Why Do We Do This? (of course, not all of us do)

[richardfinegold]

Well I was chatting to my younger son last night( in his mid twenties) , who is amateur musician,writes songs, had some classical training, and he tells me he is keen to start collecting, including vinyl if appropriate.

His girlfriend agreed. And I suspect that the young Hipster market is a powerful force in the vinyl revival.

Of course even somebody like me who has a few versions of many of the major classical works is an outlier. But for all that, collecting the physical remains a powerful driver.

The vinyl bought by Hipsters is more for show than for actual listening. My nephew proudly showed me a few lp purchases but lacks a playback device. If he actually wants to listen to the music contained within he streams it on Spotify. I don’t think that he is all that atypical. The “vinyls” that they buy buy is expensive. I expect that the vinyl sales will peak in a few years as it ceases to be trendy.

[teamsaint]

We have discussed the supposed death of physical media before and despite the variety of ( often cheap) ways there are to access books and music, physical media simply refuse to die. The multi platform business model for music and books is here to stay for a good while yet.

[Beef Oven!]

We have discussed the supposed death of physical media before and despite the variety of ( often cheap) ways there are to access books and music, physical media simply refuse to die. The multi platform business model for music and books is here to stay for a good while yet.

Which enterprises use a multi-platform business model? Amazon make dick-all from CDs and books, so not quite an example.

[Joseph K]

Which enterprises use a multi-platform business model? Amazon make dick-all from CDs and books, so not quite an example.

You sure about that? I have books printed by Amazon - I think my (rather lousy but cheap) edition of the second volume of Beethoven's piano sonatas was printed by Amazon.

[Beef Oven!]

You sure about that? I have books printed by Amazon - I think my (rather lousy but cheap) edition of the second volume of Beethoven's piano sonatas was printed by Amazon.

No, I'm not the least bit sure. I buy all my books and CDs from Amazon, but I may not be their target customer. And your personal experience might not be any more revealing than mine.

[teamsaint]

Which enterprises use a multi-platform business model? Amazon make dick-all from CDs and books, so not quite an example.

Book publishers, for example , sell their products as both physical and e format, which is what I was getting at.

I know the sorts of margins that Amazon make on our physical books and e books, and in almost all cases they make a healthy margin. occasionally, for strange algorithmic ressons, they choose to make a short term loss , but this is very much the exception.

[teamsaint]

You sure about that? I have books printed by Amazon - I think my (rather lousy but cheap) edition of the second volume of Beethoven's piano sonatas was printed by Amazon.

Amazon do a lot of "print on demand." They seem to love it actually, they are always trying to get us to let them do more titles this way. For us it tends to be something of a last resort, but it isn't by any means a problem. We make decent margin on it.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I think I spend less time listening to Music since retiring than I did as a Music teacher - it's just that now everything I listen to is entirely for my own benefit

Yes. When I travelled considerable distances each week, teaching woodwind instruments for a music service, I spent so much time driving, that I actually listened to Wagners' Ring on the road in a single week.

[Lat-Literal]

At a fundamental level, collecting is about - creating a safe space, a comfort zone, where you gather in, arrange, organise, contemplate and explore a set of objects, creating a world with a constantly renewed sense of joy, control, excitement, adventure. There is a ritualistic quality to the ever-varying repetition of linked activities. Our infinitely-extendable invented world grows around us, nourishes us.
We love to curate: in galleries, libraries, music libraries, individual collections. For the individual music or book or stamp or toy collector, there’s sense of control too: finding a higher order, deeper or richer meanings in a mundane quotidian existence. Something beyond the basic essentials. We love to play, whether games or music or other artistic performance.

Hope to joy is little less in joy than hope enjoyed….
As Shakespeare's Richard II said, anticipation is an intense pleasure in itself, the dopamine hit of finding out about, imagining, ordering, waiting for the package from far away… then the colourfully-wrapped CD arrives with its promises of - orchestras, soloists, conductors, concert halls…. all of this, before you actually hear it.

Musically speaking, of course a large part of the motivation is - different interpretations, acoustics, orchestral characters, recording quality - but again more fundamental here is -
Defamiliarisation: the desire to rekindle the freshness and sense of excited discovery we felt when we heard some great symphony for the first time. Think about when you heard your first Bruckner Symphony - perhaps No. 4 or No.7. What were you keenest to do? Hear another 7th or more Bruckner? Probably 8 or 9, or 5….
As you get older some of the pleasures are diluted by familiarity and on one level, to explore different recordings of the same work is to search for those intense early thrills once again.
(This also feeds into HIFi - the desire to accessorise or “upgrade”, in the hope of better sound, refreshing your responses - “you’ll feel like you’ve got a whole new CD collection!” - is not just advertisers’ guff. We truly want to believe it.).

“Never as good as the first time”….?
Probably not, but we go on searching, hoping….

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
(Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)

A very good piece of writing.

[Bella Kemp]

You are a true music lover Beef Oven. I salute you! Don't trouble about psychology (it's a science made up by people as they go along) just relish the music. I personally believe that it gives us an intimation if God - but don't be put off by that. Music is what makes life worth living. I am not often on this site but good luck to you - and check out the Britten quartets if you do not know them. They will speak to you.

[Beef Oven!]

You are a true music lover Beef Oven. I salute you! Don't trouble about psychology (it's a science made up by people as they go along) just relish the music. I personally believe that it gives us an intimation if God - but don't be put off by that. Music is what makes life worth living. I am not often on this site but good luck to you - and check out the Britten quartets if you do not know them. They will speak to you.

Thank you - and I agree with, and I'm not put off by, your intimation of God idea.

I know and love the Britten Quartets

[jayne lee wilson]

You are a true music lover Beef Oven. I salute you! Don't trouble about psychology (it's a science made up by people as they go along) just relish the music. I personally believe that it gives us an intimation if God - but don't be put off by that. Music is what makes life worth living. I am not often on this site but good luck to you - and check out the Britten quartets if you do not know them. They will speak to you.

It is arguable whether Psychology (however you conceive of it) is a Science as such; was Psychoanalysis as originally conceived as science, or a creative attempt to understand the hidden depths of human emotion and aspects of identity? But surely, the human animal can only benefit from trying to understand its motivations and where its beliefs and feelings come from. We do have at the very least the potential intelligence to do that.

In any case, all Science is "made up by people as they go along". That is the nature of the scientific method, thesis-antithesis-synthesis, endlessly changed and adapted according to evidence and observation. There is both imagination and creativity involved. But it is a denial of humanity not to "trouble about psychology". We are animals, but we have the gift (or the curse) of consciousness: we know that we must die. There is no incompatibility between that search for self-understanding, and the enjoyment of works of art. They exist in symbiosis. Both can make life worth living.

Unless obviously related to a specific religious context, I'm not sure about music as "an intimation of God". This reminds me of Stephen Hawking saying that to understand how the universe works, to discover a "theory of everything", would be "to know the mind of God".
In either case, I feel this type of concept is less interesting than it may appear. It seems simply to evoke the unknowable.

[Serial_Apologist]

It is arguable whether Psychology (however you conceive of it) is a Science as such; was Psychoanalysis as originally conceived as science, or a creative attempt to understand the hidden depths of human emotion and aspects of identity?

Isn't science about putting forward theories, and then seeking to find evidence to back them up? If so, psychoanalysis - and psychology - conform to the definition of being scientific disciplines.

[vinteuil]

Isn't science about putting forward theories, and then seeking to find evidence to back them up? .

... actually it is about putting forward theories, and then seeking to find evidence to contradict them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

.

[Beef Oven!]

... actually it is about putting forward theories, and then seeking to find evidence to contradict them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

.

Exactly