Everyone to go after Spotify and in the end everyone loves it. I recently discovered it thanks to my music lover companion and I must say that I already love it.
I can already imagine the reaction of those who belong to my generation with one foot in the analog and the other in the digital. They would say, “How dare you? You who were born with high fidelity listen to a cold stream as a teenager? " My dear contemporaries, calm down, times change and even we nostalgics can adapt. You see, I belong to your generation that started from vacuum, passed through the vinyl and landed on CD.
Even today I love the initiation rite of removing a vinyl from the envelope, placing it on the plate, hearing the erotic noise of the needle on the record and sitting on the sofa. I also remember the exact moment I first heard a CD marveling at the superb sound quality. But there is one aspect on which we must agree. In the era of rigid media we heard far less music than today. For the difficulty of finding the records also due to the high price especially when we were young penniless. With streaming today we have a much larger repertoire of music than before. Personally I discovered old discs with streaming and not with the hard media of the past. When I talk about streaming I obviously also refer to platforms such as YouTube, iTunes, Tidal, etc. I am aware of the fact that the audio quality of the streaming is not comparable to that of a high fidelity system.
Many argue that the quality of the recordings of the past was much "warmer" and more enveloping than that of today and that the various streaming platforms eventually compress the sound quality. Another recurring assertion is that today's music is qualitatively inferior to that of the great classics. I partly agree with these theses. It is true that certain records from the 70s still sound crazy today and many productions today try to reproduce it. Equally true is the statement regarding the qualitative compression of audio files on streaming services. I would like to try to counter both theses by proposing some reflections. If it is true that streaming compresses the audio quality, however, it is very acceptable if it is played by a decent system and not by a pair of earphones or even worse by the hands-free phone.
At the time of the rigid support, for reasons of large distribution, we inevitably listened to little or no independent productions since the little-known artists were able to churn out only one disc and then little or nothing were distributed. One had to stubbornly go and get hold of pirate cassettes of the artists not mainstream. The recording and production aspect was also much more expensive for labels that had to invest heavily in recording studios, arrangers, musicians, etc. In the digital age, independent artists can practically record their records at home and self-distribute on streaming services.
Thanks to Spotify I discovered independent artists who make music much more interesting than the so-called giants. Because that's what matters, the quality of the music not the means of reproduction. How to say: better the contents of the container. The absolute evil is not Spotify, but rather the bad music that is heard around the official circuits.
Lorenzo Sorbo
