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Digital music is shit, says Animal Collective man
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 16 January 2009
Animal Collective’s Geologist (that’s his name, I don’t mean they have their own geologist) has said that music is consumed all wrong these days. In an interview with Drowned In Sound he says that hearing music for the first time via poor quality MP3s and online streams is not the best way to get the most from the experience.
Most musos would agree, of course. Trent Reznor once remarked, when tracks from Nine Inch Nails’ ‘With Teeth’ album leaked, that it’s a shame when fans have a sneaky preview listen to new music online because that first listen is better when it’s in a top quality format and in the context of a whole album. And once you’ve used up that first listen, you can’t unhear it.
He possibly has a point. Or perhaps he doesn’t. Does anyone really take in an album the first time? What’s wrong with hearing something before you buy it? Remember the days when you wouldn’t know if you liked something until after you’d bought it? Those days were rubbish.
Anyway, back to Animal Collective. Geologist told DiS that he doesn’t like it when his songs leak online before being properly released, even though he knows he can’t do anything about it.
He explains: “I have a lot of strong personal feelings about how people consume music these days, even myself. That’s why I have these feelings; because I can see how my own listening habits have degraded over the years with the advent of the internet. People ask, ‘why do you give a shit about a leak, it’s going to leak anyway, it’s such an outdated, antiquated way of approaching music’ and I guess that’s true, but I’m unapologetic about it, in a way, growing up in a time when the internet wasn’t around”.
On the subject of legitimately listening to streams of albums via MySpace and other such sites, he added: “Even streaming it before it’s released, that goes against my views on how music should be listened to. Doing that or putting it on iTunes first, it’s giving people another option from which they can hear your music for the first time”.
Animal Collective’s new album, ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’, is out now via all good download stores.
