kuniklo

Infuriating but it's only available on vinyl & streamers. Might also be obtainable by less direct means. 🙂

I've noticed this as well. Having unlimited access to all the music in the world has actually made me enjoy listening to music less. I think there's a psychological effect at play here. Too much choice and too little investment in each choice. I'm much happier when I have deep engagement with a smaller number of records. But that does mean as an artist I'm less likely to ever listen to your work at all, which is ok.

Thanks for the thoughtful response dcom. Given what a pittance streaming services pay it seems like probably the best thing to do as a listener is not support them at all and just preview off Bandcamp and pay for the stuff you think is worth it. And I guess we all have our own ideas of how much we're able and willing to pay for new music. Back in the CD era I would regularly spend $200/month on music. I could still do that now if I wanted to but given how much stuff I already have sitting here ready to be listened to I think for my own habits one new album a week is about my max. In general I'd rather pick up something from a new artist than an artist I already have in my library but I'll make exceptions for favorites or for artists that really vary their style from one release to another. I do worry that there's a whole new generation of people that view music as something that's essentially worthless and belongs slotted into an algorithmically generated playlist to fit a particular mood.

Yeah for sure. I've let my streaming subs lapse and have just been listening to the stuff I already have. But that's reminded me how many great records I already have that deserve closer listening and sets a very high bar for new stuff to enter the queue.

As a case in point. I like this new Hoavi album: https://peakoil.bandcamp.com/album/invariant If I were streaming I'd listen to it at least a few more times. But I don't think I like it enough to buy it so if I'm only listening to music I own then this and many records like it won't quite make the cut to be heard at all beyond a preview.

For a variety of reasons I dislike using streaming services. They don't compensate artists fairly. They track and analyze everything you listen to. You lose your entire music library if you stop paying or they cut you off for some reason. etc, etc. But on the flip side if I only listen to music I own I'm a lot more conservative. I already have a big and wide ranging music library. The chance that your new album really fills a gap in there is increasingly small as my library grows and I'm much less likely to listen to your new record at all if I have to pay ~ $10 for it. Since the vast majority of musicians don't make any real money on streaming *or* record sales you could argue that at least streaming gives them a chance to be heard. Maybe the most responsible thing to do as a listener is to use streaming services but go buy a real copy of the albums you listen to a lot?

Io is one of my all time favorite ambient records. I still listen to it regularly almost 30(!) years later! If you like MLO definitely check out Ocean Moon's "Crystal Harmonics" LP: https://www.bewithrecords.com/products/ocean-moon-crystal-harmonics-kpm-lp Also Jon Tye doing ambient. Inexplicably and frustratingly not available on Bandcamp.

I don't think Plaid or the new Black Dog have ever done anything as good as Spanners but I do like quite a few tracks from the post-Plaid incarnation of Black Dog.

Koch is excellent too.

Mnestic Pressure is still my favorite Lee Gamble release and I don't find this as consistent but there are still a bunch of great tracks here.

Really great ambient with a bit of a kraut/cosmic flavor. This is one of my most played records lately and likely to be on my year end list.

He has a lot of great tracks but nothing that's held together as an album IMO. Will check this out.

This is excellent. Very likely to wind up on my end of year list. I love the more aggressive direction they've gone in on this one.

This came out back in June but I'm just getting around to it now. Reminds me of 90s era ambient. A grower.

I keep all my stuff in flac in a dropbox folder that I don't sync to my machines. It's just for backup. I transcode all these to opus and also keep those in dropbox in a folder I do keep synced to my machines. I also use the FolderSync android app to sync over the opus stuff to my phone and use PowerAmp to play it back. On my Mac I use Swinsian to play stuff: https://swinsian.com I wrote a small command line tool to normalize all the folder paths on both the flac & dropbox folders. I think we do need simpler solutions than this for people that want to actually buy music but aren't interested in this level of micromanagement. It would be nice if Bandcamp made their app better as a player.