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Comment by OvidNaso | Hacker News Reader

All of your examples have to do with minor minutia of the day to day life of a musician, but you give no examples of how the actual landscape of music has changed. And I find it baffling if the point is that the focus and work required by an artist today is more different compared to one 10 years ago than it was for that artist compared to one 50 years ago. Television, music videos, global marketing, magazine specialization. These things didn't alter a musicians life more than the current decline in retail sales?

Please expand and explain, because Albums, 3 minute songs, radio play with commercial breaks and touring are all very very similar to 10 years ago from a consumer perspective despite the proliferation of other choices and the changing landscape.

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Dude, we haven't seen the landscape change yet because no one knows what the fuck is going on.

Let me put it this way. Should I make my art in the form a 180 minute long atonal sound collage that can only be heard by buying a custom piece of machinery that is installed in your house OR should I make my art form 55 minutes of music that can fit on a Compact Disc?

Think of shipping containers. Should I make my own custom shipping container or should I go with the modern, modular standard?

The medium affects the kind of art that is made. The reason we even ended up with the three minute single and the LP have more to do with the physical limitations of vinyl than anything else. An entire industry and culture sprung up around this. It is prohibitively difficult for a musician to go outside of the well established path of the current industry to make and share their music.

Music isn't about 3 minute songs, it isn't about albums, or anything of the sort. It conforms to the momentum of culture and technology as much as it inspires the technology and culture.

It will survive, but the current culture and industry will of course go away, and with it, the entire art form.

Think about that phrase. ART FORM. Roll it around in your mouth, taste it on your tongue. Art will always be made, but it's shape is constantly in motion.

Hey man, shameless but on-topic plug. I believe I am on to the solution.

http://gralbumcollective.com/about.html

Mmmmmm 180 minutes of atonal 'sound collage' hell, otherwise known as complete and utter self-absorbed wank. 99% of the music listening public aren't interested in hearing it.

There are plenty of examples of the non-3 minute song and generally they've been done by masters of their art, the reason songs are 3 minutes long is because that's our attention span for average music.

Records, your plastic limiter, haven't been popular for decades, eons in pop music time, entire generations of teenagers have gone and past, and yet most songs are still 3 minutes long.

So there's your pet theory out of the window.

My point with the "sound collage" wasn't with the CONTENT, rather the MEDIUM. It makes more sense for me to ship a stereo recording across an established channel like a Compact Disc instead of coming up with my own proprietary medium. If I make an art form known as an "album" and I make it available on Compact Disc, I can plug in to an existing industrial infrastructure. Sound engineers, mixing engineers, networks of distribution, journalism, marketing... EVERYTHING has been built on top of the little plastic disc. If I forgo the little plastic disc, the album, well, I can't tap in to this industry. You literally can't get someone to review or promote your work as a musician unless you have a little plastic disc.

If you're interested in my "pet theory" of the medium being the message, I highly recommend you check out Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan.

>There are plenty of examples of the non-3 minute song and generally they've been done by masters of their art, the reason songs are 3 minutes long is because that's our attention span for average music.

That might be your attention span, as you have been conditioned into, all your life.

Plently of cultures cherish much larger popular music forms.

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