Music Retailer Thrives Serving Captive Audience

Just caught this on Digg, and thought it was kind of interesting.
Especially as we've been heralding the death of the cassette tape for a while now.
I guess you just need to go "low-tech" sometimes...

More than 2.3 million people were locked up in federal, state or local systems at midyear 2007, according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, and they want their Michael Jackson and Pink Floyd just like everyone else. Enter North Hollywood-based Pack Central, which runs a mail-order operation for about 50,000 prisoners.

read more | digg story

Wired and PBS test Analog versus Digital

Wow,
This is a great run down on the differences between analog and digital recording.



I started out as an all digital kid. Nothing but software and plugins, but recently I've been branching out into more hardware. I'm kinda in love with tubes right now. Mics, preamps, anything you can cram a tube in I'm sold.
I think in terms of recording the argument is kinda silly. If you keep your audience in mind, then doing a bunch of analog tape recording only to bounce it to a CD (or a full digital setup to transfer to an LP) seems like a waste. Why not just use the best of both worlds?
A rack full of crunchy warm vintage gear fed into a 32bit float at a high sample rate sounds just fine to me...

And We Shall Mourn its Passing: Cassette Tape Edition

Curry's in the UK is calling it quits on the cassette tape.

It's done.

I find it odd that I will actually miss the format. My first albums were on tape (I'm just young enough to have missed Vinyl and 8-Track). Crafting mix tapes took some skill. And, I had to want to listen to the music I was collecting, had to have some patience.

On tape, I would only listen to my favorite albums.
On CD, I would only listen to my favorite songs.
On MP3, I only listen to my favorite parts of songs.

From The Telegraph:

"The day of the audio cassette is over, it was announced today by Currys, one of Britain’s biggest retail electrical stores which said it would stop selling blank tapes when existing stocks are exhausted.

Peter Keenan, managing director of Currys, which has more than 500 stores in the UK, expressed nostalgia for the passing of an evocative piece of technology but insisted that the audio cassette had been overtaken by the digital age.

“For today’s MP3 generation, it’s just a few clicks of the mouse to achieve what’s arguably a better outcome,” he maintained."

Read the rest here!
someaudioguy some audio guy music recording distribution voice over production animation narration audiobooks