- A new process for making vinyl records: injection moulding rather than stamping, being explored by a manfacturer of CD presses. Still a work in progress, but looks promising.
- What Brexit will do to the UK record industry. You’ll be unsurprised that suddenly cutting off intermingled supply lines that it’s relied on for the past forty-odd years will utterly bugger it.
- Neil Young’s magic beans and unicorn poop based audio experience Pono may not quite be a stratospheric success: the site says it’s moving to “a new content partner”, and Young’s own records are back on Spotify.
- I was just reminded of this record’s existence. So I thought I’d remind you too. I didn’t love this even when I was ten.
The Pono concept was broken from its first assumptions – the site demonstrated from day one that its progenitors either know nothing about how recordings are made, or have deluded themselves into forgetting. Their own blurb states, “If you were to close your eyes when playing back PonoMusic, it will feel like the music is being performed live in front of you.” Somehow it must therefore be adding new information to the master through a clever psychoacoustics algorithm, one wonders? Oh no, it’s “totally true to the original”, even through headphones. More pertinently perhaps, even if it was as described, who *wants* to hear music like it’s being played live? It’s as though the world never invented studio recordings, EQ and mastering. Anyone who has ever gigged knows that recordings of live performances mostly sound like utter shit, and the ones that don’t have received the benefit of lots of work to *not* be shit. So, indeed; take an existing content catalogue, a musical plastic Toblerone, and call it magic fairy dust. I’ll take a FLAC, my Android phone and some decent earphones any day.