Últimamente me está llamando la atención la proliferación de noticias similares en las que incluso gente de la misma industria audiovisual se queja de la nueva forma de consumo:
-Volumen excesivo en los cines:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/13/cinema-noise-levels-ruining-films-joker-hugh-grant
Deafening cinema sound is ruining films, claims Hugh Grant
-Star’s complaint to Vue has provoked an outpouring of disgruntled filmgoers
Vanessa Thorpe Arts and media correspondent
Sun 13 Oct 2019 09.40 BST
Joker, the sinister hit starring Joaquin Phoenix, is dividing film critics. Hailed as a masterpiece by some, it has left others balking at its violence. For the actor Hugh Grant, the experience of watching at his local London cinema last week was “unendurable”, but not because of Todd Phillips’s menacing vision as director.P.D: https://viviendoapesardelacrisis.blogspot.com/2019/10/joker.html
Grant felt high noise levels in the auditorium had made his trip to see Joker at the Vue in Fulham “pointless”, he complained on Twitter, adding: “The joke was on us”. “Am I old or is the cinema MUCH TOO LOUD?” the film star asked.
Publicists for Vue’s cinema complexes were quick to respond, assuring him that sound settings are “regularly checked to ensure they comply with health and safety standards”, and promising to take up his case. Grant said he was grateful, but wondered how they could help unless they knew where he had seen the film.
The incident has provoked an outpouring of accounts of aural pain at other venues. Many filmgoers say they believe sound levels have been crawling up the decibel scale, and not just for the adverts and trailers. Several sufferers also argued that a lack of balanced settings in an auditorium can create an unpleasant booming sensation.
“I can’t watch mine, or any films, in commercial cinemas for this reason! It’s like a restaurant adding too much salt in the food,” agreed one producer.
Prompted by similar concerns, members of the British Tinnitus Association, who work to prevent hearing damage, have launched a survey on noise levels in public spaces. They want to focus on louder noises, rather than on the separate issue of consistent background sound pollution.
Dolby, the leading sound system, has traditionally set the “fader”, or volume control, at number seven, although some rival systems calibrate levels differently. This standard setting is the equivalent of 85 decibels, a level regarded as safe to hear over two or three hours.
Hugh Grant.
Hugh Grant. Photograph: Matt Baron/Shutterstock
But according to the association’s spokeswoman, Nic Wray, the best medical advice now suggests a level closer to 80 decibels is safer. “And for every three-decibel rise in the level, you should really halve the time of exposure,” she told the Observer.
A new state-of-the-art Dolby Odeon cinema opened last month in the Trafford Centre in Manchester with much fanfare. It hopes to attract custom with what it bills as “an immersive environment and an unrivalled cinematic experience”, so it is clear that getting the sound right is an expensive imperative.
Both the size of the room and the size of the audience alter the experience of sound, leading some film fans to suggest that large cinema chains are failing to suit the noise level to the acoustic in smaller screening rooms. The deliberate technical “compression” of the noise on a soundtrack also causes issues for people with impaired hearing. Other customers grumble that the common advice to report any discomfort to ushers presents a challenge when staff are sparse on the ground.
A spokesperson for Dolby said that all sound system formats should comply with industry standards, but that each cinema should still “integrate and calibrate” its settings.
“While a scene may be perceived as loud, these are brief moments and well within the industry standards. An area that can be confused with loudness is when we feel discomfort: this could be loudness or distortion. Distortion is when a sound system was not appropriate for the size of room it is installed in and at peaks causes distortion, which is objectionable to a listener.”
And it turns out that Grant may be right: it does also have something to do with age. The Dolby expert explained that ageing affects the intelligibility of dialogue and makes us more sensitive to sound.
Phil Clapp, chief executive of the Cinema Association, the trade body that represents most British cinema operators, said that “the increasing sophistication of cinema sound” was at the heart of the matter, as it meant the “dynamic range” of the built-in systems had grown.
“Although this has had no effect on the average sound levels, it has required cinemas to work with equipment manufacturers to ensure that the standard settings on systems keep maximum sound levels within acceptable parameters. These are typically recalibrated on a weekly basis.”
Regulatory controls ensure that British cinemas abide by the provisions of the Noise at Work regulations 2005, said Clapp. These are formulated to govern noise for any employee over a working day and so are also considered safe for most cinemagoers.
Average sound levels of 85 decibels, coupled with limits on the maximum permitted sound levels, “are well below those likely to pose any health risk to customers,” he said.
-Desajustes entre formato original y dispositivos de reproducción:
https://elpais.com/cultura/2019/10/25/television/1572012651_620364.html
Cuando los televisores no hacen justicia a las seriesMás aquí:
-La calidad cinematográfica con la que se ruedan las ficciones choca cada vez más con las limitaciones técnicas de las terminales
Natalia Marcos
Madrid 26 OCT 2019 - 10:58 CEST
https://viviendoapesardelacrisis.blogspot.com/2019/04/streaming-no-gracias.html
-Velocidad de reproducción en Netflix:
https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/10/28/netflix-testing-variable-playback-speed-on-android/
[Update: Netflix confirms] Netflix testing variable playback speed on Android
Rita El Khoury
13 hours ago (29/10/2019 a las 11:00)
Update: 2019/10/28 1:56pm PDTY la reacción, claro:
Netflix has confirmed that variable-speed playback control is currently in testing. A company spokesperson told Android Police: "We’re always experimenting with new ways to help members use Netflix. This test makes
Variable playback speed is an invaluable feature for those of us who want to consume the most content in the littlest time possible. Many podcast players and video players support it, and now Netflix is joining the fray. The service is testing playback speed controls on Android.
We were first tipped about this feature today, but looking at mentions of it online, we found two tweets about it from a few days ago and more than a week ago. The sparsity of the reports and the fact that we don't have the option yet on any device indicate this may be a limited server-side test.
If you have it, you'll get the option to slow down speed to 0.5x or 0.75x, or raise it to 1.25x or 1.5x. The former might be useful if you want to see a scene in slow-motion, are learning a language and want a leisurely pace to assimilate everything being said... or if you're addicted to Gilmore Girls; while the latter should be nice if you're catching up on a slow documentary or re-watching a favorite show.
The three reports we've spotted were all on Android, but the feature may also be in testing on Android TV, iOS, web, or other platforms.
Update: 2019/10/28 1:56pm PDT by Stephen Schenck
Netflix has confirmed that variable-speed playback control is currently in testing. A company spokesperson told Android Police:
"We’re always experimenting with new ways to help members use Netflix. This test makes it possible to vary the speed at which people watch shows on their mobiles. As with any test, it may not become a permanent feature on Netflix"
End of Update
https://variety.com/2019/film/news/aaron-paul-judd-apatow-brad-bird-netflix-playback-speed-1203386460/
October 28, 2019 6:51PM PT
Judd Apatow, Brad Bird, Aaron Paul Slam Netflix’s Testing of Variable Playback Speed
By BreAnna Bell
Following Netflix’s announcement that the streamer is testing faster playback speeds — allowing consumers to watch films at a higher rate than intended — various industry members including Judd Apatow, Aaron Paul, and Brad Bird have come forward to share their feelings on the possible update.
Apatow was particularly displeased with the new feature. “No. That’s not how it works. Distributors don’t get to change the way the content is presented,” he said in a tweet. “Doing so is a breaking of trust and won’t be tolerated by the people who provide it. Let the people who don’t care put it in their contracts that they don’t care. Most all do.”
Apatow was joined in his sentiments by “Bring It On” director Peyton Reed, who vowed to fight against the feature alongside other directors in his network.
Bird took to Twitter to express his distaste, saying, “Whelp— another spectacularly bad idea, and another cut to the already bleeding-out cinema experience,” Bird said. “Why support & finance filmmakers visions on one hand and then work to destroy the presentation of those films on the other???”
Paul, whose “Breaking Bad” character was mentioned in an Uproxx article drawing attention to the test, dropped his two cents on the idea. “Stop. As the person talked about in this article I felt the need to speak out. There is NO WAY Netflix will move forward with this. That would mean they are completely taking control of everyone else’s art and destroying it. Netflix is far better than that. Am I right Netflix?”
Uproxx has since updated the original story with a statement from Netflix.
“We’re always experimenting with new ways to help members use Netflix. This test makes it possible to vary the speed at which people watch shows on their mobiles. As with any test, it may not become a permanent feature on Netflix,” the streamer told the publication.
Y más que llegarán.
Lo preocupante es que el consumidor (bulímico) parece haber perdido TODO criterio.
P.D: https://viviendoapesardelacrisis.blogspot.com/2015/04/escuchar-musica-de-calidad-en-calidad.html
Actualización a 03/11/2019: Más:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/business/irishman-netflix-theaters.html
Actualización a 02/03/2020: Más:
https://www.xlsemanal.com/actualidad/20200226/television-streaming-burbuja-del-ocio-netflix-hbo-amazon-disney-plataformas-series-peliculas.html
https://www.xlsemanal.com/conocer/tecnologia/20200227/adiccion-television-series-online-streaming-netflix-hbo-amazon-disney-psicologia.html
https://elpais.com/television/2020-03-01/anatomia-de-una-perdida-de-tiempo-asi-han-aumentado-los-minutos-que-pasamos-decidiendo-que-ver.html
https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2020/playback-time-which-consumer-attitudes-will-shape-the-streaming-wars/
Actualización a 21/10/2020: Más sobre el tema de ver las series aceleradas (speed-watching):
El ‘speed-watching’ en Netflix y el obsesivo culto a la prisa
-Vivimos con miedo a perder el tiempo y eso nos hace desperdiciar lo banal, en lo que anida la vida
Actualización a 27/09/2022: Sobre Spotify:
https://viviendoapesardelacrisis.blogspot.com/2019/04/streaming-no-gracias.html
‘There’s endless choice, but you’re not listening’: fans quitting Spotify to save their love of music
-Former streaming service subscribers on why they have ditched mod cons for MP3s, CDs and other DIY music formats
Liz Pelly
Tue 27 Sep 2022 08.00 BST
Meg Lethem was working at her bakery job one morning in Boston when she had an epiphany. Tasked with choosing the day’s soundtrack, she opened Spotify, then flicked and flicked, endlessly searching for something to play. Nothing was perfect for the moment. She looked some more, through playlist after playlist. An uncomfortably familiar loop, it made her realise: she hated how music was being used in her life. “That was the problem,” she says. “Using music, rather than having it be its own experience … What kind of music am I going to use to set a mood for the day? What am I going to use to enjoy my walk? I started not really liking what that meant.”
It wasn’t just passive listening, but a utilitarian approach to music that felt like a creation of the streaming environment. “I decided that having music be this tool to [create] an experience instead of an experience itself was not something I was into,” she reflects. So she cut off her Spotify service, and later, Apple Music too, to focus on making her listening more “home-based” and less of a background experience.
Such reckonings have become increasingly commonplace in recent years, as dedicated music listeners continue to grapple with the unethical economics of streaming companies, and feel the effects of engagement-obsessed, habit-forming business models on their own listening and discovery habits. In the process, they are seeking alternatives.
“With streaming, things were starting to become quite throwaway and disposable,” says Finlay Shakespeare. A Bristol-based musician and audio engineer, Shakespeare recently deleted his streaming accounts and bought a used iPod on eBay for £40. With streaming, he says: “If I didn’t gel with an album or an artist’s work at first, I tended not to go back to it.” But he realised that a lot of his all-time favourite albums were ones that grew on him over time. “Streaming was actually contributing to some degree of dismissal of new music.” Even with digital downloads, he tended to give music more time and attention.
Jared Samuel Elioseff, a multi-instrumentalist who records as Invisible Familiars and owns a studio in Cambridge, New York, also felt the streaming environment was generally hindering his musical curiosity: “I’ve been Spotify-less for two years now. My musical experiences definitely feel more dedicated and focused. It’s not as convenient. I’ll reluctantly admit that I listen to less music. Although on Spotify, I wasn’t necessarily listening to stuff. I was checking out the first 15 seconds and hitting skip. Now, I have to work for it and I like that. I can use the internet as a search tool but I’m not using it as a means to listen. I really have to seek things out and research.
“Streaming makes the listening experience much more passive,” he continues. “The word ‘streaming’ is one of those things that’s gradually assimilated into everyone’s vocabulary. Before there was streaming music, what else was streaming? This idea that you can just turn on a faucet, and out comes music. It’s something that leaves everyone to take it for granted.”
Conversations around how digital marketplaces shape listening have long focused on the unbundling of the album. For some, though, this has felt distinctly tied to streaming. Nick Krawczeniuk, a music fan and network engineer who recently moved away from streaming, felt his listening habits were being particular affected by Spotify’s “liked songs” playlist: “I found myself selecting more and more just one-off songs from an artist, whereas before I’d been inclined to save a whole album.”
And Milesisbae, a 23-year-old hip-hop artist from Richmond, Virginia, who recently cancelled all streaming subscriptions after learning how little musicians were compensated, noted something similar: “I will listen to one song 100 times in a row, but I won’t give the rest of the album a chance. Before I used streaming services, I would listen to the whole thing.”
Miles says he increasingly sees artists selling CDs and downloads at shows; indeed, for some who have deleted Spotify and Apple Music accounts, leaving streaming has meant a big-picture reimagination of their relationship to MP3s. For Shakespeare, downloads are now his primary mode of consumption: he has replaced his iPod’s hard drive with a micro SD card dock to increase capacity, and loaded it with Bandcamp purchases and ripped CDs.
For Krawczeniuk, the move away from Spotify after eight years was partly inspired by the realisation that by using open source software, a home server and a VPN on his phone, he could build something similar himself. He is now using a project called Navidrome to create a self-hosted streaming library that he can stream from any location, across various devices. “It’s a little box that sits on my desk, plugged into my router,” he explains. The server holds all his music, including Bandcamp purchases and ripped CDs: “It’s a simple music library.” He sees moving away from Big Streaming as connected to a broader movement towards small-scale tech projects and open-source services that are not resource- or energy-intensive.
Nearly everyone interviewed for this piece pointed out the need for systemic change across the music industry, from rethinking how royalties are paid by streaming services to expanding public funding for artists. Still, leaving streaming has led to a more meaningful daily experience of music.
Jeff Tobias, a musician and composer who finally pulled the plug on Spotify for good in early 2022 as the company was making headlines for its deal with podcaster Joe Rogan, has an approach to streamless listening that’s uncomplicated: records, cassettes, Bandcamp, Mixcloud. When it comes to discovery, recommendations come from friends, Bandcamp editorial, and stuff he comes across at his job working at a local record shop. “It’s almost a pre-internet style relationship with music,” he says. “I am kind of going back to thinking, ‘Oh I wonder what that album sounds like’ until I really take it upon myself to actually seek it out.”
“I like music because it’s a communal artistic practice,” he adds. “And anything that I can do that allows me to listen to music in a way that connects me with either the artists or my friends, that’s what I want to be involved with. Spotify and streaming in general just has absolutely no connection with that relationship at all.”
Wendy Eisenberg, a musician and teacher who recently deleted their account with Napster Music (formerly called Rhapsody), put it this way: “The one thing I’ve noticed since divesting is that music sounds better to me because I’ve put in the work to either locate it on a hard drive or download it from a friend’s Bandcamp or something. And every time I listen to it, even if it’s just on the way to work, I can hear the spiritual irreverence of that choice. And so it doesn’t feel like I am just receiving music from some distant tastemaker. But it seems like I have some relationship to the music, of ritual, which is where I come to it as a practising musician.
“Taking the extra step to load it on to my phone, or the extra step to flip over the tape, or put the CD on in the car, it feels like something that I’m doing, rather than something I’m receiving,” they continue. “And that sense of agency makes me a more dedicated and involved listener than the kind of passive listening-without-listening that streaming was making me do.”
Lethem reported something similar: she now listens mostly to records, Bandcamp downloads, and a little radio she put in her kitchen. “The choices are very limited. But it’s actually freeing. [With streaming] there’s endless accessibility, but you’re not really listening to anything. At least that’s what it started feeling like to me. I’m experiencing so much music, but am I really listening to any of it?”
DIY discovery: Six ways to find new music …
Bandcamp
Online music store Bandcamp is a key revenue driver for many artists, taking a scant cut of sales compared with streaming services. For fans and listeners, the Bandcamp Daily blog is a treasure trove of independent gems and curios, and a few hours spent trawling other users’ profiles or the site’s Discover function is always sure to yield a new favourite or two.
The human algorithm
A great way to discover new music can oftentimes be just dropping a message in your favourite group chat: “What’s everyone been listening to lately?” Even if your mates have the exact same taste as you, there’s bound to be some kind of variance, and those small differences are often where you’ll pick up the kind of track that an algorithm could never show you.
Your local record store
There are few better ways to find new music than simply going down to your local record store, telling the staff member at the counter what you’re into, and asking what they recommend. If you’re shy, don’t worry: many shops feature a staff picks section to trawl through.
Online radio
It’s easy to be paralysed by the repetitive cycles of streaming services. Online radio stations such as NTS, Worldwide FM, The Lot and Hope St Radio offer tailored, extraordinarily niche, and often mindblowingly good radio shows. Heavy hitters such as NTS have multiple channels and deep archives; newer, more DIY operations might only have a patchy, ultra-lo-fi stream and no tracklists. Either way, it’s a great way to hear something you have never heard before.
Artist interviews
Musicians can often provide the best recommendations, and even if you don’t have most pop stars on speed dial, interviews are generally the next best thing. A Björk profile, for example, may lead you to wild techno experimentalists Sideproject, while a podcast chat between Charli XCX and Rina Sawayama could lead you to discover your new favourite diva.
YouTube algorithm
If Spotify’s algorithm is disarmingly tailored, YouTube’s is shockingly loose. You almost never know what’s going to come next when you are listening to music on YouTube (which many people, especially among Gen Z, use as their sole streaming service). Sometimes, it will be another song by the same artist, at other times, it will be something extraordinarily unlikely, such as this 1994 performance of Fade Into You that, for about a year, was ubiquitous in many people’s algorithms. Either way, it’s a journey. Shaad D’Souza.
Has streaming made it harder to discover new music?
-Services such as Spotify and Apple Music give us access to the entire history of popular songs. But has that access made us lazy listeners? And could TikTok or TV really help us rediscover our passion for discovery?
Alexis Petridis
Mon 26 Sep 2022 13.03 BST
Earlier this year, Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill unexpectedly became the most popular song in the world. After it was used on the soundtrack of the Netflix sci-fi series Stranger Things, the streaming figures for Bush’s 1985 single rocketed by 9,900% in the US alone. Something similar was happening wherever Stranger Things was available: by 18 June, three weeks after season four of Stranger Things premiered, Running Up That Hill was No 1 on Billboard’s Global 200 chart, which, as its name suggests, collects sales and streaming data from 200-plus countries.
It became a big news story, big enough that Bush – no one’s idea of an artist intent on hogging the media spotlight – was impelled to issue a couple of statements and give a rare interview. That was partly because it was an extraordinary state of affairs: the upper reaches of the Global 200 are usually the sole province of what you might call the usual suspects – BTS, Bad Bunny, Adele, Drake et al – and not a world that plays host to tracks from critically acclaimed 37-year-old art-rock concept albums. And it was partly because the unexpected success of Running Up That Hill seemed to say something about how we discover and consume music in 2022.
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