Tom Fine wrote:
It's just disgraceful how 50 years of progress in sound recording and
reproduction -- to where at least a few recordings each year were
truly life-like -- is being erased in less than a generation.
The production values of singles started being applied to albums. A
major cause of this has been artists and their managers starting to
require "complete creative control" in their recording contracts
because the press tells them that's what they ought to have. Even when
label executives know better, they are obliged contractually to choose
between releasing the recording as it is or not releasing it and
eating the advance and production expenses.
The traditional reason for "cutting hot" was to make the greatest
impact in a distributor sales or a radio programming meeting. What
typically happens in these meetings is that the first 15-30 seconds of
a track is played and the people in the room vote to either add the
title to what they are working with or to throw it in the trash. This
happens before anybody outside the industry gets to ever hear the
record. (Payola only bought you getting into the pile of records being
considered.) At the very least one never want to be too much softer
than the competition.
The sad part is that with the exception of misguided souls who think
that they are being trendy, it's the fans who buy the CDs that are
getting screwed by this process. In the old days many hit records
practically sold themselves by word of mouth. I very rarely hear of
that happening today. Likewise music radio's "Time Spent Listening"
ratings have been dropping like a rock for more than ten years. All of
the ear fatigue certainly can't be helping sales. The redeeming grace
of lossy coded music is that it often makes crushed digital audio
sound much much worse.