How much do the general public actually care about music production quality?

[Vortifex]

I thought about this after a musician friend of mine recently had some of his stuff mastered and the resulting MP3s had audible distortion after being pushed way too loud. I pointed out what a poor job the engineer had done and he just sort of shrugged and said he thought it sounded good.

And then I thought about the fact that I don't recall any of my non-musician friends ever listening to music and saying that the vocals sound 'boxy', or that the guitar is too quiet, or that there is distortion, or anything that goes beyond "I like it/don't like it."

Do the public care? Do they know bad mixing/mastering when they hear it? Maybe they do, but they don't know the geek lingo to put it into words. What do you think?

[KBSoundSmith]

Not at all. The quality of playback is irrelevant -- how else could $7 ear buds be a thing?

They also don't care about the music. People listen to music for the following reason:

1) as a background to daily tasks (dishes, exercise)
2) as a distraction from silence and the threat of having thoughts
3) as a way of establishing "identity" ("I belong to X culture, sub-culture, etc")
4) to set a general "mood" for other things, like dancing (where the actual music is completely irrelevant -- the slender, gyrating ass isn't), or for film (where Mood is all that matters, and melodic writing is either superfluous, unnecessary, or a distraction from the main event)
5) to establish some level of "ritual" for things like funerals, weddings, etc (although those norms have deteriorated considerably, since people have no longer have any idea whatsoever what music is emotionally suitable for a situation or not)
6) as an excuse to take drugs or give up the rational side of their brain and generally have an excuse for otherwise intolerable behavior

Reality -- most people don't care about music. They'll listen to and enjoy it...but they have no intellectual interest in it, and they sure as hell won't pay for it (People pay for items 3 and 4 -- the sex, the sense of belonging, not the music itself).

[thecontrolcentre]

Most people have no idea. They listen on crappy earbuds and tiny speakers. I've even noticed musicians using online "mastering" who cant hear how their own music has been destroyed by the process.

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

Not at all. The quality of playback is irrelevant -- how else could $7 ear buds be a thing?

They also don't care about the music. People listen to music for the following reason:

1) as a background to daily tasks (dishes, exercise)
2) as a distraction from silence and the threat of having thoughts
3) as a way of establishing "identity" ("I belong to X culture, sub-culture, etc")
4) to set a general "mood" for other things, like dancing (where the actual music is completely irrelevant -- the slender, gyrating ass isn't), or for film (where Mood is all that matters, and melodic writing is either superfluous, unnecessary, or a distraction from the main event)
5) to establish some level of "ritual" for things like funerals, weddings, etc (although those norms have deteriorated considerably, since people have no longer have any idea whatsoever what music is emotionally suitable for a situation or not)
6) as an excuse to take drugs or give up the rational side of their brain and generally have an excuse for otherwise intolerable behavior

Reality -- most people don't care about music. They'll listen to and enjoy it...but they have no intellectual interest in it, and they sure as hell won't pay for it (People pay for items 3 and 4 -- the sex, the sense of belonging, not the music itself).

Absolutely brilliant!

[slipstick]

Music is an art. And like all the arts many people know WHAT they like even when they have no real idea WHY they like it.

Steve

[Vortifex]

Not at all. The quality of playback is irrelevant -- how else could $7 ear buds be a thing?

They also don't care about the music. People listen to music for the following reason:

1) as a background to daily tasks (dishes, exercise)
2) as a distraction from silence and the threat of having thoughts
3) as a way of establishing "identity" ("I belong to X culture, sub-culture, etc")
4) to set a general "mood" for other things, like dancing (where the actual music is completely irrelevant -- the slender, gyrating ass isn't), or for film (where Mood is all that matters, and melodic writing is either superfluous, unnecessary, or a distraction from the main event)
5) to establish some level of "ritual" for things like funerals, weddings, etc (although those norms have deteriorated considerably, since people have no longer have any idea whatsoever what music is emotionally suitable for a situation or not)
6) as an excuse to take drugs or give up the rational side of their brain and generally have an excuse for otherwise intolerable behavior

Reality -- most people don't care about music. They'll listen to and enjoy it...but they have no intellectual interest in it, and they sure as hell won't pay for it (People pay for items 3 and 4 -- the sex, the sense of belonging, not the music itself).

Holy shit... I kind of want to disagree, but I have a horrible feeling you are absolutely right. Great post.

[Zexila]

They only notice if something sounds really weird or annoying, but no, it's us who have Golden ears fetishes, general public actually like music even if it's not produced perfectly, it's ridiculous how much we care about most irrelevant things.

[shonky]

Reality -- most people don't care about music. They'll listen to and enjoy it...but they have no intellectual interest in it, and they sure as hell won't pay for it.

To an extent though, people who listen to and enjoy music probably care about it far more than those that simply analyse it. I can remember going to out to numerous club nights and parties and not thinking much of the music, as it was pretty similar and overfamiliar, and I wanted to hear something that really snapped me out of what I thought was pretty average fare.

Then I looked around me and realised that everyone else seemed to be dancing, enjoying themselves and not being particularly concerned that the music was pretty samey. I often found the after-parties more interesting because that was usually where people stuck tunes on that didn't need to be dancefloor fodder and could experiment with the track selection (although there'd usually be a point where someone would ask us to "turn that shit off" and play what they were listening to in the club a few hours earlier).

To be honest, throughout the history of recorded music, people listened to tunes recorded using imperfect equipment in unsuitable environments, transferred to imperfect media, and then usually played on inadequate players and radios. Much of the music beloved of the sixties was probably heard on AM radios, jukeboxes or Dansette record players (or similar). I've known people that are "audiophiles" in the sense that they use high end gear and acoustically treated room but I'd hardly consider them music fans, in the sense that their tastes are usually pretty conservative and they're not that interested in seeking out anything different from what they're used to hearing.

Music fans can tolerate less than optimum sound quality as long as what they can hear gives them goosebumps, audiophilia is more of a fetish to my mind.

[Zexila]

Music fans can tolerate less than optimum sound quality as long as what they can hear gives them goosebumps, audiophilia is more of a fetish to my mind.

Spot on!

[aciddose]

What people listen to in music is a lot less about the "sound" which is technical and something only musicians are concerned with. People are only interested in the emotional impact of music: for example try listening to some of the lyrics of top tracks and then see if you can get anyone to repeat the lyrics for you from memory or tell you what the song is about without listening to it to "refresh" their memory.

It doesn't even matter what the lyrics actually say and it is in fact important that they need not be understood clearly or say anything of substance at all because in doing so they risk the potential of being disagreed with. "***kin magnets, how do they work?"

Listeners can't even tell you in 99% of cases which instrument were used! Can they tell the difference between a mic'd guitar, electric guitar, steel guitar or a clavinet? ***k no they can't.

*MASSIVE guitar solo!!!*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KET11SOC5YA

[chk071]

Of course music production quality matters. Just release a unmixed, and raw production, and people will wrinkle their noses over it, for sure. Even when i listen to a electronic music production from the 90's, and compare that with nowadays production, i hear a MASSIVE difference. Even when the "loudness war" fraction won't accept it, the stuff sounds much more professional, clean, and big nowadays. And that's not just because of the dynamics, even though they surely play a part also. TBH, it always stroke me as quite funny how bedroom producers, who never made a cent with their music, criticize gold record producers for the way they do their work.

[aciddose]

I wanted to mention in my post but forgot to, thanks chk071 for reminding me:

Yes listeners care about "production quality", but the aspects they're listening for are completely different than what musicians and producers are after. The track you send to get "mastered" and ends up muddy as hell with lots of distortion where you can barely make out the vocals could end up placing #10, while the "great master" you're thinking of might only be #47. The skill of those mastering engineers is in identifying what will sell well and applying that to their masters; not in creating "perfect" masters that appeal to the tastes of musicians or the author.

An example is I absolutely love some of the demo tracks from Devo's "Recombo DNA" album, while I can't stand the same tracks produced on the studio albums. That's because I know exactly what they were going for when they mixed the demo and although it doesn't sound "radio": I'm not interested in those masters.

So what is the difference between a hacked together demo that I love vs. a very skillfully tweaked studio master? They're the same track, the same progressions with mostly the same notes and rhythms where just the sounds are different. Sometimes in the demo things are a bit more loose or experimental and those elements are all lost from the studio version: those are the things I'm interested in! The "radio version" sound is just a distraction that makes it very difficult to try to listen through to what the original intention was because 90% of the effort is put into the polish and all I can see is a blinding reflection. Dim all the lights though and remove the polish and you can see through the glass to what is behind it.

Visual aid to what I'm getting at:


At night you can see inside the buildings! There is less polish and no reflection of the sky in the window glass to distract you.

[do_androids_dream]

Music is an art. And like all the arts many people know WHAT they like even when they have no real idea WHY they like it.

Steve

Yes, there is a lot of truth in this. The most untrained ear of a music fan will certainly notice when something sounds 'off' in comparison to an expectation (consciously or otherwise).

[do_androids_dream]

The skill of those mastering engineers is in identifying what will sell well and applying that to their masters; not in creating "perfect" masters that appeal to the tastes of musicians or the author.

Yes, there's no such thing as a perfect master. Rendering a piece of music 'suitable for distribution' (at the time of distribution) is the best description of what we do.

[Zexila]

Of course music production quality matters. Just release a unmixed, and raw production, and people will wrinkle their noses over it, for sure.

There's middle between "perfect" and unmixed, that's the whole idea, don't stress too much about things only forum golden ears notice.