A Quote by DJ Shadow

I'm trying to satirize what it's like to be a recording artist in 2011. I realize that standing on a soap box and ranting and raving about my opinions on the digital age and its effect on music is only going to get you so far.
We live in the digital age and, unfortunately, it’s degrading our music, not improving it It’s not that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s being used isn’t doing justice to the art. The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice.
Tomorrow, they will say, Donald Trump rants and raves at the press. I'm not ranting and raving. I'm just telling you. You know, you're dishonest people. But - but I'm not ranting and raving. I love this. I'm having a good time doing it. But, tomorrow, the headlines are going to be, Donald Trump rants and raves.
I don't do anything digital. Everything is analog, and that's a limitation for me. However, in my world, it's not a limitation at all because I don't create the type of music that would generally be created by musicians that work with digital recording studios, and/or digital equipment, as far as production is concerned.
I don't want to be like the angry old guy in the corner who is always ranting and raving about the same things - but I don't mind doing that just a little bit!
To me, 'rant' was ranting and raving. So to me, it's heightened. emotional flipping out, frothing at the mouth. Where I grew up, that was a rant. I don't consider what I'm doing ranting.
When digital recording came in about '84, everything started to follow into digital. Now, you've got the best recording media in the world, but it's not very pleasing to the ear.
I think one of the main reasons I write is to do better than ranting. The ranting is the opinion, and the writing is not the opinion. I always say that people's opinions are the worst things about them. The words demand a dignity.
In the digital age we're in now, with satellite radio and Pandora and stuff like that, it's not about, "I listen to this kind of music." It's about, "I listen to good music and bad music."
I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.
We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
In fact, it's in my interest to love digital recording, and I just spent a ton on a new digital recording system, so I speak from a place of heavy investment in both sides.
I'm not trying to say I'm this artist who is all artsy and that I only write music for myself, because I don't. I write music for other people to enjoy, so I think about if it'd be an idea someone else would like.
I'm always looking for older equipment and ways of recording, but you can't escape the fact that it's all going to be digitized and reduced. I do think music sounds better when it's on tape and more simply recorded. I've been arguing with people for 10 years about tape versus digital, and I believe tape is absolutely essential in getting the sound that's conducive to the enjoyment of music. I wonder if it's going to go back to that. Sometimes I think it has to. As music becomes more computer-based, it's lost some emotional impact.
I could be standing in the supermarket, and there is a person standing down the aisle, who is reading the back of a cornflakes box but everything about them is going "It's me! I'm the one you want! I am the necessary subject. This is it!"
We didn't set out to make some polemic about life in the digital age, I can only react emotionally to story ideas. You hear an idea and you go, 'That's cool. I can see spending a few years of my life working on that.' As a filmmaker, you approach it like, 'OK. They're going to give you all this money to make this movie. It's like an electric train set you get to play with.'
Tomorrow, they [mass media] will say, Donald Trump rants and raves at the press. I'm not ranting and raving. You're dishonest people.
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