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Alternative view of MP3s
A reader sent us an alternative viewpoint of the MP3 craze.
Although the writer likes MP3s for their ability to allow small artists to get their material out,
or to catch those last few B-sides, he still wants to collect actual physical media.
Caveat: My comments only apply to those whose musical tastes are relatively MP3-encoding-friendly, and for those who don't consider themselves audiophiles; that is, those for whom 128k is adequate for their needs, and to whom 160k is indistinguisable from the original. I believe my comments would also extend to most MP3-"unfriendly" music with a sufficiently high bit rate - try VBR, 160, or higher, until your ears don't notice.
The author writes that "there's something about looking at a big mass of music". I get the same feeling when I look at a hard drive full of MP3s - it's just as big a "mass" of music, just in a different form.
Ane yes, you can have the same feeling of "hunting down" MP3s as with other media. I find it odd that the author writes that one can build up a huge library "with a T1 and a healthy dose of spare time" (emphasis added), and then goes on to say in the next paragraph says that only collection of physical media offers the feeling of reward that comes with finding a long-sought item. If the "item" is the experience of being able to listen to the song at any time you like, it's not just a matter of downloading it. Someone else has to have it, rip it, encode it, and post it to USENET or an FTP/WWW site. If an FTP/WWW site, you've gotta find it, and then you've gotta get through to it to make the download. If USENET, you've gotta be reading the appropriate group at the right time, all the pieces have to propagate from the poster's server to yours, or you've gotta hope/pray/beg for a repost. In either case, music that's "rare" on physical media can often be every bi n MP3.
The author's snort of derision ("Oh, how impressive") at the notion of an 18G hard drive of MP3s strikes me as bizarre. I think what we have here is a culture clash. I'm a geek. I think small is cool, and the thought of having 18G of MP3-based music in the palm of one's hands as immensely attractive. Does the author snort just as derisively at a CD of music when the bulkier 78RPM vinyl format could have been used? (A hint - we call them "albums" because a collection of songs from a single artist in the days of "78s" was a hefty book of discs. Each "track" was roughly the mass of a 12" vinyl recording. I snort in derision at the notion of a CD as a tangible item :-)
How many of us have looked at our hard drives and remembered when floppies were king, pondering the question "how many rooms full of floppies are on that drive?", and marvelling at the answer? I think of it the same way - how many shelves of CDs can I fit in the palm of my hand?
As for permanence, I think the /. crowd needs little reminding that backing up an 18G hard drive (or transferring it to some other storage media when "hard drive" technology is replaced by something else) is far simpler than backing up a wall full of vinyl or CD. A safety deposit box in a bank costs as little as $20/year. A spare 18G hard drive, a little over $250 and falling. If you've got 18G of data, a monthly trip to the bank for offsite backup is the least of your worries.
Lastly, getting back to the notion of collecting as a hobby that requires effort - how long does it take to download 18G of data? And given the impermanence of FTP/web sites and USENET binary postings, how long would it take one to replace every track on those 18G worth of MP3s? About as long as it took to find the MP3s in the first place, assuming a random probability of any specific MP3 showing up in any given place. I dunno about you, but at the rate I've been accumulating MP3s, our author's hypothetical 18G collection would represent several years of work.
To recap - yes, if you're interested in "original" material and the ability to say that you have one of the 500 pressings of Foo's limited edition single, maybe an MP3 collection isn't for you. But if it's the music, not the packaging, that you collect, collecting MP3s can be a hobby that's every bit as rewarding as collecting physical media.
Frank Zappa used to say that "fondling and fetish potential" were an important part of the experience of owning an album.
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
I understand where the writer is coming from in many ways. However, there are A LOT of times that I would gladly have bought a single vs. the entire album. Most artists have one or two tracks that I am actually interested in - with some notable exceptions. Still, after you get the CD you have this large piece of plastic and aluminum media with a jewel case and a 4-6 page insert. If you are lucky to find an artist that has disdain for jewel cases thats a rarity. I like the comment about this technology being for the "bushes". I also know that markets haven't emerged just yet for when media is transferred to a new supreme format. I mean how much cool collectible visual information can you put on the cover to a MiniDisc? How about if music starts being sent out on smart media cards? Maybe that is the time when large throw away lcd panels that are the size of a poster come into vogue. You put in the media and it will tell your poster what to show off. Just a thought. I also don't think that MP3 will be the end all be all of formats *cough 8 tracks* but it will last through the time of cheap disk space and plentiful bandwidth for some. Basically, it is rare to find what you want when you want unless you have a small out of the way record store (why do they still can them this when they rarely have records i.e. wax?). Sometimes you can get lucky and they have the promo stuff with the song you actually care about. Most often though there are the music walmarts and the mega mega music wholesale places inside malls. At least with new technology you get some input into the purchasing. So, the writer has some points but those points don't apply to the way I think about music distribution. Record companies might set up those central servers but that isn't happening right now but MP3's for those of us here in the "bushes" are happening right now. When I can dial in the local college radio station and hear an entire nights show composed of mp3's of artists I would never have heard of in a mega mall record store I think this MP3 phenom is doing just fine without critical acclaim. :)
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