MP3 And The Art Of Audio Maintenance
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MP3's are here to stay (I think...)
Like all (mostly all) audio blogs, blogalive takes advantage of MP3 technology - for today's post I wrote a little bit about discovering, experimenting with and learning to respect MP3's.
A long post...
My experience with MP3's are that they're not a replacement for CD's (or radio, or live performances) despite the rhetoric from the Record Companies (emphasis on "Company" not "Records"). There are different ways to disseminate music which profit the "industry" and it's true that digital files will hurt it financially in the short run. But as the end user, my experience using each format differs. I listen to CD's when I want to "commit" or listen to a band or album in high quality the way it was originally intended. Herbert's "Bodily Functions", Greg Davis' "Arbor", Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, John Coltrane, Robert Fripp, these artists & albums are best experienced with headphones or on a decent stereo via a high-quality format. I think everyone agrees that there is and always will be a place for high quality music reproduction.
Due to “lossy” compression MP3's are not high quality, but they have benefits which CD's don't - such as the fact that they're readily available. You already know why - or maybe you don't - but it's because MP3 coding and compression creates small files which are easy to store and transfer. I bet anyone reading this (making the effort to visit an audio blog, this one or any one) can probably download several megs of music at a time by poking around the internet. The music is out there and that's the benefit of MP3's. With CD's, we have a financial and esthetic commitment to the CD's we buy. After all, a CD collection represents "you" to a degree. When someone looks through my CD's, they get an idea of who I am and what I like. You won't find a Justin Timberlake CD in my collection, but I do have a Justin Timberlake MP3 in iTunes ("Rock Your Body" and I'm not a fan), I was curious and wanted to check it out.
MP3's have afforded us the luxury of more experimentation than we ever had with CD's. Most of all to sample music we might otherwise hesitate to purchase. When I first started using LimeWire I'd scrutinize search results and carefully pick and choose the songs I wanted to download. I had a CD buyer mentality. Music was a commodity. This was the result of the "industry" of music. Admittedly it wasn't long before I was downloading music like the plug was going to get pulled at any moment (I still feel the plug is going to get pulled at any moment). The opportunity for a music fan to exchange and experiment with music is MP3's greatest gift. I'm now mining musical genres, checking out obscure bands, rediscovering lost favorites, essentially broadening my interests and diving into the musical pool head first. Heck, I even have a Justin Timberlake song. This wasn't possible financially with CD's, nor did we have a plethora of editorial audio blogs to hold our hands and introduce us to new music - and so quickly.
When I was young there was plenty of music around of course but like most suburban teens I was fenced in by radio and the tastes of the people around me, I wasn't exposed to much diversity. Fortunately my mother had relatively unusual musical tastes, so I at least had the notion that there was more out there to be discovered (even if I wasn't diggin' Joan Armatrading as much as she was). As I came to the realization that music had an important role to play in my life, I began the process of discovery from magazines, friends, MTV, record stores, wherever. When I first strayed from Pop radio, my tastes in music were still juvenile, but music soon became a hobby. I'm more a fan than collector, but I understood the idea of ownership. These were "my" CD's (tapes and vinyl in the very beginning...) and they represented "my" tastes. I tried to choose carefully.
Of course there were other ways to experience music: radio, tape trading with friends and fans, mix tapes, live performances and recordings, MTV, Night Flight, etc. And that was what I experienced for years: I'd discover something new, try it out on CD, hopefully it was good or had some redeeming value, sometimes I'd trade tapes with friends or make mix tapes (mostly for girlfriends). Then I'd buy more CD's relying on my opinion of the ones I previously bought, trade more tapes, talk to more friends. The CD's started to pile up. By 2000 (when I practically stopped buying music) I had 4,000+ CD's which covered a wall - not a ton, but a lot to me and a focal point of my studio. I still have them, boxed away - I don't even know why I keep them all.
Then I started reading about a new 'thing' called MP3. Reviews focused on the quality, which I think was described as "sucked", but not so much on the eventual obvious implementation of small audio files. They were being compared to CD's of course since MP3's were being ripped from CD's, it made sense to compare "before" and "after". I can remember listening to MP3's with MacAMP and being disappointed, maybe I too expected MP3's to compare to CD's. But eventually I realized this was unfair. I could connect my stereo to my G4, and in an art studio environment, with people talking and working, the convenience of MP3's started to win me over. And the fidelity may have been inferior to CD's that's true, but it was better than radio. And radio programming was pretty bad anyway. What started as a convenience - a way to share music with the people who work with me (they'd bring in CD's to rip to my computer) - became a new way of experiencing music. Buying a CD was expensive and a commitment. Burning CD's from friends was less expensive, but still required a little bit of time - artwork was still important. But MP3's were something different. Because they were almost disposable. They didn't have value, any more or less than a Quark document or Excel spreadsheet. (now however, my MP3 collection as a whole has value and I back it up)
In 2001 I read about the iPod on the Apple website and thought that maybe MP3's day had come. I mean, Apple was on board, and they were really great too - I placed my pre-order for the first generation 5G iPod, which was released on a Tuesday (don't quote me on that) but the following Wednesday Apple sent the iPod via DHL Next Day Air from the factory (somewhere in Asia, how much did they pay for that?) so I had one of the first iPods around - well, around my own tiny universe. I bought a cassette adapter for my Volkswagen and showed the guy at Tweeter my new iPod which he sniffed at, "An Apple walkman, huh?" I think I actually said, "I guarantee you'll be seeing more of these." as if I knew something he didn't. But I just felt the tide turning. I think a lot of us did. I hadn't walked into a record store in ages, the Internet bubble was still inflating and MP3's were part of the love-fest with "new technology". Digital Music was the next big thing.
Sure the sound quality didn't compare to CD's, but I had plenty of CD's already. And although I had a cable modem there still wasn't *that* much music out there. But overall my experimentation with music had never been more, ah, experimental. I was listening to new music and enjoying the process of discovery, and re-discovery, of new styles, artists and bands. MP3's weren't just an encoding format, they were opening my eyes and ears in a way that was proactive and exciting. I liked the little guys. I still have a collector mentality, so organizing MP3's by artist, album, genre, etc. with iTunes gave the files a face - and a clean, user friendly face from Apple too. Nice!
MP3's were about the implementation - sharing - not the compression.
Then the Internet bubble burst. The music labels started yelling time-out, the media predicted the death of music as a career choice and even Lars Ulrich was crying no-fair. And to bring it home, my favorite local record store, "In Your Ear", went out of business. A Providence institution as far back as I could remember and they closed their doors. That sucked. The RIAA cracked down on ISP's and University students. Napster closed up shop (I didn't have much experience with Napster). What a legacy for the lowly MP3 encoding algorithm. Karlheinz Brandenburg probably never imagined what a Frankenstein his little creation would become. A Godzilla really.
And still we hear about the demise of the music industry. Tonight we had a small dinner party and the topic came up and I asked how many people actually downloaded music, no one did but me. And everyone still buys CD's. The problems of the music industry may be exacerbated by digital file sharing, but record companies are in the same position as the rest of retail America - adapt or sink, but stop complaining. I'm willing to spend my money on music, I think we all are. I recently purchased "Live Mixtape Pt. 2" by Breakestra and "Teeter" from Gregory Douglass since both are independent and not raking it in from the industry machine. But it was a conscious effort. I don't really purchase music from iTunes either as I fill my quota with audio blogs, LimeWire, Epitonic, surfing the 'net, and sharing with friends. But the record industry needs to recognize digital files as an opportunity, not the enemy. Apple's iTunes is a start.
In the end MP3's have changed the way I experience music - and for the better, despite what the labels are saying. And I support - in spirit - Apple's effort to force the commodity issue with digital downloads, 200,000 iTunes Music Store downloads can't be wrong. MP3's have a place of their own, that's different from classic radio, Internet radio, satellite radio (we have Sirius), CD's & tapes. They've allowed me to step away from the commercialization and "packaging" and get back to what I always loved about music - the experiment. And for that, I fondly respect the little MP3 with the less-than-perfect sound.
If the record labels can find a way capitalize on the digital revolution, they'll have my money again. But there's plenty of music to enjoy without an associated cost at the moment, so the ball's in their court. (no more sports references, promise).
In the meantime, I'll try to do my part so here are today's live tracks. Enjoy.
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[Recorded live at the "German Festival", Frankfurt, Germany - October 23, 1999]
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