What's wrong with MP3 downloads?
No effort goes into packaging MP3 downloads does it? The thing that bugs me is the lack of decent cover art, sleeve notes and band/writer info.
When you download In Rainbows there wasn't any cover art included, so the bands fans made thier own (note to EMI sack cover artists and leave it to the kids)
There must be lots of possibilities for making cover art more interesting in an MP3 file. animation, hyperlinks etc?
What about sleeve notes? I don't know anymore who wrote or played on the recordings I've downloaded, and there's no easy way of finding out. Aren't we missing a trick with MP3 tags? Why aren't the MP3 tags populated properly by the record companies with composer info, lyrics, notes, hyperlinks to websites, promotion of other recordings? (note to EMI put paid for advertising in your download tags and charge me less, torrent guys have been doing it for years).
I would have thought this would be a serious problem for most artists and writers how are people going to know who you are? Most people know the Mark Ronson and Amy Winhouse version of Valerie but do they know who wrote it?
Maybe nobody cares anymore, but I can't believe that.
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and another thing...
...when mp3s were invented why did no one think to come up with a groovier name?
Couldn't be that hard could it? Although I guess Cd, LP, cassette, single, 8 track cartridge and minidisc don't sound that cool either. 45 does though. That's my fave.
I like the wag who...
uploaded the cover of "The Dark Side Of The Moon"!
What's wrong with MP3 downloads is
that they sound like shit if you play them back on anything that deserves the label "HiFi", and have ears that are made of anything other than "cloth".
I suppose if you want a music collection you only ever listen to on the train, or or the motorway at 85mph, an MP3 will do; you'll have so much background noise it won't matter.
In the long run MP3s, I believe, will turn out to be a fairly short-lived phenomon, er, phenemeno, er, file format, when we finally have a decent broadband infrastructure, all have 50 terawhatsit hard disks and don't have to worry about ISP download limits.
The music industry spent millions weaning us on to CDs with promises of resistance to damage and higher audio fidelity (don't let's get into that one here) and yet when audio downloads become marketable they fall back on MP3s. Doh.
If you must download music, why not use FLAC or SHN formats? (These are lossless compression schemes that squash CD quality music files by about 40-50% in size.)
Mp3s
"In the long run MP3s, I believe, will turn out to be a fairly short-lived..."
It's not done too badly so far - the default audio format on the web since the early 90s, and despite an increasing demand for FLAC and other lossless formats, still very much the format of choice for the huge majority of people.
"I suppose if you want a music collection you only ever listen to on the train, or or the motorway at 85mph, an MP3 will do; you'll have so much background noise it won't matter."
I think this is probably the way most music is heard these days.
Doc doc doc doc, Dr. Beat
When I was a teenager, my stepdad had accumulated some serious, BBC-studio grade hi-fi and sure, when it was allowed out of its dark, mahogany prison even I could notice the difference between it and my Hi-Fidelity, 'look, you can stack seven 45's up on the arm and watch it go' turntable.
But... he couldn't have been less interested in the music. I know this because the first vinyl he bought for it was Miami Sound Machine's 'Dr. Beat'. 'Listen, Egg' he'd say to me, 'you can hear the maraccas!'
Despite this, I went through a stage of buying 'What Hi-Fi' and dribbling over £30k systems that promised to net you musical nirvana and for all I knew at the time, a sneak at Claudia Schiffer's indoor sports diary. Ay, chi hua hua.
I am firmly of the opinion, however, that 99% of the music-buying population have a boundary above which their ears wouldn't know the difference in quality (law of diminishing returns and all that), and I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest it's probably no more than £2-3k's worth of Linn, NAD and Pro-ject, and that most of us don't even own these sort of set-ups.
Bottom line? I'm with Fraser on this one; for the majority of us on this blog, music is an all-encompassing passion that isn't necessarily held hostage to needing lots of men in white overalls and oxygen-less manuafacturing units creating playback materials you can use in space. Most of the time, as the Russians proved to NASA, a pencil works just fine.
The majority can do what it likes,
I still prefer to hear what the artist put in, rather than notice what the algorithm left out.
Without wishing to reanimate the audiophile debate, which did indeed conclude that you couldn't trust anyone whose kit cost more than their record collection, I have to say that I think your estimate of a £2-3k rig is probably a tad on the high side for kit that's amply capable of illuminating the differences between even 320 kbps MP3s and a well engineered CD.
The value of my record collection probably exceeds the value of my HiFi by an order of magnitude, but this is more a reflection of the fact that music is an all-encompassing passion for me, and I buy lots of it.
I don't need cosmonauts to tell me that Nigel Kennedy prefers his Stradivarius to the old pencil he practised upon aged 6.
All
valid points, and my estimate may be a little high, but I maintain that no-one appears to be screaming from the rafters for someone to storm the market with an audiophile version of the i-Pod.
My record collection and music-buying habits are the same, but between the missus banging pots in the kitchen and next door digging up their garden, Carole King's deep breathing and the piccolo snare on Roxanne will probably get lost anyway, hence my inference that the best gear and the ears of the nation, more often than not, won't share the same space.
But wait 'til I build my soundproof shed. Oh yes.
You could always do as I have done
and buy some Sennheisers of such enormity and ambient-noise-excluding brilliance that they are, in fact, exactly the same size as TWO SHEDS, one for each side of yer noggin.
You can't brew up illicit wines and beers in them, or keep some old jazz mags under the seedling trays, but they're great for listening to music.
I agree that the market for an audiophile "personal stereo" is indeed thin on the ground. But then, a frighteningly high number of the nations ears seem to be cheerily hastening the onset of tinnitus with "New Monkey" music these days!
That's
"Mr Jackson" to you by the way.
Got
some Sennies, and yes, they're great.
But two sheds? You are clearly a superior being...
Look, forget about the sheds. They don't matter.
Audiophile ipod
http://www.imerge.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=193&It...
And I can testify that a 320kbps mp3 sounds bloody good when one of these is connected to a decent (but not obscenely expensive) Denon amp and heard through some B&W speakers.
Oh, and my collection cost more than my system by the way...
Blind Alley this way.......Point of order ....
The whole space writing biro/pencil stuff is sadly an urban myth I'm afraid.
Pencils can't be used in space as they shed (conductive) graphite dust, the pointy bits snap off float around the cabin and get stuck in swichgear etc.
Just thought I'd try and derail the string (further)
Yah! Boo!
Another of my favourite apocrypha bites the dust, though conjures image of NASA press bod explaining why the controls are suddenly set for the heart of the sun;
'We, ah, don't have all the facts, but it's possible Lt. Cdr Mutt'n may have fused the right-side gymbal with his 2B.'
: -)
Pedants corner
The Cosmonaut pencil story is a myth in reality both countries spent 100,000's developing space pens, which is a lesson in self.
Like
a Muller Corner, but less fun?
Seriously Paul, apologies for the derail.
I agree that more should be made of the technology; it's here to stay for the foreseeable but as usual, I imagine the music business will catch on just as we move to 'wi-fi hi-fi', my new and as yet untested model of streaming any song from any catlogue to any portable or house-bound device just by thinking about it.
In beta tests, there's been an awful lot of Blondie...
It's as expected - I've completey lost the thread....
Have you seen these they're great, the original wi-fi hi-fi
http://www.slimdevices.com/
They'll stream your FLACs all over the house.
Just a little thing...
...Egg, old chap. The Russian pencil thing is a bit of a myth.
Bother. I should have read the whole thread before jumping in.
Historical blip
Sorry to be pedantic (but I am so we'll all have to live with it!) but MP3 files didn't actually exist until mid 1995 (before that they were known as .bit files I think). Even when Win95 came out in late 95 most people had no access to the software to play them on. Back then the default sound file format was the .au file that Netscape could handle along with some Realtime stuff (bear in mind that Microsoft only grasped the concept of the Internet in late 1995). I would say that MP3 files didn't really start to appear in any quantity on the net until about 1997 and at that stage the ones available were very low quality.
You're right, apologies
I was basing my 'early 90s' line on the launch of IUMA.com, the first music download site, which went online in 1993. The switch to .mp3 came later.
With you on this
totally agree with you Paul - a little more effort wouldnt go amiss - especially in the tag data. I have a bit of editor software for that very purpose, though I'm not so OCD as to include composer details n whatnot. On the subject of quality, it would help matters if iTunes [spits] would up the quality a little.
Didnt the audiophile discussion conclude that you couldnt trust anyone whose kit cost more than their record collection?
Folk'll be keeping CDs in the freezer next.
Have you heard
the difference those little green felt tip pens make? Amazing.
a propos the CD in the freezer discussion
started in Q mag, oh, around 15 years ago, what was the upshot of it?
I seem to remember the entire buzz being started by a John Deacon writing into 'em, and always wondering was it the Queen bass player having a laugh...
well apparently
when tested* under laboratory conditions a freshy frozen CD does indeed produce a better audio reproduction...but be honest, unless your name is Dexter or Frankenstein who has a laboratory handy?
And I'd need a bloody big freezer for my collection.
*tests carried out by the "professor of pop" from the University of Toomuchtimeonhishands, Arizona.
An example
Here I am... I downloaded Robert Wyatt's Comicopera last night (£6.99 from Beep in glorious 320Mbs MP3 stereo)and have been listening to it today, all very enjoyable. But I haven't a clue what's going on. I gather it's a 'concept album about searching for connections and meaning in today's world'
I bet there are all sorts of interesting sleeve notes on the CD. And who is the woman singing on track 10?
Can anyone explain?
Beep?
Do tell... a Google search was unhelpful.
I think
Paul means Bleep. It's Warp Records' mp3 site.
Yes
Sorry finger trouble!
Ta
muchly
What I don't get
is why you didn't shell out another three quid or so and get it delivered from your favourite online emporium, with a cover, sleeve notes with lyrics and higher sound quality in a format you can bung in the CD player or the car stereo without having to burn anything to a blank.
Is having instant access and saving £3 really worth foregoing all of the above?
Fair point but
I don't have a CD player in the house or car anymore. I just live off MP3s and FLACs in both.
I buy CDs but only if I'm passing a decent CD shop and fancy a rumage. I end up sticking them in the PC, ripping them, read the notes and then put it away. It seems a waste of space and effort, just give me all the notes in a file, or in MP3 tags, and some cover art and I'd be happyish...it just seems to me they could do a lot more that's my beef. After all I did pay 6.99 and didn't just go to PirateBay.
But
if all you do is read the notes and put them away, why clutter up your hard drive?
I do agree that record companies should do more with this opportunity though; as stated previously, this is a great chance to release rare tracks, b-sides, interviews with band members etc. that wouldn't be available elsewhere.
I have a dream...
I'm listening to Comicopera on my ipod and am captivated by a couple of bars of bass. I wonder to myself who played that? A couple of click on my clicky wheel thing and there his name is.
I'm listening to Amy Winehouse singing 'you tore me down like Roger Moore' I wonder did I hear that right? what does that mean? (I was worrying about that for months!) A couple of clicks and then I realise, oh it's 'you tore MEN down like Roger Moore'! Still don't understand but at least I know...
You know the sort of thing, a few bytes of text wouldn't take up much space would it.
Fair play, you do deserve more guff with your files.
As a curious aside, I worked with a chap a year or two back who had an original approach to pretty packaging, lyric sheets, posters and what not that appeared inside the case of any CDs he bought. He threw it all away.
He listened to music almost exclusively in his car, a BMW with a very quiet cabin, and in the boot he kept the biggest CD case I've ever seen, probably custom made for him in Thailand, which held literally hundreds of original CDs. God knows how much it had cost to fill, but the equivalent feet of shelving would have stocked a small Fopp.
Once I'd cottoned on to what he was doing, I naturally decided that all the artwork, lyric sheets and so on deserved recycling. I now have a smattering of dodgy CD-Rs curiously complete with all the commercial packaging.