It's a new year... · 2008-01-02 23:21
…careful what you pack.
So I’ve decided to forego the whole “2007 Year-End Review.” Why? Well, because I’m sick to death of them, for one. And because my posting schedule was sparse enough that you could just re-read last year’s material in about 10 minutes. Besides, you all know the salient parts anyway. I did this, I did that, blah, blah, blah. Whatevs.
Instead, I’m gonna tackle something that is more interesting to me. If you have an internets, you might have noticed that for some time there have been rumblings in the music industry. You know, piracy and all that rot. Many people, fed up by the RIAA’s shitty business practices, have decided that stealing their music is a preferable alternative to paying $20 for a CD that they only really want for one or two songs anyway. The fact that most of the profit from CD sales goes to record label execs and not artists doesn’t cause most people pangs of guilt, either.
It’s gotten so bad that the RIAA is filing questionable lawsuits against some people to protect their interests. After all, CD sales have been slipping for the past few years, causing the RIAA much grief. Some optimists are even heralding 2008 as the year the RIAA will die. Unfortunately for the RIAA, they were about 10 years behind schedule in predicting the next trend in the purchase and distribution of music: digital sales. Because of this, their sorry attempts to get back into the game have produced an equally mediocre result of mid-quality, DRM-infested songs. Apple was among the first to utilize this business model [fuck iTunes, btw] and although they have since tried to mend their ways I am still not impressed. Others have entered the online pay-per-song market, most notably Napster, Rhapsody, Wal-Mart [of course], and Amazon. I have to say, of the services that I’ve perused in the last few months, I’m not impressed yet by the idea of buying from these retailers. My reasons for this are twofold.
For one. I don’t like buying substandard music, even if it is à la carte. The act helps support too many of this things that I don’t like about the RIAA. I don’t like buying a product and being told that I can only use it one way, and will be forced to do so through hardware or software restrictions. I don’t want to buy one copy of a song for my computer and then have to buy another copy that’s compatible with my MP3 player. And I especially don’t like supporting the machine that’s responsible for churning out shitty music. Which brings me to my second point, the meat and potatoes of my rant…
Over the past few years, I’ve become [somewhat] mature enough and financially stable enough to start enjoying music the way it’s meant to be heard. I don’t need to have all of my MP3s burned in medium quality 128kbps stereo. Hard drive storage and good computer soundcards are cheap enough that a lot of people can afford better quality digital music. Without getting into which codecs are better than the rest, or which is the optimal bitrate and how it should be sampled with whichever algorithm, I can say that there are plenty of good, free, open-source choices for lossless or near-lossless digital music that are highly compatible with most players. If it weren’t such an incredible hassle, I would go back and replace my MP3 library with FLAC. Actually, I’ve started to do so on an as-necessary basis.
Now, some of you I’m sure are saying, “We’re not all audiophiles, so why should we give a fuck about whether or not your music sounds abso-fucking-lutely great?” To which I would reply: I’m not an audiophile. Not in the serious sense of the word. I’m saying the technology is available, and I intend to make use of it. I would like an online music service that will sell high-quality music competatively and without DRM restriction. I understand that offering higher-quality downloads requires more server space and more bandwidth, thus increasing costs. I have no problem paying a little more for songs that are better quality. I would like more money [if not all of it] to go to the artists, minus the overhead for the retailer, and less or none to go to record execs who, in my opinion, are much less deserving of my financial support. I would also like to listen to some music that doesn’t sound flat and unwavering. I always wondered why some of my old CDs sounded so much quieter than their newer counterparts. Now I know why. And you know what, I kinda like my music to have a little dynamic expression. I like hearing all of the little nuances of a song tucked in underneath the melody. I guess I’m just picky.
