.MP3…the Format That Backfired?
Posted on | May 21, 2008 |
I was just sitting at my desk thinking about whether or not compact discs were ultimately doomed. Whether, someday, everything would be vapor. No physical discs. No CD, SACD, DVD, BluRay, whatever. Nothing. What would musicians sell at shows? Vouchers for .MP3s?
And that made me wonder whether this is the first time in recording history that an inferior technology would replace a superior one.
To some degree, that’s been going on for a long time. Convenience is always a factor. Records were inferior to reel-to-reel, but offered an affordable (and somewhat portable) way for people to listen to music. 8-tracks and cassettes were just a portable turntable, so even though sonically inferior, they co-existed happily. The first CD had lower quality than really good vinyl, but it was — by comparison — almost indestructible and sort of married the best components of albums and cassettes: improved sound quality for portability (over tapes) with more consistency and durability over vinyl.
But what does .MP3 offer? Is this “upgrade” convenience-based only? Or, has every new technology iteration been based purely on convenience?
I think the biggest boon is that .mp3’s are easily transferrable over P2P networks. But as the bandwidth of the Internet increases, that becomes less important. And the size of the average movie trailer is about the same size as a 16/44.1 song, so if people are willing to wait for a movie trailer to download, why not a song?
I’m not against .mp3s (OK, well maybe I am a little), but IMO there has to be some reason besides convenience that drives art’s consumption. But maybe there doesn’t. Maybe there never has been, depending on how you look at the evolution of consumer playback formats. Is it solely based on ways of packaging audio that can maximize sales?
I guess if that’s the case, then this is the one time it backfired…
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From Ohm to Om reflects the opinions of mastering engineer Paul Abbott, owner of San Diego's ZenMastering.
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May 22nd, 2008 @ 10:30 pm
Paul wrote:
the size of the average movie trailer is about the same size as a 16/44.1 song, so if people are willing to wait for a movie trailer to download, why not a song?
Paul,
I hear what you’re saying, but here’s my take: Currently, you can fit 2500+ 3MB MP3’s on your 8GB iPod, but you can’ fit 2500 movie trailers. The memory/HD space hasn’t reached that density yet. In the time it takes to download two 35MB movie trailers, you can download a whole album of really good-quality MP3’s. Gen-Y internet-savvy users are a society requiring instant gratification.
FWIW, when I compres MP3’s, I use Variable bitrate compression for the best quality at the best filesize… and that’s what it’s all about for me. What am I willing to listen to? With high-quality MP3’s (example 1:8 filesize compression) it’s nearly impossible for me to discern between .wav’s .mp3’s CDA tracks, or 48/24 recordings.
Maybe my ears are shot, but that’s the truth.
- Rickshaw
May 22nd, 2008 @ 10:53 pm
Rick,
The sound quality is one aspect. I don’t think your ears are shot, but if you listen on a great system the difference is noticeable.
But by “backfired” I meant not that the sound quality backfired but that all past forms of “portable media”, like the cassette tape, usually resulted in MORE sales. In this case, people just started transferring for free and sales went in the can.