Dunno that this will find favour with too many folk here but here goes it
anyway...
At the end of the day I would love to be able to afford to have the hard
copy artifact, and perhaps there is a way for record companies to allow for
this to happen, but it will take a major reseller (Amazon, iTunes or eMusic
for example) to start selling digital downloads not as a finished artifact,
but rather as something closer to paid for previews - if you like what you
hear you're free to pay peanuts for a low bitrate copy (you could even put
some form of crippleware/DRM in there that'll time out after so many plays
or days - wasn't/isn't Napster doing something like that ?) BUT if you
"love" what you hear and want to access a better quality reproduction (i.e.
CD, WAV or FLAC) you only have to swop back your low bitrate MP3 and pay
the difference between the original low bitrate mp3 and the price of the
higher quality non crippled reproduction.
Also a greater incentive then for musicians and producers to create well
written, engineered and mastered music - the better the products qualities,
the higher the rewards.
Not gonna turn the music industry on it's head/bring it to it's knees
exactly, but should help create a more favourable market in which customers
get to hear exactly (and only) what they really want to hear at a quality
they feel appropriate to their budget/taste.
|---------+---------------------------->
| | n3wjack |
| | <n3wjack@n3wjack.|
| | net> |
| | Sent by: |
| | n3wjack@gmail.com|
| | |
| | |
| | 25/10/2007 11:44 |
|---------+---------------------------->
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| |
| To: idm@hyperreal.org |
| cc: |
| Subject: Re: [idm] who still buys CDs |
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
OMG a proper thread on the IDM list!! w00t!! :)
And to actually answer the question, yes, I still buy CDs if I can.
I haven't bought any digital releases online yet, but I see myself getting
some on bleep.com since it's becoming increasingly hard to find the same
releases on plastic with my favourite alternative record stores going out
of
business one by one.
As a few others in here I also have the habit of ripping any new CD I
bought
straight to an insane quality mp3 file.
That because it really sucks if a CD ends up scratched in the long run, and
the music becomes unplayable. Secondly because it's so much easier to port
the mp3 format all over the place and listen to it at work, in the car (mp3
radio), at home on the PC or dump it on an mp3 player. Sweet.
The claim that mp3 quality sucks is bogus imo.
If the bitrate is at the maximum (320kbps), you won't hear the difference
with the original CD. If you've been buying mp3s at 128kbps you've been
ripped off. 128kbps is for previews, like the latest Radiohead release up
for download.
Bleep.com does it at 320kbps for example.
--
"progress doesn't come from early risers
progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things"
http://n3wjack.net
http://www.jungletrain.net - 24/7 dnb radio station