Posts Tagged ‘mp3s’

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Audio fidelity is overrated

April 8, 2010

For most of us, more audio fidelity isn’t better. It’s a bar. And above that bar, you’re fine.

My car is old-school enough that it doesn’t have an MP3 input, which means I listen to everything on CD. That means I’m regularly swapping between purchased CDs (LPCM audio) and burned MP3s – it’s not quite an A-B comparison, but it’s close. Could I tell the difference if I was sitting quietly in a soundproofed room? Maybe. Can I tell the difference over engine and traffic noise on my factory-installed car stereo? Not a chance.

In general, advances in reproduction of music have been about making it more accessible, not about making it sound better. From live musicians to player pianos, from record players to iPods, most consumer-oriented music technology has led to music being available to a wider range of people, in a wider range of environments. And Paul Lamere made a related point in a discussion earlier this week: “The audio fidelity you can buy for $100 today is a lot higher than what $100 would have gotten you thirty years ago.”

Note that I can think of two counterexamples to this general progression of increased access and lower quality. One was deliberate: the move from AM to FM radio, which sounds much better but generally has a  shorter range. The second counterexample is really more of a side effect: the move from vinyl to CD, which was clearly mandated by the convenience of the shiny little discs. I know that many people argue that vinyl sounds better than CDs. I’ve never done the comparison myself (although I’m sure that many people reading this post have), but I can readily believe that a pristine LP on an expensive system would sound better than a CD. But in the real world? I have CDs that I’ve been listening to regularly for well over a decade, and they sound as good as they did when I first ripped off the cellophane. I doubt that would be true for a record. Digital fidelity is not to be sneezed at.

So this idea of being prescriptive about audio fidelity—”Oh noes! You’re storing all your music at MP3s! You’ll regret it!”—doesn’t seem to be in line with what people actually do with music, which is to readily trade fidelity for accessibility. Kryder’s Law being what it is, it’s increasingly possible to store lossless versions of music on your hard drive—but how many people will take advantage of more hard drive space to simply store more songs? I love music, but I have no illusions about being an audiophile. Based on the overwhelming evidence, I’m not alone.

The open question remains: how low can you go? A friend of mine finds satellite radio intolerable because of the high degree of audio compression low bitrate [see EDIT, below] (many people are oblivious, including me, although I do find it intolerable that there are 200 channels and barely anything worth listening to). As streaming becomes an increasingly viable alternative to downloading, is something similar going to happen with audio on mobile devices?

Feel free to flame me for being a audio Philistine in the comments. Or just share what you think.

EDIT: Mike corrected me in the comments, below: satellite radios use a lower bitrate, not a higher degree of compression.

Image: MP3 vs CD quality (PCM) by Flickr user filicudi, used here under its Creative Commons license.

Posted in future of music | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments »

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Jukebox in the sky, or in our hands?

June 8, 2009

HD vs year

Further to our discussion of streaming vs downloading a couple of weeks ago, here’s a short article from Digital Renaissance, “The Future of Private Copying,” that came out about a year ago, in which the author gives projections for the average size of a hard drive. I’ve taken the data from that article* and plotted it; note that it’s a straight line on a semi-logarithmic scale (that is, the size of hard drives is increasing exponentially, Kryder’s Law). Also note that the average song is about 5 MB (0.005 GB) as an MP3 and about 25 MB in a lossless format. As the author writes, “How will this development affect private copying? When music fans can say: “I have all the music from 1950-2010, do you want to copy?” What kind of business models will be viable in such a reality?”

I’d love to see something similar forecasting the use of the wireless spectrum, which I know is a bit up in the air right now because of the delays in switching from analog to digital television broadcasts. If anyone can point me to a good reference, I’d really appreciate it.

*I haven’t sourced the data, but a quick troll through Dell and Apple’s site suggests that the numbers are in the right ballpark, and the shape of the curve is documented. It is an extrapolation though, which is always a bit dangerous.

EDIT: In the comments, Mark Chang writes:

The spectrum is there. It all depends on regulation and deployment costs in a country like the US. For instance, in Korea, SK Telecom has had MelOn, a streaming music service, since 2004. AFAIK, you can subscribe and stream all you want to your phone….

I would say that storage is free, bandwidth is where you pay. And you end up paying the provider of said bandwidth plus the fees to cover the licensing of the material. Since in the US, the copyright complexities and general craziness of the recording industry, and the propriety-stuff-first thinking of the wireless carriers, it becomes orders of magnitude harder. But only from a business perspective. This is all easy from a technology standpoint, and really, advantageous from a cost perspective.

Posted in future of music | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments »

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eMusic and Sony: a rocky start, a risky move?

June 2, 2009

bruce

As you may have heard, eMusic inked a contract with Sony to make the label’s back catalog available for download (with a moving wall of two years), including albums by Bruce Springsteen, Modest Mouse and, um, Michael Jackson. I don’t have an MBA from Harvard, and I’m not a self-described ‘Internet (insert buzzword) guru’. But I can’t imagine that any business strategy that starts by alienating your most loyal customers is the way to go, and that’s exactly what eMusic did. Not in the nebulous, ‘the cool kids won’t like it’ way (which they may also have done), but in the real, live ‘hits you in the wallet’ way, as long-term subscribers are losing their grandfathered-in plans at the end of July and getting fewer tracks for the same price; in my own case, dropping from 50 downloads a month to 30. Needless to say, people are unhappy.

So after that fairly shaky start, what’s going to happen? At this point, eMusic is the place to go to easily find obscure indie songs; it’s always my first stop when I hear about a band for the first time. While the pricing structure facilitates this – it’s easy to give new bands a chance – I’ve mostly just been happy that they have ever-increasing amounts of cool stuff (like my most recent find, the Haligonian band Plumtree, who wrote the song that was the inspiration for Scott Pilgrim). But if the idea is to attract a vast new audience by adding Sony’s back catalog, they are differentiating themself not on what they sell, but how much they sell it for; Amazon currently lists over 500 Bruce Springsteen MP3s, for example, which surely includes most of his releases. eMusic only makes economic sense if you are a very consistent downloader. If you are just an occasional purchaser, it makes more sense to just buy MP3s à la carte. This suggests that their shiny new subscriber base would be sensitive to anything that closes the gap between eMusic pricing and ‘regular’ pricing, such as iTunes dropping their prices further. As well, if streaming services continue to improve, casual listeners will have less incentive to download. I guess that’s a risk that eMusic decided was worth taking, and I hope it pays off, especially since they are probably going to start by losing customers.

MP3: Plumtree – Scott Pilgrim [buy]

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How-to: Digital submissions to music blogs

March 19, 2009

nataliedee.com

Music bloggers are in the game for love, not for money. We love listening to new music and helping out emerging musicians, and most of us welcome submissions from artists. But the whole ‘doing it for love’ thing also means we trying to listen and write about new music in the interstices of our day job and the rest of our life. Here are some tips to help make it easy on us, which means that we’re more likely to listen and write about what you send.

The farther away your e-mail is from a form letter, the more likely I am to listen to your music. In particular, I can practically guarantee I’ll give it a listen if you say nice things about my blog and can relate your band’s music to my love of Britpop/geeks/overeducated musicians/(insert topic here).

Tell me why I should listen to it. Writing about music may be like dancing about architecture, but it’s the tool you have at your disposal to convince me to spend more time on it. No matter what, you should say something about your music, even if it’s the dreaded ‘we sound like x, y, and z.’

Send me links to individual MP3s – don’t just send me the whole album in one chunk. I’m not going to dedicate the hard drive space or listening time to a whole album from an artist that’s new to me without checking out a bite-sized piece first.

Use logical filenames. It’s your baby, so you don’t need this information. But I do. If I want to find it again, it helps if your fantastic new opus has a more mellifluous title than ‘Track 03.’ At the very least, put the song title into the filename. Note that I also have a new appreciation for band names that don’t start with ‘the.’

On a related note…

Give me good metadata. If I download your song to my computer, I’d like to be able to keep track of it. Make sure all the metadata is in place. Artist, song title, and album, please.

If I’ve gotten this far, there’s a good chance I’ll want to say something about your music. Make it easy for me.

Point me to an electronic press kit. It can be a website, a PDF, a SonicBids page. Anything with a bio and photos I can download (SonicBids disallows right-clicking and saving, which is annoying).

Hosting the MP3s yourself is a nicety (but not a necessity). While I host MP3s for my blog, not everyone is happy using their own storage and bandwidth. If you provide an MP3 link to share, it’s a bit nicer for the blog and it also makes it easier for you to track downloads.

Help me decide what song to post. Tell me if you’d like me to post a particular song, or if I can choose a song I like. If you don’t want me posting any songs, I won’t—but it’ll also make me disinclined to write about you, especially if you aren’t well-known.

Finally, please don’t send me DJ mixes. I don’t care what you do in your bedroom; I only want to hear you live, in front of a crowd. Figure out how to get shows in your area.

This list of tips is a work in progress – I’d love to get feedback, especially if you’re an artist who’s been on the other side of the process.

MP3: Clatter Clatter – Downpour [buy]

Edited to add:

Do not add me to your mailing list without first asking for and receiving permission. There’s a name for unsolicited commercial e-mail:  spam. Cluttering up my inbox will not predispose me kindly to you, to put it mildly.

Posted in future of music | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments »