NY Times Article On MP3

TreyHarris writes "The New York Times has an article about how MP3 is changing the experience of listening to music. Most other articles have been hung up on how it changes the experience of purchasing music, which misses the point, so this is a nice change of pace. Pretty simplistic, but good for your clueless friends. Requires free registration. "

Article Mirror...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here [dhs.org] is a subscriptionless mirror of the story.

Re:Other change I see

[wynlyndd]

For that to occur, we will have to see dramatic increases in the amount of bandwidth being delievered to the homes of general populace. while it is fairly trivial to download one 3 MB file for the song that you like, is America (and the rest of the world for our non-USA-centric readers) going to invest time downloading all of the rest of the albumn? I doubt it, especially for artists that they haven't grown to love anyway. For certain artists that I love and have cds of at the moment, yes, I probably would make the investment of time but for some fresh-faced band or singer of which i have only heard one song, probably not. This means that as the distribution gets more and more digital and the older bands that I have grown to love stop producing, we will only be left with bands that began after the transition period. Bands without histories. Bands that with one hit.

Re:Mass media...

[wynlyndd]

Don't forget xDSL and cable modems.

Other change I see

[wynlyndd]

As the online distribution of music proliferates, I, unfortunately, see more and more artists becoming "one-hit wonders". There will be few incentives to generate the other music which is often just considered filler on the cd anyway. Personally, some of my favorite songs are the ones that never received airtime and would never be considered hits. But in a distribution method where people pick and choose what they want, all the other tunes will be lost by the wayside. There won't be these decisions how to arrange songs together. There won't be a 70 minute concept record. Only individual songs without connection to each other.

Mass media...

[Signal 11]

Why does it take so long for the general media to pick up on this kind of thing? MP3s have been around for.. mmmm. 4 years? And only within the past few months have they been getting any exposure.

The RIAA has been trying to maintain a stranglehold on music.. well... longer than I've been around. Yet strangely enough, that's not an often-discussed topic. Now, it's been cast into the limelight.

Seriously now, I'd like to hear from journalists who work at newspapers - why can slashdot have a story up within a few hours of it becoming known, yet it takes weeks for a regular newspaper to "pick up" on the story?

I don't think non-internet means of communication are so slow that it takes that long for stories to reach newspaper offices...



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Re:Other change I see

[Signal 11]

Well, considering that mp3s are highly compressed and take up very little space on people's harddrives, I see no reason why the author / distributor couldn't pack in a hundred mp3s from that author. It doesn't cost them much (I believe hdd space is running at under $0.10/mb right now).

Seriously - it's so cheap for them to distribute that it makes no sense to only keep a small collection of "one-hit wonders" on a server.

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Re:Instead will see countless "re-mixes"

[Cid Highwind]

You miss the point. Digital music distribution gives you the freedom to pick and choose. If the new n'sync remix of a spice girls cover of a new kids on the block song sucks, you don't have to click that download link. We won't all be downloading anything unless we all like it.

I see the OPPOSITE

[ToastyKen]

I actually see the EXACT OPPOSITE.
Nowadays, I don't really buy one-hit wonders, but I DO buy concept albums or just generally good albums.
Why? Because such albums are often a good mix of music that sounds good together.
Maybe what you say could be true for the long term, but in the short term, I see MORE concept albums being created because those are the ones that people who use online music will actually be willing to buy.

Re:Other change I see

[fornix]

There will be few incentives to generate the other music which is often just considered filler on the cd anyway. Personally, some of my favorite songs are the ones that never received airtime and would never be considered hits. But in a distribution method where people pick and choose what they want, all the other tunes will be lost by the wayside.

I disagree. When a musician publishes a LP (or CD), they are often forced to eliminate some of their material because of restrictions imposed by the format or their record company. Sometimes these tracks are pulled from the vault and released on subsequent albums, but the fact is that publishing on the internet will allow musicians to publish all of their material with very few restrictions. So, contrary to your claim, I believe that you will be able to hear gems that in the old days would have been deemed unsuitable for the record. With the "pick and choose what you want" distribution method of the internet, you are free to download every last morsel that your favorite musician has created and burn them to CD (or DVD) in any order you like. The options of the artists and consumers are not diminished in any way by internet distribution compared to the rather restrictive model of LPs or CDs.

Re:Other change I see

[thal]

I would think it would be horrible if what you said were to happen, but I don't think that mp3 will necessarily make it happen. People want what people want, despite of the technology. There have been ways to get just "the single" for years now (taping it off the radio, just buying the cd/tape single, just watch MTV), but people are still buying albums. Of course, buying the hot song for $1 (mp3) instead of $3 or $4 (tape/cd single), may make people more willing to just get the single.

Still, the important thing to remember that mp3 is just a technology and it can be used in many ways. While perhaps the big record companies will make up a bunch of fake bands to release a continues stream of singles that the record executives have concluded will be a "hit," you're not going to see Sonic Youth do that. "Real" bands, who write their own songs, weren't discovered in a casting call, etc., want their "filler" material to be heard and they'll release on mp3, because it costs practically nothing. In fact, you'll probably get to hear a lot more material that would otherwise be thrown away, because it will cost almost nothing more to distribute it.

No, maybe they're won't be an album accompanying every one hit wonder band that you see on MTV, but maybe that's a good thing. The bands that want their music HEARD and not necessarily bought will find a way to get it heard. mp3 is simply a conveience that can used for good or evil equally as well.

Re:Mass media...

[thal]

well, only recently has the bandwidth become cheaply available for trading mp3s to be reasonable. who wants to do it on 14.4? if some technology exists that nobody uses, it's not news, at least for the mainstream media and you really shouldn't blame them for that.

but now "normal" people are using the internet a lot more, downloading these mp3s and want goods and services that help them use mp3s better. retailers are getting involved. people are going to spend money on this stuff. now THAT'S news. at least in america.

"utopians"

[QuantumG]

heh.. I've always wondered what word to use to describe myself.. "I'm a utopian".. that oughta starve off any conversations at them boring dinner parties.

nytimes

[Field Marshall Stack]

cypherpunks/cypherpunks. You know the drill...

Re:Mass media...

[worker_ant_13]

Mmmm, okay. There are
two reasons for "news
lag" in a paper - tech
and editorial.

Here's an example of lag
viz technology. Recall
the guy who got the
perfect score in Pac-
Man? That was just
in my local (100k
net paid circulation)
paper. It was in the
Wall Street Journal
on Thursday or Friday.
It was posted in Slash-
dot several days earlier.

The recent coverage of
the RIAA strongarm tactics
in the recording industry
is an example of editorial
lag. There's only so much
that can be put in a news-
paper. And I hate to say
this, but most newspapers
are little better than a
fax machine with a copier.
Despite the romantic notions
of "breaking a story", most
editors just wanna print the
kind of stories - or the
same exact stories - that
they see in other papers.
And the only reason the MP3
stories are getting lineage
is because the RIAA went into
hysterics about it like a
shrieking schoolgirl. Most
everyone knows the music
industry is a bullying and
treacherous racket, but such
coverage only became news-
worthy with the advent of
an alternative.

=13=

Re:Other change I see

[fwr]

so?

Re:Other change I see

[Syslevel]

When you don't get something: the idea of "concept albums," the idea that an artist may want to present a porfolio of songs all connected, the idea that music isn't always just a three minute sound bite, please don't try to write it off with a single word response.

Re:Mass media...

[Syslevel]

The bandwidth boost that many people involved in the MP3 "revolution" are enjoying is often their on-campus Dorm-Room ethernet access to the 'net.

One good thing that may come out of this whole phenomenon will that that the CD vendors (they won't go away, they might even become smaller and more diverse) will write off the "youth" market and start focusing more on the more 'mature' music-buying public.

I haven't noticed any of Charles Ive's Symphonies distributed in MP3 format, for instance. The market for said material won't be going away, and if MP3 kills off the market for "hit singles" then the less mass-market selections may become a larger percentage of the market. I see that as good, even though it will probably still be hard to find music that doesn't bore me at BestBuy.

Re:Other change I see

[Syslevel]

I agree with what you say about 'one-hit wonders' and have another point to add:

I often dislike an album the first time I listen to it. Oftentimes it takes two or three playings before I come to appreciate a collection of music. By reducing the music to a 'commodity' that people just download and discard if they don't like what they hear the first time, some of the music that I've come to like a great deal just would have passed through my ears once and been gone. Maybe it's a materialist urge in me, but the committment of having the CD and not being able to just delete it means something, and it encourages me to invest some attention in trying to hear what the artist is trying to deliver. Once the artist has a "foot in the door" in the form of an indelible piece of plastic that I can't erase and that I've paid for and probably won't discard, it gives him/her a chance to work the magic on me in a degree that an MP3 file that disappears immediatley into a sea of other files on my hard drive just can't.

Do away with hits altogether

[Wainstead]

What do we need hits for anyways? If you have a network of friends, a few websites and other sources to get listening recommendations from, hit singles become nothing more than curiosities.

sw