Harry’s Place Arts

Looking at album artwork on a screen somehow reminds of the restaurant scene in ‘brazil’ where they’re tucking into plates of homogenised protein mush while looking at a picture of steak and salad.

No.

Well, not unless you fill it up with music downloaded from the Internet.

Any lossy format will soon be redundant. Cheaper, bigger data storage will inevitably enable us to have all our music on a portable device before too long. In the meantime I guess the industry is bound try and sell us some new piece of crap that’ll go in the bin in a year or too.

Lossless audio compression methods exist, though they seem to have been betamaxed by mp3.
Just look at the cheap & nasty audio gear consumers are buying and then tell me the industry is wrong to believe most people don’t care about quality.

“Lossless audio compression methods exist, though they seem to have been betamaxed by mp3.”

An uncompressed CD is only 640mb, so there is no reason why they have to use MP3 on a 1gb card - except convenience in terms of the data being ready for use with portable players.

“Just look at the cheap & nasty audio gear consumers are buying and then tell me the industry is wrong to believe most people don’t care about quality.”

*weeps*

I have an original Sony CDP-101 from the early 80s and I was shocked to dicover that the specifications are much higher than one’s avergage contemporary CD player.

http://stereophile.com/cdplayers/193/
http://www.hi-fi-insight.com/95/sony-cdp-101-compact-disc-player.htm

I still have it only because I don’t throw audio equipment away. Just as well, because any sound system I put together with components I have stacked in the cupboard if going to sound better than the crap you can buy from Comet of Dixons (or Tesco!!) today insulting called “hifi”.

I’m hoping labels like “Navigator” are the future - beautifully packaged vinyl LPs of contemporary folk music, they come with a free CD copy, perfect for the car or the ipod.

“I’m hoping labels like “Navigator” are the future - beautifully packaged vinyl LPs of contemporary folk music, they come with a free CD copy, perfect for the car or the ipod.”

Beautiful!

An alternate idea I had was this: why not include an iTunes voucher with every CD or vinyl record sold so the buyer can legitimately download the MP3s for their iPod as a fringe benefit of buying the physical album? Or, as a promotion, bands could give away the MP3s from their websites to people who have purchased their singles or albums.

Quite a few independent labels do something very similar - including a voucher with the LP which has a code that gives you access to a download of the same item. The last LP by “Growing” had one - it worked a treat.

“a voucher with the LP which has a code that gives you access to a download of the same item…”

Splendid!

I guess they are able to ‘blow’ the data into flash much faster when it’s mp3′d giving them higher throughput at the plant. Bit like the high speed duplicators they used for cassettes.

I don’t want to get into the whole audiophile argument, except to reiterate that cheap storage means there is no good reason to limit this “format” to MP3. Audiophiles are now listening at resolutions far higher than CD specification.

Also, you are right when you say that this is not a format: it’s just a medium to get the digital files from the recording studio to your hi-fi or iPod. It’s no more a format than a hard drive - or the internet - is a format.

The good news is that the idea is a complete non-starter: it is expensive compared to most digital downloads, which tend to be free; the quality will be worse than CD, and aesthetically, it will lack even the miserable appeal of CD artwork; it will be much more effort to buy than the five minutes it takes to download from the internet; and buying redundant consumer goods leaves one the feeling of being cheated, and I believe that most people will have the sensation of buying a mass-storage device that they do no need, rather than an artifact, as are CDs and vinyl.

The only people who will buy these will be completists, and perhaps their limited appeal will ensure that they become collectors’ items in years to come. Anyone who can’t get their head around ripping a CD is going to be too techno-spazz to buy flash memory every time they want to hear an album.

So, don’t worry Brett. The future is not another “format”, but a new means of distribution. Physical formats are already dead, as anyone who’s tried to sell their CDs on eBay will confirm to you.

I always wonder how companies come out with stupid, unworkable ideas like this. It really smacks of ‘Something must be done… This is something!’

Also, I’m sure that U2, or someone crap like that, released an album on flash memory a couple of years back. Maybe they’re trying it again because they forgot about the last time.

But can you skin up on it?

In my book, the better your Hi Fi player - the worse your collection of music.

My most played music is stuff I taped off the radio. In Berlin there was an American Forces Radio show called ‘Metal Shop’ that was just fantastic. You could imagine the noise belting out of ratty speakers in a Humvee somewhere. Unfortunately it was on that Long Wave band that fades in and out, but no matter. The blank tapes I used were cheap Polish C90’s about 20p each and when I crank up the noise it sounds just fine, hisses, squeaks and all. Truly atmospheric.

My other collection goes back for about seven years and is ‘Radio Ungawa’ the Frei Sender Kombinat (FSK) of Hamburg. This is a kind of Anarchic free radio broadcaster which has a once a month Garage Punk and Rockabilly show. The DJ’s keep miscuing the records, argue about the correct dates of release and fight each other to play their own favourites! Glorious!

What has this got to do with your format wars? Just that if you like the music then the format is irrelevant. We used to dance around a little bitty record player playing tamla motown 45’s and thought that was heaven.

Loosen up there.

As my ears get older I find MP3s become more agreeable. Those high frequencies just keep disappearing.

I say bring back DVD-Audio. Bastards!

“Physical formats are already dead, as anyone who’s tried to sell their CDs on eBay will confirm to you.”

It is definitely a ‘buyer’s market’ on eBay, but that very much depends on the artist. There is a roaring trade in ‘collectable’ artists, and rare or out-of-print CDs.

The chief problem with the average CD on eBay is not that the format is phyisical but that it can be had brand new for £3-£5 from retailers like Fopp, or from online retailers like Play or CDwow. So when you add the eBay fees, and the average eBay postage charge (£1.50) it doesn’t make sense to buy 2nd hand for the vast majority of stuff unless you’re getting it for pennies.

Brett, a large factor in the collapse of the price of retail CDs is because of the competition from illegal downloads. Many titles in HMV are regularly available for a fiver, and the cost in real terms has been going down steadily for the last few years.

I am one of those people who started to get rid of his CDs a few years ago, when I saw which way the wind was blowing. Most CDs are now not worth the effort of selling, save the collectibles. I had a collection of some 4,000 CDs, which were entirely redundant to me. As CD had become, to me, a one-use only medium, I saw no point in holding on to them. It’s better to allow someone else who still fetishises the physical artifact to have use of them, rather than to throw them away, surely.

The medium is dying fast, and this new format is somewhat confused confirmation of that.

As for the collectors’ market, it’s a strange one. In the past, reissues have often brought awareness of the more esoteric LPs and hence stoked the value of the originals. On the other hand, the value of rare, deleted CDs tends to collapse the moment the album is made commercially available. Before Dennis Wilson’s ‘Pacific Ocean Blue’ got the deluxe edition treatment it was going for upwards of £150, but sadly, I couldn’t locate my copy before that happened, and it is now worthless. Thankfully, my original vinyl will maintain its value, despite now being available as a lavish, remastered, 3-LP edition.

The reason for this is because CD is an ugly and redundant format. Some people just like to have stuff, which is why there is still some market for official CDs, and why there may even be a collectors’ market one day for these Sandisk editions. However, far from being “the future of music delivery”, it is a physical format and already very much in the past.

Around five years ago I was working for a hi-fi company, and chatting to my friend, who was the new head of R&D. The company had just launched its “silver disc” (CD, DVD, DVD-A, SACD) player, and although it made sense to support the new audiophile formats, we agreed that they would be stillborn. Anyone who paid any attention to the falling price of hard disc storage could see that individual discs, particularly ones that couldn’t be ripped to hard drive, would have no long-term, mainstream market.

If you like to read the lyrics, you can look at them on your laptop. If you like nice things, you can buy a painting or some memorabilia. If you like folded bits of paper in a brittle and scratched piece of plastic, you’re a fetishist, and not an important demographic as far as future music sales are concerned.

I am one of those people who started to get rid of his CDs a few years ago, when I saw which way the wind was blowing.

My unlce had a huge vinyl collection and he got rid of it for almost nothing in the mid-90s because he thought CDs were the future. It would be worth a fortune today. Some of the albums he gave me are now worth £20 - £50 each to collectors, so it doesn’t bear thinking about how much he offloaded on charity shops. Bizarrely I’m now buying up vinyl albums for a pound or two when I too traded a section of my vinyl a decade or so ago.

It’s better to allow someone else who still fetishises the physical artifact to have use of them, rather than to throw them away, surely.

Indeed. Which is why you should eBa them.. so people like me can snap ‘em up for 99p each

“On the other hand, the value of rare, deleted CDs tends to collapse the moment the album is made commercially available.”

Yes, this terrifies me. Having paid over £50 for a single album (as a giving up smoking treat to myself) a year ago, I am now terriefied that the band will re-release their back-catalogue making it, and other similar colectables I have, worthless. It’s a risky business.

Yesterday I got a vinyl EP on eBay for just over £4. I’d seen it for sale at a record shop for £40 on the weekend. I have a theory that eBay has rocked the market because in the past an album’s worth was determined by its known or anticiapated availability to the market. eBay has inadvertantly added a sudeen over-supply to the marketplace as people who before might never have thought of selling stuff in their attics to dealers now have an easy way to do so.

If you like to read the lyrics, you can look at them on your laptop. If you like nice things, you can buy a painting or some memorabilia. If you like folded bits of paper in a brittle and scratched piece of plastic, you’re a fetishist…

Guilty as charged. But defiant and proud!

1. “I am scornful and disgusted by people who sell of their CDs on eBay because they’ve “loaded them all onto the iPod”.”

2. “Which is why you should eBa them.. so people like me can snap ‘em up for 99p each”

Well, make your mind up!

eBay has been great for vinyl, in many ways. I don’t know how it’s affected the vinyl market overall, but I’ve been able to find plenty of bargains, and when I’ve sold, it’s been far more profitable than taking them into the Record & Tape Exchange.

However, my advice to you would be to get rid of your rare CDs. As long as they’re not re-released, there will always be some sort of market for them, much like there is for 8-track cassettes. However, all the signs suggest that in the long-term, the CD will be obsolete in a way that vinyl is not.

If you sell all your CDs because you’ve loaded them onto a hard drive, are you not committing a crime? Actually aren’t you strictly speaking committing a crime loading them onto a hard drive anyway?

“If you sell all your CDs because you’ve loaded them onto a hard drive, are you not committing a crime? Actually aren’t you strictly speaking committing a crime loading them onto a hard drive anyway?”

It is a “crime” to rip your CD to MP3 to play on your iPod, yes. This is absurd, of course and is only the equivalent of taping one’s LPs to play in the car or walkman was a decade or two ago. Though one wonders why bith Windows Media Player and iTunes allow you to rip CDs if this is against the law. This seems a grey area. But there is certainly no moral issue.

Buying CDs to rip and resell is *definitely* a crime and is immoral.

I’m not entirely sure where the law stands on listening to digital music, but I can’t imagine that there are many people who are buying to rip and resell, when, if one is so inclined, you can simply download for free without the effort and financial cost of buying and selling CDs. What I do know is that I would happily pay for my music, but there is currently no legal method to consume it in a manner that reflects my listening habits, which exist as a direct result of the available technology.

If it’s not already, I think this position will soon be the norm. I’m not at all sure what business model will emerge that could support this development and make a profit.

“What I do know is that I would happily pay for my music, but there is currently no legal method to consume it in a manner that reflects my listening habits, which exist as a direct result of the available technology.”

The iTunes store? MP3 versions of albums for download by Play, Amazon, etc?

By my listening habits, I mean that I require instantaneous access (which precludes CD) to previously unimaginably large quantities of diverse music, most of which I will listen to only once. Financially, this is not feasible, despite the fact that previously I have spent more on music than anyone I know.

It’s simply too late for me to go back to paying a tenner for an album that it turns out I don’t like.

Do you disapprove of consuming illegally downloaded media, Brett?

“Do you disapprove of consuming illegally downloaded media, Brett?”

The only time I can see that it is morally justified is if you already own the album in another format and wish to play it on your pod and downloading, for whatever reason, is easier than ripping, or if you have ordered a copy, it’s in the post, but you really are that excited you can’t wait.

I’d also say it might be reasonable if the music was genuinely out of print and unobtainable otherwise.

Bootlegs and ROIOs are a different issue. These I support because they generally only appeal to people so rabidly infatuated with a band that they already own all their official releases - probably more than once.

But otherwise it’s theft. Plain and simple. You can’t snack from a buffet without paying and claim it’s because you have a huge appetite and that your eating habits demand you taste a wide variety of foods at least once.

Well, the buffet analogy doesn’t quite work, because there is a quantifiable cost to stealing food, whereas digital media can be reproduced infinitely, at no cost. That’s not to deny that there is no cost.

In the long run, I don’t think that listening to music as I do will be much different to turning on the radio, which is free to you. The benefits of being able to listen to anything whenever you want are so obvious, that another means of paying the copyright holders must be found, that is not based on the model of owning a physical copy.

It just seems unreasonable and undesirable that I should pay the same tenner to listen to an album once that you might listen to a hundred times, when there is no additional cost to the copyright holder for my usage.

Anyway, the reason I asked the question was because you seemed very upset when your DVD player didn’t support DivX, a file format that is currently used primarily for illegal movie and TV downloads. I had assumed then that this was why you needed DivX support.

“It just seems unreasonable and undesirable that I should pay the same tenner to listen to an album once that you might listen to a hundred times, when there is no additional cost to the copyright holder for my usage.”

Well, that’s a spurious argument because you can’t claim you should pay less for painting because you won’t look at it very often, or ask for a discount on your car because you only drive on weekends.

Furthermore, there IS a cost to the copyright holder because he needs to recoup the cost of production from micro sales.

If I buy a painting or a car, or a CD, then I am preventing someone else from having it, and there is a cost to the producer. This is not true of downloaded media. And I’m not trying to argue against the recouping of costs from micro sales, only saying that the current model is outmoded and based on owning a physical thing.

Anyway, one day in the (hopefully) not to distant future, you will be downloading all the music you could ever dream of, and you won’t be paying 99p per track. You will be happy!

Now, about that DVD player…?

“Now, about that DVD player…?”

I don’t download movies. I buy DVDs.

I don’t have an issue with downloading a TV programme I missed because I forgot to set the PVR. I don’t see this as any different to borrowing the tape from someone who did record it. The moral difference here is that broadcast programmes do not base their revenue generation on physical sales. TV programmes that I enjoy enough to rewatch I buy on DVD.

The bottom line here is that the person making the art for our enjoyment has done so with certain expectations which we should respect. An author writes books knowing that some copies will be held in libraries or passed around among friends. This can be factored into the equasion. Photocopying the book and producing ‘bootleg’ copies is somehow violating an understanding. The artists should have some say in what is done with their. Simply saying that they are fools because it is *possible* to break the bargain - while correct - is as immoral as a burglar claiming you left the door unlocked. While true, it misses the point about theft. For the while, intellectual property relies on the honour system for protection. It may be a mislaid trust, what is the alternative?

We’ll find out soon enough, but it sure as hell ain’t shiny discs or 99p single track downloads.