Just had a bit of a realization that I am going to try to work out via this blog post while Saints/Cowboys pregame is on mute.
I recently invested in a terabyte hard drive for my laptop. I had a friend show me a similar drive that contained 600 gigs of mp3s that I had to have. Everything I ever wanted was there and available for the taking. The external hard drive cost me $110 after shipping and handling. After copying the drive and figuring a subpar way of hooking my laptop to my stereo, I have been enjoying the likes of Al Green, Os Mutantes, and lots of Django thanks to copying a music mecca made into mp3.
Just now, while listening to my new top play (Vince Guaraldi's Christmas album) I had a moment of realization. I bumped into this article on the Wired blog and realized I just made a poor decision. While the hard drive is filled with great Beatles rarities and Zappa interviews, as far as the music goes, I could have subscribed to one of these music networks and gotten a far greater amount of tuneage for a much better price.
I had always swiftly scooted these subscription services aside. The idea of paying a monthly rate for such a service seemed silly. I could buy the albums I wanted to hear and stream samples of other songs on blogs. Then, when I invested an amount of money that could have garnered me a year of Rhapsody or Napster usage, I realized that music ownership is on the way out.
I'ma just riffin here, but riff with me.
By buying a harddrive with maybe 30 gigs of music I really want and 400 gigs of music I will listen to once and delete, I'm not sure I really gained as much as I once thought. Plus, I am essentially breaking laws of copyright in the process. As a musician, I don't really get upset about illegal downloading as it is a waste of energy, but I still make jokes and occasionally utilize the phenomenon as a persuasive pity point. As a broke person with a love for music, I find myself downloading albums I want to hear all the time. This thievery is a weight I would like to take off my second hand smoke filled chest.
SO- a great way to have done this could have been to sign up for Rhapsody or Napster or anyone of the other applications out there that help support the industry that has supported me for the last few years. Instead, I invested that money on a digital brick that holds all the same information and will undoubtedly break before the next real wet season.
still just riffin here:
I think my problem is that I wanted to OWN all these songs, but I'm not sure why. I essentially paid the money I could have invested in a music service (and to a lesser extent; music culture) to some silicon valley hard drive manufacturer so that I could own a bunch of music. And that is the problem... yup, in the last two sentences I think I realized that my mistake is that I didn't go with music socialism. Perhaps some sort of hard wiring in my yankee brain caused me to denounce the idea of just sharing songs online. I demand ownership of these songs, even if I have to steal to do it! It's so messed up in my brain, that I think when I read over this blog post it wont make any sense.
I'm going to think about this a bit more and report back.
Early conclusions love the idea of one giant music network that everyone shares and logs into, but it seems anti-American at the same time, which I also love. Man- I'm really quite shocked at this revelation... probably guaraldi/rum-induced.
5 comments:
sheesh! i suppose the next thing you'll be raving about is health care for all americans!!!!
I don't like commies posting around deeez parts!
First let me say you have a cool blog and some great links. Second I want to make clear I am not trying to rip on you imply you are not smart. In fact all you are is a bit younger. My name is Rob and I am in my late 30s and here is the evolution of how you are thinking about this. While I am not anti-biz, there are plenty of shitty greedy business men who would gladly serve you less for more as a general rule. Music in the day used to be considered of great value for obvious reasons but mainly because it was the one thing one could not simply buy on the cheap and reproduce to make a party. keep in mind this is pre- much tech. When the ability to give people high quality musical reproduction came into being, the focus for years was on making and getting good gear that could both record and then reproduce the music. WIth the music being so obviously valued and with people not wanting to play just one thing all the time, so was variety. But starting around the computer era is when things began to take a big turn. While on one hand people liked surround sound as it was the logical continuation of the previous trend of making the musical reproduction as real as possible and a new trend, adapt it for big budget action of special effects movies. There was this New thing called digital music. The CD was great because it focused on debugging recording digitally and reproducing in great fidelity. IN fact they were about to leap beyond CD into the next level of fidelity when.... DUN DUN DUN.... Broad band internet caught on and you had things like Napster -- with a new format called mp3 which whlie not even being remotely close to great music quality, it was good enough for many to want it and grab it up for free. since then as you know digital music is the thing. and of course music education being in the toilet like it is and half of the pop music being rap, (nothing against it just saying it not that musical in and of itself) so bad music education, and rap -- and free digital music and broad band and the music executives saw this and thought -- subscriptions -- but of course they jumped the gun -- because I was not a child when edward scissor hands came out and I already could see he was a bit pretentious -- creative and detailed sure -- but not god. Ok so, they tried to get people like me who have a huge CD collection to give that up for what -- and MP3 subscription? thats a laugh. And it really was in those days the quality of even the best mp3 were not as good as todays common ones -- which by the way are still not great -- on a CD you could get great speakers and hear the full musical sound. -- unfortunately most folks have shitty speakers or something in between and very little music background and even less audio background. Also you have people who a now motivated to get you to rent what you should own. -- I think its great to have an mp3 subscription -- I even have a really cheap one to preview songs on although now LaLa is almost good enough for free. Bottom line -- an mp3 is not real music reproduction and if you put it a good speaker set up -- it would sound like shit. -- to further complicate this mess -- you have two main sampling rates -- 44.1 for stereo and and 48.2 or whatnot for surround sound. -- they are making chips now so that the up or down converting is good but the point is -- right now -- people are no longer being sold on high quality music.
instead they are being told not to buy just rent a low quality recording of all music and you can whatever you want -- until you really listen or have the ears to hear now that you are missing a ton of detail and feel. -- at least apples Itunes has a format that is of a much much higher quality then mp3 and yet there is still no DRM -- the point is, do not be fooled -- you did not make a mistake -- insist on owning high quality copies of the musicians you really like and pay for it and then use the other to just check stuff out and explore -- and do not kid yourself -- the only thing that is losing money in music right now are all the old school middle men who did coke, banged models and never wrote a lick of music. -- insist on ownership do not trust collective to do right by you because by the time you realize because its full of greedy humans and therefore flawed -- it will be too late to change it. -- that is the lesson of america -- never ever give up the sacred rights that allow individuals freedom and limit the power of government -- then let the greedy folks fight it out in the market to see who will offer what to you at what price and quality. -- its not a nanny state -- but it is most successful system so far. do not let music be taken from you because you are too young to remember when they knew you would only buy a high quality recording
-- to see examples of the the almost dead next level of fidelity for the CD -- google SACD. and read up on what will go the way of the laser disc. -- cheers and I hope I was interesting to you after the rum hang over.
-- ps -- sorry I did not have time to make my text very pretty or grammatical but I am sure its readable and the content is spot on. check out my brothers studio in NM -- www.santafecenterstudios.com
peace and do not let the fool you -- never give up ownership of things that define you
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