MP3s and the Changing Music Experience

Everyone who follows technology understands that new developments have a way of altering industrial organization fundamentally. One clear instance of this is the introduction of digital gadgets and the sale of music files digital stores such as iTunes and Amazon.  Together with others, these two have adapted to the fact that listeners today encounter music through portable devices and are prepared to purchase songs as single tracks. Having pioneered this, iTunes turned the rest into history.Music production corporations remained intransigent for a long time because they defended the CD format of sales which guaranteed substantial profits for selling a cocktail of songs. So one sees that CD sales over time have almost collapsed and that a new model for the music industry.

On the other hand, the variety of sophisticated gadgets and software that enables a wider dispersion of music at affordable costs has had its downsides. To my mind, the main one is that MP3 files allow for music portability in comparison to CD but have lost the acoustic fidelity that comes with listening to music on good quality speakers. It is undeniable that the sound quality of MP3 files is comparatively poor. Joseph Plambeck addresses this trade off in this NYT piece by arguing that the need to sell music through Internet stores led to great compression and the loss of the full range of auditory experiences. So to purists, it would seem that the success of the iPod and other portable gadgets mean that CD quality music is being lost. And yet again, many people who started listening to music only on the portable gadgets probably do not know better.

So while it would be exciting to listen to a real Stradivarius Violin through speakers that are as close to a live performance as is possible, the rise of portable gadgets means that only a minority of buyers will buy the expensive equipment that allows this to happen. The equipment will them become even more expensive and exclusive. So anyone with serious interest in high fidelity music today should shop for high end equipment like Burmester audio systems.