wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

The recording industry is dying, music isn't.

and sound quality does have to be considered as an over all measure. even in the cd era most people actually listened to low grade car stereos or home stereos. on the go they used walkmen cassette tapes. mix tapes were still in use for much of that time, and headphone technology was pretty bad. what the ipods done is elevate the average experience of sound quality even if the digital files are not all that could have been possible if sacd/dvdaudio were not locked down and had succeeded. you only have to look at the store shelves, in the 90s headphone choices at big box stores were dire. after all, a cassette walkman was not worth spending good money on headphones for,and so selection was poor, and the only thing was sold was a few cheap units. now? there are dozens of types of headphones. even target or walmart sell 50-100-200 dollar headphones. the variety and competition and sales of different kinds of portable headphones are probably through the roof compared to the 90s. that is a massive change from the past. so like it or not, the digital files have only increased average user expectations and actual experience of quality which is a nice change from the pasts theoretical quality if you won the lotto and bought ridiculously priced audiophile equipment.

and its true, most people will fail a blind test on high bitrate mp3 to cd. never mind if done on headphones, even the high end ones. i find that a vbr setting of ~224kbps is more than enough.

Well, music quality IS something consumers care about. the thing that wasn't said was that they aren't willing to cut their throats to get that quality. The music industry did try high definition audio, audio dvd/sacd. The problem? They charged an arm and a leg, and locked the formats down so you couldn't record them!! Not only that, they held back dvd audio to finish up drm which is why all dvd players didn't come with it as default. Their fear of piracy led to them giving up an installed base of players of countless millions. People were also buying cd burners at this time and it was becoming affordable for people to make their own music mixes, but the industry sneered and decided that it was not to be allowed for consumers to have freedom of use. So the formats failed. Once you have a taste of freedom of being able to create your own pristine mixes, or even better, a whole jukebox on an ipod, the limitations of what the music industry was asking was simply a deal killer. and thats the same short sighted behavior they've exhibited since the start.

Bob, point taken about mp3~instamatic

But it is an error to talk about "mp3 quality" - there are as many qualities of mp3 encoding as their are bitrates, from 24 Kbps to 320 Kkbps, and also many parameters for variable bitrates.

My initial, very negative impression of mp3 was based on the kind of encoding that prevailed nine years ago, generally 128 Kbps constant. if you haven't already experimented with higher bitrates, check them out - I've demonstrated repeatedly and in studio that the most self-righteous, arrogant, dismissive snob mastering engineer in Montreal (whose first name includes a 'y') cannot discern between uncompressed .wav audio and 320 Kbps 'lame' mp3.

MP3 players have become popular and widespread, despite music quality, in exactly the same way that early Kodak cameras did. They were vastly inferior to professional equipment, but they were cheap, portable and easy to use.

At the same time, mp3 quality is not so bad - compared to cassette, an old LP, or my fm radio.

Though digital technology has changed the way we listen to music, I agree the record industry really dropped the ball making the change, and yet still finding a way to both make money and promote talented artists. Though I suspect Moby probably appreciates the creative freedom and independent decisions he can take producing and releasing his own records, artists like him, and Bjork, for example, are HUGE internationally, and record labels would be smart to actually fund artists like these - yet they don't because they are not Top 40 pop artists.

Any ideas how artists and labels could work together again so both can make a living?

Without any disrespect to moby, I have to say that I can't believe that Thom York's name has not been invoked in this conversation about technology and music. OK Computer, 1997: Tech + LoFi + emotional relevence = way ahead of the game.

Playing devil's advocate here, doesn't the proliferation of easily accessible digital recording technology also mean there's more "crap" music out there now? Quality, of course is a relative thing to one's taste. But on balance, does this technology improve or hurt the overall quality of the product?

I read years ago that Roy Thomas Baker, when recording and producing the first albums of The Cars, mixed the songs in such a way that the album would sound good on a radio, especially car stereos.

The proliferation of digital formats that are "lossy" is a dissapointment.

No surprise that mp3 succeeds with those that want apps and games on their player as opposed to a dedicated quality listening experience.

Better players are hard to come by but very worth looking for. The iPod may be the most ubiquitous but is hardly the be all end all of quality.

Let's face it, the "record industry" isn't dying...it killed itself (that's what a cocaine fog will do to executive decisions)! The digital revolution was a grand opportunity for them to develop new & future markets & they could have held the traditional buyers WHILE moving foward.Once the vinyl trending "hipsters" and
boomer CD/LP format "lifers" are gone it's all
soft...and over.

"My name is Leonard by the way .."
OUCH!