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Neil Young is one of music's veterans, a man who has released more albums than I can remember. He isn't a big fan of the digital era. He said MP3's should die. I can't disagree.
I remember when music was important, and the release of a new album really meant something. In the digital era, music is disposable and the sound quality? Vinyl is still popular, and there is a reason why.
Neil Young said that digitally compressed music, both the CD and MP3, should be destroyed. After reading the Steve Jobs biography, he clearly felt the same way, which is ironic because Apple make so much money selling compressed music files online. Some experts claim that AAC, the format that Apple use has better resolving capabilities, especially in the low frequency areas.
Young said “Piracy is the new radio, That's how music gets around.”
He was speaking to MTV news, and he told the reporter “If you're an artist and you created something and you knew the master was 100 percent great, but the consumer got 5 percent, would you be feeling good? “I like to point that out to artists. That's why people listen to music differently today. It's all about the bottom and the beat driving everything, and that's because in the resolution of the music, there's nothing else you can really hear. The warmth and the depth at the high end is gone.”
AllthingsD reported that he said “It's not that digital is bad or inferior, it's that the way it's being used isn't doing justice to the art, The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn't have to make that choice.”
We all know that MP3 data is compressed. This compression strips out some of the sound quality, regardless of the compression level used when encoding. The nature of the algorithm is to strip out data that the creators believed the person couldn't hear.
Young added “Steve Jobs as a pioneer of digital music, and his legacy is tremendous. But when he went home, he listened to vinyl. And you've got to believe that if he'd lived long enough, he would have done what I'm trying to do.”
Other artists have said similar things about compressed music, such as Brian May, Queen guitarist and Jon Bon Jovi, lead singer in Bon Jovi.
Kitguru says: Is compressed music really that bad? Do you long for the days of vinyl?
MP3s have killed the industry, no one cares anymore. my friend downloads about 50albums a week, listens to the tracks, skips over some then bins them afterwards.
music should be treasured!
It’s an interesting and valid point, he’s spot on about quality, but at the fans’ end it’s only half the story, and misses out the most important benefit of Mp3s and piracy’.
As Young observes, ‘piracy’ is the new radio – it is the new medium used to promote. When I was a kid, listening to radio on Medium Wave, the signal would crap up, crackle, spit – you could barely hear it when the weather was bad – Mp3 is a huge improvement over that. And the ability to choose your own play-lists means a far wider spread of music is being heard than the narrow choices of the programmers of Radio 1 or wherever.
I doubt less people are hearing recordings as they were intended, because poor quality radio aside, we simply couldn’t afford more than a few records, and our equipment was cheap crap. So most people either couldn’t hear anything, or they heard it tinny and unimpressively. Vinyl is the best, but Steve Jobs had a nice deck and speakers I’m sure. And on the upside more people are hearing bands live than were during the days of expensive recorded product – because they haven’t blown all their money on the easily scratched plastic. With the exponential spread of their music, artists overall (especially those who had been long forgotten) are now making more money through performance, allowing them to continue in the business. (Although very few artists seem willing to undergo any of the hardships that the bands of the 60s and 70s did on the way up, but that’s their choice).
Uncompressed music is an ideal worth aspiring to, but Mp3s have a critical role to play for some time yet. And the quickest way to get to the ideal will be to cut out those who value huge profit over quality – i.e. the record companies. Once they’ve all gone, artists can get back to the business of making money through performing, and work with those who can best technically achieve their desired sound, then find new ways to sell that directly to fans, and we’ll all be far better off. (Except for the parasites in suits).
It is true that MP3’s have piss poor quality. AAC is no different either.
But the CD?! CD quality is top notch. So basically we need an online store that offers FLAC versions. That would be a compromise solution 😉
The good thing that MP3’s and file-sharing did was make artists renowned all over the world in places that albums never end up for sale in a store. Eventually, if you like the songs/band you will try and find the original album, CD-quality. And end up paying a ticket for one of their concerts. 😉
So I am pretty sorry for Neil Young, but the digital era and MP3’s actually helped. In the days of dial-up connection, would it have been possible to get a FLAC version? Now in the broadband days, it is. Why isn’t he offering lossless versions of his songs for sale? That might make him rethink his argument against digital revolution 🙂