The basic reason for the appeal of internet downloading could teach us all a few lessons. The reason is not that the web exposes us to music we would not have encountered anywhere else; nor is it because searching for music on the internet takes less time than browsing for it in a store; it’s not even because it’s free.
The reason is that listeners of all stripes are, to some degree, disssatisfied with the way that music is currently disseminated, distributed, marketed, and sold to them. The expensive CDs that take up shelf space, unmitigated by any of vinyl’s aesthetic allure. The continuous glut of superficial, overproduced artists. The glut of hit songs that become unlistenable and stale after a month. On the artists’ side: musicians’ net profits make up an embarrassingly tiny percentage of the proceeds from the sale of their albums, due the train of middlemen who must manage, manufacture, package, market, and distribute the material before it gets to your ears. Every way you look at it, the North American music industry is a case of greed gone rampant, and downloading can be seen as a symptom of its essential disorder.
But is downloading films, music, and even books off the web the cure? Is it really going to make us smarter, more savvy consumers?
Music has always been characterized by a split between high and low culture, and recorded music has come to us in two forms as well: higher quality, “legitimate” versions on one hand, and on the other, substandard copies, field recordings, bootlegs, etc. used by the great mass of listeners and artists left behind by the privileged channels of distribution.
Because internet content is not broadcast the way radio and TV signals are, the web offers a seemingly democratic solution to this divide. Content is delivered to people who request it specifically, as opposed to traditional broadcasting where a signal is beamed out over a general area and is picked up by any receivers in the area that happen to be tuned into the frequency. Because you must specifically request each item you want on the web, there is a sense that internet is a medium controlled by its users, a utopic cultural space where high and low culture have been leveled and Justin Timberlake competes with Le Tigre and Bach.
But with the leveling of privilege that democratic spaces engender comes another leveling: that of sound quality and that of taste.
Yes, web content is digital and thus immune to the degradation in quality over time and copies experienced by analogue material. But not all digital media is made equal. Mpeg Layer 3 technology allows compression of music files to a fraction of their size so that they can be uploaded to the web. But the smaller the file, the more data is lost. Generally, once a file is compressed to less than one-third of its original size, the difference in audio quality becomes distinguishable. Because mp3s commonly compress files to 1/24 their size, the data that is lost must be carefully chosen so that the music still sounds “normal.” Even then, many people report a definite loss in audio quality.
But because our conception of what sounds normal is very personal-there is still a convincing argument to be made that vinyl sounds better than CDs, but those who stand behind it usually grew up listening to records-it is possible that as listeners get used to hearing audio primarily from computers, the flat sound of a highly-compressed file will become the standard. This applies especially to younger listeners who may not listen to CDs at all.
Complicating matters, mp3s can be compressed at different bit rates, further affecting sound quality. This compression rate is not something available in the filename of a song -it must be entrusted to the person who ripped and encoded the track to begin with. To add insult to injury, CD quality files are barred from such mass downloading programs as Kazaa which cap their files’ bitrates.
Thus, the split between high and low quality still exists on the web. It’s just less easy for the consumer to distinguish between them.
There are many different types of downloaders, all varying in knowledge and degree of care about what they’re downloading. Usually, those who care about download quality occupy a niche in terms of genre as well. Since the subgenre of content they are looking for is not readily available on most mass search engines, they use specialized downloading environments, such as Usenet binaries, where the compression bitrate is bound to be greater.
As it is now, however, those who have high standards of audio quality for music they are downloading are in the distinct minority. And those downloading shitty songs feed that shittiness back into the industry because not only do they provide exposure for bad artists, they change the norm for what good quality audio is.
Computer audio is not equivalent to the dumbing-down of music. In fact, mp3 technology has the potential to surpass CD quality. Unfortunately, because the internet is such a frustratingly democratic space, the 15-year-old downloading the Lindsay Lohan song with computer-assisted vocals is bound to set its standard. Downloaded music has rejuvenated music for many artists and consumers alike, but, in most cases, you’re still getting what you pay for.
