Convenience vs. Quality

On a Wednesday afternoon driving with my brother for a family event this past week we came across this story on NPR.  While listening to this story driving through Richmond, VA I became so wrapped up in the story that I didn’t even consider that this could become a blog.  When the story finished I thought to myself this would make a great blog post.

In 1988 Karlheinz Brandenburg with some help from collaborators invented the MPEG Audio Layer III or the MP3 for short.  At the time many wondered if anyone would use this technology.  Billions of MP3 downloads last year show that MP3’s are indeed in use.  Many would argue that though MP3’s are popular they still don’t in any way match the sound quality of a CD.      

Keith Holzman, who ran Nonesuch Records, had this to say about the quality of MP3’s.  “The difference between listening to an MP3 and a CD is night and day to me," says Holzman. "It's like daylight — with a clear, crystalline sky — and a muddy, cloudy, overcast day. The MP3 is highly compressed, taking away a great deal of sonic quality.”  Brandenburg spoke about some of the things that needed to be worked out with the technology because of some of the sound quality lost when compressing the file.  "Everything else sounded quite OK," he says, "and Suzanne Vega's voice was destroyed. So we had some work to do."  Brandenburg says he must have listed to Suzanne Vega’s voice 1000 times in the song “Tom’s Diner” just to get the sound right.

I don’t spend a great deal of time driving but this weekend had to go out of town once again.  While driving it dawned on me that I could conduct my own little experiment in listening.  I started the experiment by ripping one of my favorite CD’s Uninvisible by Medeski, Martin and Wood to my computer and then transferring it to my phone as MP3’s.  I played the CD, which I have listened to at least 100 times and was very pleased with the sound quality it produced.  My car has six speakers 2 in the back and 4 in the front, 2 of which are tweeters.  The 2 tweeters really do add all those subtle highs of the sound spectrum that we really don’t hear with just 4 speakers.  I then plugged my phone into the auxiliary jack and began to listen to the MP3 version that was imported to iTunes at 192 kbps.  I can honestly say that there were some slight differences, which were volume of sound, background sounds didn’t stand out and the mix.  When I spoke about subtlety with CD’s the MP3 didn’t seem to bring out the same background instruments or sounds.  I’d have to say the compressed not as bright nature of the MP3, for me is a close 2^nd place in this 1 v 1.

Though the title of this article suggests it is about CD vs. MP3 I believe the real focus to be the way listeners are constantly changing the way we listen to music.  Years ago when Brandenburg invented the MP3 he had no idea that it would become so popular.  The same can be said for sites like YouTube, Pandora, Last.fm.  It seems that these sites were started just as a means of socializing listening experiences but now because of listeners have become the most popular ways to listen to music. 

The only criticism I have of this article is that the writer didn’t specify what kind of MP3 he was referring to.  There are after all scores of MP3 formats like AAC, OGG, WAV and the list goes on-and-on.  Many of the MP3 formats like iTunes AAC are a very high quality form of MP3 when bought from the iTunes store.  The loss of sound quality is almost negligible compared to a CD.  Other formats though have a lower bit rate which means some sound quality is sacrificed. 

The industry is changing all the time with new technology.  It’s interesting to see that back in the late 80’s the industry decided they wanted to change the face of how music was listened to by everyone.  Cassettes were replaced by CD’s and the way we listened to music was forever changed.  Now it seems as though the industry is being controlled by its fans with inventions such as the MP3.  Though many music purists don’t accept the MP3 as a formidable competitor to the CD it is still widely accepted as the best and most convenient means by which to listen to music. 

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/03/18/134598010/for-better-or-worse-mp3s-are-the-format-of-choice

Music Clearances

The number of clearance agents that extend their service to clients has grown in the last several years.  One sample clearance agency in Delaware, DMG Clearances, has been in business for almost 20 years and works with some of the biggest stars in the music business.  Owner of DMG Clearances Deborah Mannis-Gardner, had this to say about sample clearances in a recent blog interview:

“If you’re at a stop light and hear a song and a portion of the song is recognizable as something else then you need to clear it.” (personal quote blog interview 2011)

The blog interview that Deborah did for an Alaskan blogger will be published in March, one of her many blog interviews.  When proofreading the article there were many more points made about when samples need to be cleared.  Deborah was very clear when being asked about what she thinks about indie labels taking advantage of sites like Band Camp to distribute and publish their music through unofficial channels (2011): 

"Just because there are means to sell your material independently as easily like Band Camp doesn’t mean you don’t have to clear your samples. Do you think this means you are under the radar? Copyright holders scan the Internet and look for un-cleared samples.  Publishers and labels are constantly scrutinizing the Internet for places that contain un-cleared samples." (personal quote blog interview 2011)

Further changes in the industry will force lawyers, musicians, publishers, music societies and anyone else sampling music to change their way of thinking about sample use.  Eventually sample use could mean using as much as 1 second of a song and having to clear that song with the owner.  Advances in technology will surely change the way samples are cleared.  Computer programs will soon be able to recognize small parts of songs that are sampled no matter how drastically they’ve been changed.  The experts of the industry have spoken and it seems the general consensus is that if you sample you have to pay for that sample.

Mannis-Gardner, D. (2011). Personal blog response proofread by Isaac Mitchell on March 1, 2011