Editorial: Rich’s Ramblings
It seems that some things never change. Back in the 1980s, when I was growing up in England, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) mounted a campaign to discourage people from recording the records they’d purchased onto cassettes (sound familiar?). Many inner record sleeves featured the logo, which had the headline “Home Taping is Killing Music” and the tag line “And it’s illegal”. Although I am not a lawyer (nor do I play one on TV), I think that copyright laws’ fair use provisions render the latter inaccurate. But it’s the former assertion that I’d like to talk about here.
The BPI’s position (and, I assume, that of the RIAA also) was that people recording copies of their records were thieves, depriving artists of their royalties, and that the reduction in royalties would deter musicians from releasing their work commercially. I don’t mind admitting that I’ve made copies of records I own for my own use (e.g., in the car), and that I’ve received copies of records I didn’t own. Perhaps I am in the minority here, but my only reason for the latter was to experiment with new music. If I liked the album, I purchased a copy; I like supporting artists, and like looking at cover art.
So, I don’t think that home taping (or these days, recording) is killing music. I think what is killing music is a combination of two things: crappy music performed by untalented artists, and compression. The first of these is arguably a generational taste issue, so I’ll leave it at that (besides, there are many example of great modern music). But the second issue is more serious.
There are actually two types of compression, both of which are killing music. The first (dynamic compression) happens in the recording studio, usually at the behest of misguided artists or producers; you may have heard of the loudness wars. In an effort to make their material “stand out”, artists want their music to sound louder. The only way to do that is to reduce the dynamic range, which is the difference between the quietest and loudest parts of a track. Dynamics are an important part of music, and in my opinion, reducing them to this degree is criminal.
The second type of compression (data compression) is that used by iPods and the like, and again there are two types: lossy and lossless. Both reduce the amount of space needed by a song, but achieve it in different ways. With lossy compression—of which the most common example is MP3—musical data is literally thrown away: it is irretrievably lost. With lossless compression (examples of which are FLAC and Apple’s proprietary ALAC), the music files are compressed in a manner that does not lose musical information. While I’m on the subject, don’t kid yourself that higher bit rate MP3s are an acceptable alternative to lossless or uncompressed audio: yes, they’re better than low bit rate MP3s, but that’s a bit like saying that having two fingers cut off is better than losing your whole hand, when one of the alternatives is to not have anything cut off!
A few years ago when disk space was at a premium, compression enabled one to fit much more music onto one’s portable music player. These days, portable devices have so much more space for music that compression is arguably unnecessary. Given that pretty much all today’s portable music devices support lossless compression, the scourge that is MP3 (and other forms of lossy compression) should be relegated to the history books.
If people could hear their music in better quality—i.e., uncompressed or with lossless compression—they’d enjoy it more as a main activity as well as for background music when doing other things. The more people enjoy their music, the more music they’re likely to purchase. Everyone wins: consumers get more music which they enjoy more because it is better quality, artists sell more records and earn more royalties, and the record companies earn more money too. Even high-end audio companies will benefit: once people hear what music can really sound like on a system where sound quality is important, they’re going to want to have that same experience in their own homes.
If you love music (and if you’re reading this, it’s not an unreasonable supposition!), eschew lossy audio compression like MP3, and petition record companies to stop the loudness wars nonsense. (While we’re at it, let’s petition Apple to add FLAC support to iTunes: it’s free and unencumbered by patents, so there’s no technical reason why they couldn’t, and places like HDtracks.com use FLAC for their highest quality content.) Enjoy your music like it was supposed to be enjoyed!
As I write this, the Salon Son & Image show in Montreal is fast approaching. I’ll be there to check out all the neat audio gear; I love meeting new people, so if you see me, please stop me and say hi!