I hate MP3s. I hate digital music. After a few years of blithely entertaining myself with pirated songs, downloaded tracks, and burned CDs, I've realized the sad horrid truth of it all: Downloading (whether legal or illegal) sucks.
Interestingly, I have yet to find that the artists getting paid or not factor into any of my complaints, so the RIAA can still blow it out there ass. If you really are an "artist" you make music so that people can hear it and enjoy it, and you'll do it because you love it.
1. Cost vs Return
At last check, the album "Duck and Cover" by the Mad Caddies was $9.99 in the iTunes Music Store. For this price, I get 12 tracks, formatted in AAC (Mpeg Layer-4) running at 128kbps. Using the Amazon Marketplace, I can get the real CD for $9.94, probably less at a local music store. For this I get the real CD, 12 tracks of pure audio running at 1411kbps. I get the case, the album art. When I do record it to my laptop, I can leave it uncompressed. I get more, for less!
2. Sound Quality
Compressed digital music sounds like ass. Let's take files that are compressed, have ground noise, and pipe them through inferior laptop sound boards and $20 speakers and see how it sounds. Great for previewing a CD to see if it is worth buying, but then buy the god damn CD. God forbid you actually by a good stereo too, because you're missing a lot without it. All this pretentious music opinion came about when I had new speakers installed in my car. JL CX-i coaxials pair with stock VW tweeters. It was as if the world of music suddenly meant something again. Clarity, better sound staging, complex layering and subtle volume and mixing effects; all lost in an MP3.
I know that spending money sucks, but you do it for a reason. If you download music illegally, you get shitty quality... big deal, you didn't pay for it. But if you're going to bother to spend the money at one of a million online music download services, do yourself a favor and walk to a local record store and a stereo shop. Buy a good set of headphones, or if you can afford it speakers. Buy the real CD. Grab a quiet room and drift through your new album while enjoy the album art that the band put out with their CD, and realize that this is how music is sometimes meant to be enjoyed.
Interestingly, I have yet to find that the artists getting paid or not factor into any of my complaints, so the RIAA can still blow it out there ass. If you really are an "artist" you make music so that people can hear it and enjoy it, and you'll do it because you love it.
1. Cost vs Return
At last check, the album "Duck and Cover" by the Mad Caddies was $9.99 in the iTunes Music Store. For this price, I get 12 tracks, formatted in AAC (Mpeg Layer-4) running at 128kbps. Using the Amazon Marketplace, I can get the real CD for $9.94, probably less at a local music store. For this I get the real CD, 12 tracks of pure audio running at 1411kbps. I get the case, the album art. When I do record it to my laptop, I can leave it uncompressed. I get more, for less!
2. Sound Quality
Compressed digital music sounds like ass. Let's take files that are compressed, have ground noise, and pipe them through inferior laptop sound boards and $20 speakers and see how it sounds. Great for previewing a CD to see if it is worth buying, but then buy the god damn CD. God forbid you actually by a good stereo too, because you're missing a lot without it. All this pretentious music opinion came about when I had new speakers installed in my car. JL CX-i coaxials pair with stock VW tweeters. It was as if the world of music suddenly meant something again. Clarity, better sound staging, complex layering and subtle volume and mixing effects; all lost in an MP3.
I know that spending money sucks, but you do it for a reason. If you download music illegally, you get shitty quality... big deal, you didn't pay for it. But if you're going to bother to spend the money at one of a million online music download services, do yourself a favor and walk to a local record store and a stereo shop. Buy a good set of headphones, or if you can afford it speakers. Buy the real CD. Grab a quiet room and drift through your new album while enjoy the album art that the band put out with their CD, and realize that this is how music is sometimes meant to be enjoyed.
how you are ok man, take it steady