Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Digital killed the Analog (Star?)

I was going to write a filler list of discographies I own (literally, on disk), but I realized just now that it's been a long time since I really got much new music on disk. I'm very close to having discographies for many bands, but fall one or two albums short (usually if it came out in the last three years). It's possible/probable that this is because of the decline of compact disk and the rise of the MP3 (which is terrible, actually. More on this later), but I think realistically it's a decline in my funds and the rise of college tuition.

Assuming that it is actually a media problem, then I have a number of issues with MP3s as a format. To be completely frank about it, MP3s are expensive and transient. They exist only as long as your computer doesn't crash and your mobile device doesn't decide to Hara Kiri. They can be backed up on disk, but most people don't bother. I've heard so many times (and even when I was younger experienced) a crash that wiped music libraries clean. In some cases this means repurchasing hundreds of dollars of music. Some services offer ways to get the music back through licenses and whatnot, but that also means it's something that must be done entirely digitally.

I'm always going to be an advocate for hard copies of everything, I'm the kind of person that backs up everything. I have print copies of everything I've ever written academically (except some of the blog entries on here, ironically), no eBooks, print copies of any recent art I've made (the old stuff was also destroyed in said crash), and other things that fall in these lines. I'm not saying that digital copies of everything aren't useful. They're pretty awesome too. I haven't used a CD player for my portable music in years. I still have a stereo with a CD player and a dual tape deck attached that I use frequently, but that's mostly for plugging the Zune dock into it and letting it play that way. I'd be a liar if I said that I'm against MP3s as a format, or any other electronic audio file. That's how I write/record my music these days.

I do, however, feel that there should be a rise in another physical medium of some kind. If not the CD (though it's still better quality than most MP3's, M4A, ACC, and pretty much anything besides a very high quality WAV), then some other thing. Video's jumped from the casette to the DVD to the BluRay in the CD's lifespan thus far. It's probably time for an update.

This has gotten very off topic and really only outlines my paranoia now. Oh well.

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