Funk Babblings

About three years ago, Pepsi ran a promotion with the iTunes Music Store, giving away free songs via codes in bottle caps. As someone who doesn't use a player compatible with iTunes downloads, and likes being able to play all my music on whatever player I happen to have handy, the promotion didn't do much for me, so I gave away the codes.

Of course, eMusic has been around for a while, primarily serving up independent music (which you probably know I listen to quite a bit of), but they use a subscription-based model and don't let you see their catalog before starting your limited-time free trial. (So if I do the free trial and don't like the selection, I can't do another free trial later to see if the selection has improved.)

But recently the landscape has changed quite a bit. First EMI started putting their music on iTunes without the "DRM" that prevents the music from being played on players not somehow controlled by the record labels. Then Amazon introduced their MP3 store, selling plain old MP3 files (that pretty much anything will play) for about the same price as iTunes Music Store -- sometimes a dime less, occasionally a dime more. They started with indie music, and then added some major labels.

I discovered Amazon MP3s a couple months ago, and picked up a few singles I'd heard on favorite podcasts or on Pandora. I still prefer having CDs (better quality, less prone to disk crashes, sometimes more convenient), but when there's just one song I want from an album, it's nice to be able to get it right away for cheap and have it immediately part of my collection -- and without worrying about what software or hardware will play it. I'm more excited about Amazon MP3s than a CD fan should be.

Apparently even the record labels think they have a good thing there too, or they've just relented. In the past few weeks, Warner Music and Sony BMG have both signed on to sell their music there.

And now Pepsi is doing a joint promotion with Amazon MP3 that echoes their previous iTunes promotion. I might actually be able to take advantage of this one myself.


Of course, the major record labels still aren't paying the artists properly.

Everyone who listens to MP3s knows (or should know) that MP3 is a lossy medium; in order to get a file that's only about 10% the size of the uncompressed music, some frequencies are thrown out based on how well the human ear hears them. You just don't get as good a sound from MP3 as from the source CD.

But wait! It turns out that the sound engineers producing those CDs are now using MP3-through-iPod-earbuds as the reference for how the music sounds. And when there are things that sound great in the original CD-quality music that they don't hear or doesn't sound as good on the iPod, they'll cut them out!

The reason is that these days the music is considered most likely to be heard on an iPod, so that's what it's optimized for. It reminds me of the cell phone catch-22 of the past 5-8 years: As more people got cell phones, fewer used pay phones, so pay phones started disappearing, forcing more people to get cell phones, perpetuating the cycle until there are hardly any pay phones left. Similarly, as more music is heard on reduced-quality MP3, more music is optimized for MP3, prompting more people to listen to that music where it sounds best, forcing even more music to be produced for that lower-quality medium.

I do *like* the convenience of MP3, but I'd still like to have the better sound of the CD available! Besides, I probably encode MP3s at a higher quality than most people.

Now I dread the day when music production is optimized for hearing as a ringtone.....