Downloading free mp3

Sound advice - MP3 versus compact discs - Brief Article

MUSIC

Does MP3 mean the death of CD? RICHARD COOK doubts it

You can tell that this Internet music lark is getting serious when news programmes invite brash young talking heads on air to offer such cheerful doomsaying as "of course, CDs will be obsolete before much longer". MP3 is the codename for this death knell, and a suitable enough monicker. Think of the tradition it stands in: 78, LP, MC, CD. Will this one sweep its predecessor aside,just as CD did to LP? Some claim it already has. While the industry itself has been busy preparing either DVD or SACD - formats that essentially enhance and add to what the compact disc can do - to displace CD, MP3 is like the barrow-boy trader who shuts down the supermarket with sheer nerve and energy. It can zing music around the world in seconds and send it to your computer, which will play it back to you or store it so you can play it on something else.

It is not all that different from taping an album that your friend bought, really, which is why in some ways the record companies themselves are less bothered by the format than the retailers. They fear global piracy, but if MP3 turns out to be more like a tape-swapping device, it will simply displace cassettes. MP3 advocates, though, see a future where the format completely undermines the corporate culture of music and unleashes artists and entrepreneurs into a free market where the hegemony of the big companies counts for nothing. "Albums" will be mix-and-match collections entirely of your own choice. Is this really going to happen?

Maybe, but at present the home-made culture of MP3 is so fragmented, chaotic even, that it seems unlikely to present a cogent alternative to the entrenched forces of music on record or CD for a longtime. The numerous MP3 sites on the web are a fascinating lot, but they're intriguing in the boffinish way of so many websites, and they need a huge amount of time to explore them properly. It's like being caught in the biggest music library in existence: great choice, but where do you start? Consider www.mp3.com, which sounds like the daddy of all these sites but is merely a portal where you can download free songs by any of 18,000 unsigned bands. That's 18,000 bands. More commercially minded sites such as www.listen.com are better organised and more discriminating, but actually downloading the music isn't all that cheap: tracks tend to cost around $1 each, and an album's worth might be no less than what you pay for a CD.

What do you get for your money? The first thing to understand is that MP3 does not offer the same quality as CD. The process of transmitting, storing and then listening to the music has a data cost: in other words, a lot of the music is actually compressed out by the process itself. Not quite the difference between listening on a transistor radio and on an expensive tuner, but you get the idea. Audiophiles will have no truck with MP3 because it simply isn't good enough. All those American fans who downloaded David Bowie's new album a week ahead of time from the web may have bought themselves some bragging rights, but the chances are that the old shrewdie knew that once they heard the CD version, they'd probably realise that this was considerably better, and would have to buy that too.

Bowie's initiative predictably outraged the retail sector, and in recent weeks there has been a tremendous amount of bleating by the big record stores over unfair competition. Fear of the web is a palsy which is creeping through retail ranks at an increasing speed. The cynical may observe that it is a fate that these powerful chains, with their disdain for non-chart music and contemptuous attitude toward older consumers, simply deserve. Again, I'm not sure that they have much to worry about yet. What MP3 finds unanswerable is that CD is a superb format. It's portable, immortal and it performs at the highest level. It made LP redundant because it was by its very nature a terrific improvement. Whatever comes after CD may have more information, or graphics, or whatever - but the sound of it won't be the great leap forward that previous advances have made.

Since everyone else is making predictions, here are mine. MP3 will create a teeming culture of termite art, an alternative to, but probably not a destroyer of, the music biz as it is now. Music retail chains will either adapt to web commerce or implode and capsize. Boutique-sized record shops will make a great comeback as many tire of impersonal Internet shopping. And the CD, or something very like it, will be here for a long time yet.