Home Music Lane

It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

Just can't agree with that, Dave

The music recording industry, the "major labels" in particular, sat on its a$$, resisting innovation as much as possible and relentlessly allowing its product to deteriorate, throughout my lifetime (starting with the LP of the late 60s and 70s), especially in the US. When cassette tapes came around, they were so badly made that I could produce a superior product for a fraction of the price by making homemade tapes of radio broadcasts.

Then came the CD, superior from a convenience standpoint, and admittedly better in sound quality in some ways, but with heavy digital distortion that was fatiguing and irritating. Philips wanted to make it even worse, but Sony, then led by a classical music lover, prevailed. Finally, CDs began to improve circa 1995. All this time, I was paying $18 (later $16 and finally $13) per CD, before that $16 per commercial cassette (though I had a substantial collection of homemade cassettes and bought few commercial ones), and before that $3 for budget LPs and $7 (eventually $12 or $13) for full priced LPs.

Then came SACDs around 1999, at $20 or more each, with good digital sound. By that time, a couple of younger generations had come of age, and they were computer users, on the internet by 1995. But the music industry steadfastly refused to make their product available online, trying to force their customers to buy physical discs, until the wildly successful Napster started doing it illegally.

After protracted litigation, the recording industry finally put a stop to Napster, and after that, finally started offering their product online in an inferior digital format (ironically, in part by buying Napster). But by then, two online generations had grown accustomed to thinking about music files as costing nothing, and worth nothing. Most of what they download illegally they would ignore completely if it wasn't free or very close to it. (Even illegal downloads aren't free, Dave. You still have to pay an ISP and buy hardware at a minimum.) Yet the recording industry continues to focus on piracy issues. And the product continues to deteriorate, now compressed by the loudness wars.

I think the only cure for the music recording industry is for it to disappear, perhaps to be absorbed into the video industry or the ISP industry. Although now that the "major labels" are thankfully fading away, some imaginative people are trying to make a go of it with more innovative thinking. It's about time.


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