Online Music - MP3

MP3 and Digital Music on the WWW

Zinesh gavin 16:00, 24 Aug 2004 (EST

Mp3 and digital music -Mp3

Mp3 and digital music -MIDI

Mp3 and digital music -Law-Copyright

Mp3 and digital music -Artists

Mp3 and digital music -P2P

Digital music has taken over the music industry and the internet in more ways than one since it was introduced. Many artists have turned to digital music rather than traditional analogue music. Digital music is simply music recorded from CD which is then converted into and Mp3 format by the process of encoding and decoding. It eliminates signals that are inaudible to the human ear without affecting much quality at all, thus making file sizes very much smaller. This enables files to be transferred to anyone easily across the internet as it doesn’t take long for an Mp3 file to download. According to Hacker,�Mp3 discards huge amounts of information, preserving the data absolutely necessary to reproduce an intelligible signal. The amount of data preserved is decided by the person doing the compression, so an optimal balance between file size and quality can be achieved�(2000:2). There are many issues surrounding the issue of digital music. Firstly, there is the issue of Mp3 and the internet. Although mp3 is one of the best formats for transferring digital data over the internet, many countries are taking a harsh stand on it as it is the medium used to transfer millions of songs per day from people to people all over the world, while infringing copyright laws. Companies that offer MP3 players on the internet are being sued as they are being blamed for encouraging and providing the public with information and utilities needed to download and play Mp3 files. This has given rise to many companies being sued by recording companies.

An earlier form of digital music is known as MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface as it is known is a way of converting sounds produced by instruments into ones and zeroes so that the computer can recognise them. “As an interface, MIDI acts as a bridge between (musical instruments such as keyboards and electric pianos) of the digital persuasion. It acts as a translator by providing a common language for digital instruments.�(Hill, B. 1998:89). This is how digitized music was first introduced onto the internet. The downside to this was that the sounds produced by the MIDI system often sounded fake, while the upside to it was that it literally needed no time to download as users were not downloading the file but were actually loading it when they visited the webpage.

The present situation that faces digital music is unclear as many copyright issues are currently being settled in court. Some of the legal disputes have been won by the recording company but many other issues are still left hanging, pending further investigation. Although this is the case, the future for digital music is very large and holds potential for being one of the most widely used new media technologies. The advantages clearly outweigh the disadvantages of switching from traditional digital music to analogue music. Production techniques which once seemed impossible with analogue music are now possible with digital music. Production time is also cut into half as music production techniques are made shorter. A process which takes a few days can now take just a few hours to complete, achieving the same desired results. Artists who embrace or don’t embrace this technology have different views on downloading music files on the internet.

    “The Black Crows who hooked up with Led Zepplin wanted to put 
     the record out straight away, on the back of the tour, but figured 
     out it would take months to get it into the shops, taking the usual 
     record company route. “Had we gone through a traditional major label 
     marketing and distribution system, I think it is safe to say that it
     would have been four to six months before the record would have been in
     the stores.�� 
     
     Pete Angelus
    (Mewton, C. 2001:77).

As we progress into today’s digital savvy world, Artists are making use of the internet and digital music technology to promote themselves by bypassing the big record companies. Users can download samples of music from artists before buying them. They can post their music creations on the internet for anyone to download them, giving them and their music exposure. New artists benefit from this route as they do not have to have the capital of millions of dollars to spend on advertising and promoting themselves. Although some artists support this, other are against it saying that record companies are losing millions of dollars and that their rights as artists are being violated. P2P or Peer-to-Peer as it is known is the most widely used file swapping resource on the internet today. Users all around the world are connected through P2P networks and millions of files are swapped everyday. As users are downloading from their peers hard drives, this makes it more difficult for authorities to track downloads but easier for people to find and swap any file they are looking for. The future of digital music yields many opportunities in unexplored areas for the novice and professional musician.

Zinesh gavin 19:14, 8 Sep 2004 (EST)

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