The Trouble with the "Digital" Music Industry

(And How to Beat It at Its Own Game)

by ScatteredFrog

The whole "digital" movement irritates me.

It's disturbing how CDs and vinyl are endangered while downloadable music is taking off.  I like being able to listen to music without having to boot a computer.

(Yes, I have an iPod Classic that I'm crazy about, and I guess you can say you don't have to boot a computer to use one, but you do need to boot a computer to get the songs on it in the first place.)

And by the way, to those of you who refer to downloadable music as "digital," I have news for you: CDs are digital, too.

For about 13 bucks, you can go into a store and buy an album on CD or vinyl (yes, they still make vinyl), and what do you get?

You get a physical medium that contains your music, and you use the appropriate player to listen to it.  You get some form of storage with it (e.g. a jewel case or sleeve), and you get artwork, liner notes, and sometimes lyrics or extensive details about how the recording was made.

With vinyl records, all those goodies come with a roughly 13" x 13" cover that often is suitable for framing.

What really gets me is how the artists get screwed, though.

After the sales of vinyl and CDs get divvied up to line the pockets of the record labels' (((corporate suits))), pay for the costs of designing and printing the covers, payola for the radio stations (as a former radio broadcaster, I can assure you that payola is alive and well), etc., there is so little left to pay the artist that the only way most recording artists can earn a decent living is to go out on the road and tour.

The only other way the artist can profit is to release the music without the red tape of a label.  But unless they do this, the aforementioned 13 bucks of your money doesn't go to those who truly earned it.

For roughly the same price, you can download the same thing on iTunes, Amazon, or other similar online stores - with many catches.

First of all, you don't get your music in any tangible form (unless, of course, you burn the music to a CD).  You also don't get the liners in any tangible form.

But there's one thing that people tend to miss: most, if not all, of this stuff is in MP3 format.

Yep, for roughly the same price, you get reduced sound quality.  So all those people who think they're keeping up with the times and technology by downloading their music are actually downgrading their music.  (And, of course, you gotta wonder how much the artist actually gets from the sale of this product that has virtually no overhead.)

Perhaps one could argue that your average consumer might not be able to tell the difference between a reduced-quality MP3 and an uncompressed source from a CD.

Of course, because of bitrate settings, some MP3s can sound better than others: an MP3 encoded at a rate of 128 kbps won't sound as crisp as one that's encoded at 192 kbps.

A friend of mine can identify a song as an MP3 at rates up to 224 kbps.  I could always tell up to 192 kbps, yet most CD ripping programs I've seen inexplicably refer to 128 kbps as "CD quality."

After listening to the new Beatles reissues in Apple lossless format on my iPod (with studio-quality headphones, not those piece of crap earbuds), I can now tell if it's an MP3 at up to 224 kbps.

To save space on my iPod, I eventually MP3'ed the new Beatles remasters to said bitrate and now I can even hear that little of a difference.

Many major acts haven't made the leap to iTunes and other online music providers.  The only way to hear their music is to actually buy a physical object that you can't download.  So anybody who decides to rely solely on downloads for their music will be missing out on some big-time stuff, unless they take the path towards music piracy.

Some of my favorite artists release CDs of previously-released material, but with maybe one or two tracks that have never seen the light of day; either songs that were never released, or new and (presumably) improved mixes of old songs.

This is not a new practice, either; it's been going on for decades.

Nevertheless, sometimes it's upsetting to have to buy an entire album just to hear one new song.  Often, even the download route isn't an option, because you may have to download the entire album to hear the one song!

One solution is to check the public library to see if they have the CD, and just check out the CD and rip the track.  But what if they don't?

This is where Amazon came in for me.

I found a redemption code for Amazon good for $3 in music downloads.  There happened to be three songs that I wanted, and in each case it was one of those "buy the whole album to hear one new song" situations.

Fortunately, Amazon gave me the option to download these songs individually.  Unfortunately, I hadn't used the code properly (let this be a lesson: always read and follow the instructions to the letter!), so the MP3s ended up not being free.

Before I had a chance to remove them from my shopping cart - in fact, there is no shopping cart for MP3s on Amazon - they transferred to my computer, meaning I would be charged for the songs.  Oh, well.

Lesson learned for only $2.98, no big deal.  I still had the code for $3 in free tunes, so I used it to get three other songs.

The next day, I got an e-mail from Amazon saying that my order had been canceled because there was no valid form of payment attached to my Amazon account.  (Mind you, this was a day after the MP3s had already transferred to my computer.)

Indeed, my Amazon Visa card had been recently stolen and I had to cancel it.  I hadn't used Amazon since getting the replacement, and I forgot to update my account with my new card number.

Basically, I got free MP3s from Amazon simply because of an invalid credit card!  This could be a boon to music pirates, but a big loss in profit for Amazon.  All you'd need to do is make sure your Amazon account has nothing but an invalid credit card number on file, and you're home free.

I don't know if it was the Catholic guilt in me, or if it was that I didn't want to risk eventually being found out, but I confessed to Amazon's customer service, mentioning that I had updated my credit card info so that they could charge me for the amount on the invoice.

What really floored me was the e-mail I got in response.

In a nutshell, the e-mail said that they couldn't charge the card because it wasn't attached to the invoice!  Wow.

Whether or not this incident of unintentional free music was enough for the folks at Amazon to rework their MP3 payment system is too early to tell.

While many writers like to put disclaimers in the beginning of the article, I'd rather put mine here as a recap.  The purpose of this article is not to encourage anybody to steal, but rather to vent about some of the problems with downloadable music.

It was not my intention to rip off Amazon, but I admit I was proud to have exposed a flaw in the system.

All someone has to do to get free MP3s from Amazon is to use a canceled or expired credit card number.  And who gets hurt in the end, really?

The artist.