The Future of Recorded Music

The question isn't whether they hear it--it's whether they care. I've yet to meet anybody who listens to MP3s, but thinks they're inadequate (actual audiophiles excepted, of course).

I don't think the question of quality's importance to non-audiophiles is so black and white. What seems to have been fully determined is that non-audiophiles don't care about quality MORE than price. Free downloads that sound so-so beat better sounding CD's at $12.99, which beat better sounding SACD's that cost $18.99. Very similar to the popularity of so-so tasting pizza that's conveniently and quickly delivered to your door vs. the much better pizza you have to go to the little shop to pick up. If it were as easy and (almost) as cheap, I'd take the better tasting pizza every time. But since it's not, I eat the so-so convenient pizza way more often.

I can scarcely begin to express my contempt for the idea of any essentially profit-driven entity succeeding in becoming a leading repository of any media, be it music, images, text, or whatever, in virtue of information storage in proprietary format.

There is a well-known institution which has been around for well over 2000 years which does function as a repository of (in modern jingoism) "experience". That storage used to be restricted to the textual, and extends in modern times to also include the aural and visual. As everywhere, increasingly under pressure to self-finance, its general spirit remains to serve as a public good. Its existence is even a measure of humanity: its burning/disappearance is always a sure sign of our depravity. It generally gives its users unrestrictive access to wholes, not stray tidbits, and if its service has a subscription fee, it is reasonable. The institution I speak of is a public library.

Anything which needs to trade on its future now to survive today, is much less likely to survive than anything which already has a -- deservedly -- celebrated past. Needless to say, i or eTunes/Images/Books/Films and the like will never be the apple of my eye.

If the issues involved were only banal, about sliding scales of cost/quality, frankly I wouldn't care much more about these things than about any other barterable good. But it's also about control/freedom. The M$ phenomenon is but a minor consumerist appearance of how the slippery slope of the apparently trivial can be much steeper than anyone ever imagined. So how did it all begin? In the beginning there was convenience.

Interesting philosophical point Agonanon, but what example in the history of recorded music can you cite that both emerged and survived on a purely public, non-commercial basis?

DVD-Audio is the format I can think of that attempted to be as universal as the thing permitted, and out of it came an overly complex, confusing, somewhat poorly engineered, and poorly marketed design. What works in the marketplace is something with a singular vision and monetary support, which generally implies a profit motive.

I agree with you about control and freedom, by the way. This is one of the underlying reasons why p2p has so much appeal.

Flex, with Bomarc's grace and goodwill, to clarify:

I was simply trying to say what selection between some of life's apparently banal little options ultimately --and cumulatively (as a consequence of many selecting whatever option)-- can mean.

Selection between these contributes in determining the palette of available options for others in the long run. Given today's pace of change, the "long run" is more often than not well within our lifetime. So these determine choices for us as well - everyone goes for iTunes, iTunes undergo explosive growth, becoming a dominant option. Or: everyone tunes in to Fox, CNN and MTV and that kind of info[tainment] becomes staple, while other kinds of information (options) become waysided. The same applies to IT (instant M$ gratification and convenience vs. free OS's with better build but less convenience) but also to more important phenomena, say in the social-political sphere.

As for your Q'n: the issue is I believe not about the conditions of emergence and growth, where I will wholeheartedly agree as they say, that pecuniam non olet (hence there exists a strong correlation between size of endowment fund -- or equivalent -- and quality of research in educational and other institutions). Rather it is about the conditions of access, use, and distribution, what kinds of conditions -- restrictive or free ("free" as in "free speech" and not as in "free beer") -- apply to these. Imagine if vinyl (or: CD's) could only be played on TT's (or: CDP's) made by XYZ (and associates) but not on any other kind: the horror, the horror. Note: the source (LP, CD etc) can be (even: terribly) expensive, but it would still be "free" in the sense meant.

No one is claiming that good musicians -- or anyone else with anything to offer society -- should not earn a king's ransom. Even if there have been generously bankrolled efforts to associate supporters of some notions of free/freedom with idealogies gone historically awry, these, at best, dissumulate. I daresay even casual observation of the world will reveal that systematic legal, social or other curtailment or restriction of creative or other goods (ranging as implied from music, to information, or even to ideas themselves) is a surefire recipe for mediocrity and worse.