Digital Music to wipe the floor with CDs soon?
A new analyst's report (oh how we do love them), has claimed that by 2012 digital music sales will have surpassed CD sales. This distresses me in a number of ways, firstly because, I personally like my physical product, which I can store on my shelf and look at now and again, but more importantly, with the current state of music downloads, you will be paying for what is in effect, a small proportion of a CD.
How do you mean, you ask? Bitrate, is what I mean.
Most music downloads today are at 128 or 192kbps, which is acceptable for listening too on most PC speakers and on MP3 Players with cheap tinny headphones, but for those of us out there, like me, who have expensive equipment, and can tell the difference between something of CD quality and something which is compressed to hell and back, this is a big problem. I refuse to pay slightly less for something of significantly less quality, and without a physical product. The prices of downloadable music are not acceptable, they are just too high for what you are receiving.
But I guess I'm a minority, floating alone in the weird world of low quality digital downloads…
Dude, MP3s have already dominated the field. Why buy a bunch of CDs when you can download the MP3s for much cheaper? I found this new-ish website called SharingZone, where you can P2P without worries…it’s pretty sweet; I found everything from ABBA to U2. Not to mention you can find just about every movie ever made. I love it. Anyhow, there’s a blog about it: http://onlinedownloadingreview.blogspot.com/. It’s a pretty good summary…check it out sometime.
—Ted