Clip: MP3 article from today's Boston Globe
The prophet Chuck D, on MP3 By Patti Hartigan, Globe Staff, 02/12/99 In the words of Cornel West, he's ''a freedom fighter of his generation.'' In the words of Spike Lee, he's ''one of the most politically and socially conscious artists of any generation.'' But forget the superlatives. Chuck D, founder of the rap group Public Enemy, has roared about the Three E's: education, economics, and enforcement (as in law). Now he's aiming at another alphabetical trio, an Information Age version of the three Rs - record companies, radio stations, and retail stores. ''I'm the person who waves a flag for the artists to have a fair shot,'' Chuck D says during a phone interview from Atlanta. ''The record companies hide behind bushes when I talk because I'm the mouth that roars. They're full of `No comments.''' His latest rap condemns the music industry. ''If you don't own the master/then the master owns you,'' the song proclaims, comparing the artist-industry relationship to slavery. ''Dollar a rhyme/but we barely get a dime.'' Needless to say, you won't find record company executives touting the tune, you won't hear it on the radio, and you won't find it in retail stores. It's available only on the Internet at www.public-enemy.com. The provocative song is the latest salvo fired in Chuck D's dispute with his former label Def Jam Recordings and its parent company Polygram (now part of Universal Music Group). Now, you could write this off as a typical artist-management skirmish if it didn't involve a technological advance that is rapidly changing the way music is produced, marketed, and distributed. The record industry is facing its most monumental shakeup, more daunting than what happened when vinyl gave way to the CD. It's all thanks to a simple but groundbreaking computer format that rhymes with MTV. They call it MP3. The controversial format enables anyone with a modem and a mouse to download digital copies of recorded music that sound almost exactly like the originals. It's the hottest thing in cyberspace these days, and companies like Lycos and JamTV are racing to come up with products and services as fast as you can say, ''I want my MP3!'' Depending on whom you talk to, though, MP3 is either the beginning of a brave new world of artistic freedom or a return to the days when the pirates ruled the seas. Certain artists (including Public Enemy, Billy Idol, the Beastie Boys, and the surviving members of the Grateful Dead) are way ahead of the industry executives, who are scrambling to catch up with the chaotic, constantly changing world of cyberspace. Public Enemy, for instance, used the MP3 format to post recordings from its unreleased remix album on its Web site late last year. Def Jam demanded that the band remove the songs from the site, and Public Enemy eventually severed its ties with the label, which has produced every Public Enemy album since its debut in 1987. ''That was the straw that broke the camel's back,'' says Chuck D. When asked about the split, a Def Jam spokeswoman said, ''No comment.'' But the Recording Industry Association of America is hardly hiding behind the bushes. ''With the touch of a button, any 13-year-old can make music available to millions of people around the world,'' says Cary Sherman, the industry group's senior executive vice president and general counsel. ''We're talking about a whole new dimension of piracy.'' Chuck D, however, downplays these fears. ''They're trying to come up with a two-minute offense,'' he says. ''That's what we say in football when you're behind and you come up with some rush plays.'' Here's the play by play: The recording industry association has been scouring the Internet to shut down illegal MP3 sites, and in December, it launched the Secure Digital Music Initiative, or SDMI, a plan to develop standards to protect copyrighted music in cyberspace. When the Internet portal Lycos launched an MP3 search engine last week, the industry association forced the company to vow it would not link to illegal sites offering bootleg music. MP3 files, after all, aren't scratchy cassette tapes with gaps between tracks. They're high-quality recordings. Many Web sites, including www.mp3.com and www.goodnoise.com, offer legal MP3 recordings to download for about $1 a song; the files are compressed, so it takes only a minute or so to download a track using a high-speed modem. Browsers can then play the tunes right on their computer using one of the free players, such as Real Player, that are readily available on the Internet. MP3 is all the rage among today's technologically savvy college students, who can easily use ''ripper'' software to copy their CDs into the MP3 format and distribute it for free - or for profit - over the Internet. David Weekly, a 20-year-old Arlington native and a computer science student at Stanford University, put his entire music collection up on his Web site two years ago, and his site was so popular it almost crashed the
Re: Clip: MP3 article from today's Boston Globe
On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, Brad Bechtel wrote: The technology is relatively easy to master, the sound is quite good, and the sizes are decent. For example, I made an MP3 of the song "Dwight's Blues" from Rob Ickes' new CD "Slide City" (for testing purposes, not for dissemination). The original 16 bit 44kHz stereo AIFF file was 36.3 Mb. The MP3 was 3.3 Mb. I have to admit some curiosity. One of the reasons Sony's MiniDisc has been met with disdain is that it uses a lossy format. MP3 doesn't strike me as all that different, and I do wonder why many people seem to feel so differently about the two. (I'm not implying you have, Brad, just taking off on your comments.) Bob
Re: Clip: MP3 article from today's Boston Globe
Bob Soron writes: I have to admit some curiosity. One of the reasons Sony's MiniDisc has been met with disdain is that it uses a lossy format. MP3 doesn't strike me as all that different, and I do wonder why many people seem to feel so differently about the two. (I'm not implying you have, Brad, just taking off on your comments.) My theory is that its popularity has to do with the fact that the technology isn't proprietary (that is, Sony, Seagrams, Panasonic, Microsoft, etc. doesn't get a cut of each sale) and that it's software-based, not hardware based, so it requires no outlay of cash, unlike MiniDisc, DAT, DCC, or the other digital consumer formats. The resistance from the major labels certainly hasn't hurt, either, giving the format a Robin Hood-esque aura. No one particularly minds seeing the majors squirm a little. --Jon Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wollaston, Massachusetts
RE: Clip: MP3 article from today's Boston Globe
Bob says: I have to admit some curiosity. One of the reasons Sony's MiniDisc has been met with disdain is that it uses a lossy format. MP3 doesn't strike me as all that different, and I do wonder why many people seem to feel so differently about the two. I don't have the specs in front of me, but I believe that the MP3 compression algorithm loses a bit less than the MiniDisc one. More to the point, though, I think there's a market positioning aspect here; Sony's positioning of the MiniDisc pretty well sucks (or sucked; maybe they're changing it), since it appeared to place it as a straightforward substitute for a combination of CD and CD-R. Around here, at least, most of the MD shelf space is given over to audio system component units - tabletop player/recorders, sometimes in packages with a portable player-only unit. That's direct competition of sorts with the Diamond Rio MP3 player, but the Rio doesn't have any moving parts, which renders it superior. MP3s are, I think, mostly played back on computer audio systems (duh), on which the difference between an MP3 and a CD is barely detectable, if at all. IMO, the MD's survival depends on the extent to which it's adopted as a portable recording format; I know a lot of musicians and radio folks who use them, for listening to mixes and dubs for the former (superior to cassettes) and for doing out-of-studio interviews, station promos from stars, etc. Jon Weisberger Kenton County, KY [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.fuse.net/jonweisberger/
Re: Clip: MP3 article from today's Boston Globe
I have to admit some curiosity. One of the reasons Sony's MiniDisc has been met with disdain is that it uses a lossy format. MP3 doesn't strike me as all that different, and I do wonder why many people seem to feel so differently about the two. (I'm not implying you have, Brad, just taking off on your comments.) The MP3 file format is different from the Sony MiniDisc delivery format, just as an Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file is different from a lined sheet of accounting paper. Both can be used for the same purpose, but in different ways. I couldn't see buying a MiniDisc player unless I were doing a lot of recording. I could see buying an additional hard drive (or a Jaz drive) to store MP3 files on my computer, if I were into that sort of thing, which I'm not. I would expect that bands will end up doing a lot of recording to hard disk in whatever format they see fit, but I wouldn't be surprised to see MP3 being the delivery format for a while. The Diamond Rio MP3 player is actually pretty cool (see http://www.diamondmm.com/rio). I don't see an MP3 recorder anywhere in the near future. You have to record in AIFF or WAV format, then translate to MP3 format. np: Nine Pound Hammer, by the Robby Robot Band (http://www.mp3.com/music/folk/7023.html) - featuring Stacy Phillips on Dobro, Tony Trischka on banjo.
RE: Clip: MP3 article from today's Boston Globe
I don't see an MP3 recorder anywhere in the near future. You have to record in AIFF or WAV format, then translate to MP3 format. If your CD drive supports it - and most do - it appears, judging by the elapsed time it takes, you can extract CD audio files directly to MP3 format; there's a huge variety of commercial, shareware and I think even a few freeware products that do this. That's a substantial part of the piracy concern; it's easier to copy a commercially-released CD than it is to record your own stuff. Jon Weisberger Kenton County, KY [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.fuse.net/jonweisberger/
Re: Clip: MP3 article from today's Boston Globe
Brad Bechtel wrote: I'll admit it. I downloaded the Other Ones' MP3 of ''Mississippi Half Step.'' It sucked, to quote Jeff Wall. There are a lot of decent MP3s out there (see http://www.mp3.com for legal ones; search for the others). The technology is relatively easy to master, the sound is quite good, and the sizes are decent. For example, I made an MP3 of the song "Dwight's Blues" from Rob Ickes' new CD "Slide City" (for testing purposes, not for dissemination). The original 16 bit 44kHz stereo AIFF file was 36.3 Mb. The MP3 was 3.3 Mb. I wonder when someone will come up with a way to translate RealAudio files into MP3. I think MP3 sounds pretty good, but I do hear artifacts from its compression- the high end sounds sort of swirly, but it is still pretty decent sound. I have one on our page if you want to check it out at: http://www.kimmierhodes.com/wonderfulsound.html -- Joe Gracey President-For-Life, Jackalope Records http://www.kimmierhodes.com
Re: Clip: MP3 article from today's Boston Globe
Brad Bechtel wrote: I would expect that bands will end up doing a lot of recording to hard disk in whatever format they see fit, but I wouldn't be surprised to see MP3 being the delivery format for a while. Yeah, MP3 is only useful as a way to compress an existing master audio file into a file small enough to be downloaded in a reasonable amount of time, which has been the holy grail of internet music dreamers for years. I think it is close enough to CD quality that some fans won't even notice, but the hard-core ones will notice and still want the CD. It is, of course, only the first in a series of these compression schemes and we are rapidly reaching the point where a lot of music is about to be sold and downloaded instantly. The record industry is scrambling to try to force people to put an encoder into audio files for the 'net which makes it impossible to clone the file. -- Joe Gracey President-For-Life, Jackalope Records http://www.kimmierhodes.com
RE: Clip: MP3 article from today's Boston Globe
On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, Jon Weisberger wrote: [...] MP3s are, I think, mostly played back on computer audio systems (duh), on which the difference between an MP3 and a CD is barely detectable, if at all. Well, here's another of those areas in which I get confused. Why do people use their computers to play back audio and, even weirder, video? I'd suspect a K Mart boombox is going to offer better sound than a typical computer setup (this was the problem, BTW, when I asked a couple of weeks ago about MP3 quality; it turned out to be the speakers). And you have the advantage of portability; the computer's CD drive isn't going anywhere, but you can take that boombox with you. As I say, I'm even more baffled by the huge demand for DVD players for computers. I can't imagine any less-comfortable way to watch a movie than sitting in a desk chair and staring at a computer monitor for a good 90 minutes. Bob
