CASA - the contemporary a cappella society

Who’s With Me?

Written by Jonathan A Minkoff

Tuesday, 18 April 2006

I often write casual versions of brilliant scholarly analysis. Or at least inside scoop stuff. Today I’ve chosen to simply ramble in my blog. Blah blah blah blog.

If you’re like me, you still buy CDs. But you immediately rip them to high-quality unrestricted MP3 format (192) and listen to the ripped tracks on the computer (wirelessly streaming to the stereo) and the adorable, elegant and ubiquitous ipod (video 60gig). (One reason I’m including the specs in this piece is to see how fast the technology appears antediluvian. Six months? A year? I should be so lucky.) Eight and half bizillianquadrillion songs in one molecule. It’s coming. But honestly, I’m still pretty psyched about taking every piece of music I own with me. Always.

The CD itself, by comparison, is terribly awkward, the drunken elephant in the fine glass collectibles warehouse. The moment it’s ripped, it is reduced to a kludgy back-up. It takes up space, gathers dust and mocks me from its wasteful perch.

So just buy online, you say. iTunes. Maybe you’ve heard of it? My god, you’ve really grown bitter in these last few years, I reply. It’s New York City, you confess. It just makes you ….hard inside. You look away but I can sense that tears have begun to well up. Broken dreams. I put my hand on your shoulder. It’s gonna be …alright. You hear me buddy? You’re gonna be ok.

But back to online purchases. They haven’t won me over yet. For one, restricted files drive me up a wall. I’m an attorney, and I understand the desirability of stopping the vast dissemination of illegally copied music files to the untold masses of the world. It really does kill artists. And even if it only hurts record labels, so what? It’s mean. It’s morally offensive. There’s taking a few extra packets of sweet and low at the diner and then there’s stiffing the waiter, punching the owner and robbing the register on the way out.

So hey, other people-not-me: thanks for messing up the whole MP3 thing. I never should have trusted you anonymous hoards.

Point is, I really need the files in high quality MP3 –or better yet a lossless format. I need no restrictions on the number of drives I can back music up to or play from, or the players I can play the files on, or making the songs into ring tones for my Treo (650), or whatever else I feel like doing in the dark hours of the night (which would be all the hours of the night, pretty much by definition). And in return for this flexibility to which I feel I am entitled as a technological citizen of the world, I promise not to make unreasonable numbers of copies and send them all over the place. I will not give my songs to complete strangers. I will not define every person who connects to MySpace as my friend.

But when a friend asks for a copy of say a song, not a whole CD, mind you…I think it’d be cool, not legal, but cool, to make them a copy. I’d say, yeah, that FrouFrou track is kickin’, huh? You should pick up the entire album.

So can we all just go back in time and make this thing go right? We need an inch. Not a mile. Just an inch. Who’s with me? Ya feel me?