A (digital) Product of it's Environment

I was lucky enough to be a teenager during the Napster era of digital media, and remember using an AOL dial up connection to download songs from the service. While it might not have been the most legal way of getting songs, it was the easiest and most convenient. At the time I had a Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra mp3 player which was a large 30GB capacity (also about the size of Sony's original tape player 'The Walkman'). It was cheaper than the iPod and worked with Windows (iPod was MacOSX exclusive when it launched). The idea of holding an entire library in your pocket was what drove me to shell out big bucks as I worked my first part time job. I love music and drove a lot so I used it with an adapter in my car and around the house.

The music itself was in mp3 format, and I feel like it was compressed in this format to better utilize current technology. While there were better sounding formats out there, they were much larger in terms of file size. I liked that I could fit thousands of songs on my mp3 player, rather than just a few albums. Also, even though my mp3 player was new technology I was still using pretty cheap headphones, being a poor teenager in school with a part time job. In other words, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to hear improved audio clarity using the $20 headphones I had. Even now as technology has advanced and storage sizes have increased I’m not sure I would have the equipment to tell the difference in clarity (I use $30 logitech speakers and some cheap apple ear buds for my phone).

The file format was the way it was because of the current technology. Download times would’ve been too long during the dial up era to download anything in a larger format. The size of storage during the first versions of the mp3 player was too small to support anything larger than mp3.  The technology was the product of it’s environment. Apple was probably the smartest player in this as they built both their own MP3 player and app store. They had complete control over things once the record companies signed on. Record companies were now making more money off these songs because the consumer could pick out individual songs and buy each for a dollar. Also the digital downloads cut back on production costs, actual discs and album art books were not required for downloaders.

Now with much faster internet connections and cheaper storage we are seeing an increase in other formats with higher quality audio. We’re even seeing new audio players like Neil Young’s Pono player that plays music “without compromising the sound”. (Boilen)

The player looks like a throwback to the early mp3 players but is focused towards audiophiles who put sound quality above all else. But is it too late for a change in audio formats? We’re so accustomed to mp3 and it’s smaller compressed size, which has dominated music downloads the last 20 years.

Boilen, Bob. “Neil Young Wants You To Truly Hear Music.” NPR. March 19, 2014.

March 21, 2014. http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/03/19/291130878/neil-young-wants-you-to-truly-hear-music