17: MP3 DEBATES (YAWN!)

Introduction

Debates about MP3s usually revolve around sound quality and copyright infringement, but your position on it will depend on what's in it for you. The debates rage on furiously and can be found by visiting www.mp3.com and others like it. However, most objections to MP3s are from record companies and major artistes who may stand to lose some money by not being given royalties for their work being spread around using this format. But for the newcomer to the industry these points have only limited relevance......read on.

First things first - what is MP3?

For much more detailed accounts of this use www.mp3.com, or do a search on the net. My site is from the angle of the struggling musician - detailed technical info and megastar sob stories can be found elsewhere. There are some very useful technical guides on there which I have read for my own purposes as an artiste and music collector.

MP3 is a kind of computer file which stores audio information in a small enough way to be sendable over the internet without taking an age, and at a high enough quality for decent listening. Its not quite as good as CD but almost (then again CD is not as good as vinyl, but let's not get too picky, eh!!).

Waveform files are the industry norm when it comes to storing high quality audio information - extension .wav. 'WAVS' are very big files, needing lots of storage space (about 10megs per stereo minute). The implications of this are numerous but for our purposes it means that they are practically useless in terms of sending over the internet. Sometimes they are a problem for Music Technology departments drivespace limitations on college internal networks, but that's another issue! By using the MP3 compression method many of these problems are eliminated.

What's the big deal with MP3?

The biggest beef is that people can get music without paying. This means that copyright law cannot function properly to protect the rights of owners of the various rights (see my copyrights page for info on what these are). In the beginnning, which is about 2 or 3 years ago, there were sites on the net where MP3s could be obtained for nothing. This was fairly quickly stamped out by a combination of record company vigilance and server strictness.

I remember a bunch of us thinking 'surely the powers that be won't be bothered going round checking millions of individuals - it won't be worth the effort.' - they didn't: they made sure ISPs didn't allow sites to have MP3s on them. Its like rather than prosecute children for buying cigarettes, the gov't focusses on the people who sell them instead because they are easier to monitor.There are a few that still do but many sites now have a 'cannot find page' or '404 error' displayed instead.

The Napster Debate

Napster.com is a site on the net which gives away free software which enables people to swap music in the form of MP3s - Napster itself does not provide the music. The software itself is rather like a search engine in that when a song title or artiste name is typed in it searches all the 'shared' folders of napster software owners who happen to be online at the time. So in fact it is napster users who are infringing copyright laws, not napster themselves - at least that's how I see it.

Alternatives to Napster can be found at both www.winmx.com and www.kazaa.com. Neither of these appear to suffer the severity restrictions placed on Napster, however Kazaa limits MP3 download quality to 128kbs - meaning lower than CD quality.

Summary of the Main arguments Against