No, You Should Not Buy An MP3 Player
Apr 18 '00
And here's why. Mp3s exist solely as a Hard drive space-saving program and it's not meant to be anything portable. You need to have some background facts to see where I'm going with this. OK.
When I started really getting into On-line activities in 1996, I used to play CDs in my CD-ROM, and I'd be on AOL. One thing I soon noticed, is that some kids in the illegal warez (pirated software) rooms would have these HUGE files of songs, and would send them to you. They'd reduced the quality of the music, but you could get full length songs for less than 10 megabytes, which at the time seemed awesome. (Considering the average 4 minute song is over 40 megabytes, uncompressed.) Then, Urethra! They found it, a type of compression that allows you to have CD quality songs, at about one-tenth of the size, Mp3s. This ofcourse made sharing a lot easier, and pretty soon, I had hundreds of Megabytes of songs on my computers. This was awesome, I mean, the whole point of it was to allow you to be able to have a lot of files on your computer, save space, and play them as you liked them, as opposed to needing a multi-CD-changer and other boring cumbersome things. Then, ofcourse, things started going horribly wrong.
Record companies realized quite quickly that, for some people, if they could get the music in a retainable form, (Mp3) they wouldn't buy the CDs and tapes. Personally, I thought it ridiculous, as ofcourse we'd still buy the CDs! We need them for our cars, and our walks to and from school, and the times when we're just NOT AT A COMPUTER. Enter mp3 players, destined to screw things up.
OK, I know people make the argument that you could make your own mp3 files, maybe some songs of you and the dog howling at the moon, or possibly you singing your heart out, and being like Yanni, a fan of your own voice, wants to carry it around. But let's be real here. You're going to download that Pearl Jam, that Nirvana, that Tori Amos, that Filter, and yes, that Bob Dylan song, and if you can take it with you everywhere you go, you will NEVER buy the CD. There's no need! This is where we're all going to lose it. You should NOT be able to carry around pirated music on some player designed to rob record companies and artists of control over their own products. It's like saying you ordered that Black-market cable box, not to steal cable, but because you liked the remote feature. Please.
The record companies and the artists are not going to let this stand. Computer files are fine, cause it's highly likely that you own the CDs, and you can't really take the mp3 files anywhere, meaning you would have to support the artist and buy the CD if you really liked it. However, with the portable mp3 players, you won't have to, and few people will. If you continue supporting this portable mp3 "technology" that is robbing the record companies, do not expect things to just stay the same and have no one do anything... Oh yes, and Bob Dylan says... A Hard Rain's gonna fall.
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Epinions.com ID:
StrummerJane
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Member: Jane Strummer
Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 5 members
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