Jacob Jones Analog to Digital Comparison Paper N100 Foundations of New Media 5/21/12

One aspect of music that has changed over the years is its medium for mass distribution. The way that people can hear an artists music, and potentially own it or have some sort of copy for listening whenever they feel the desire to do so. That idea started with Thomas Edisons phonograph machine that was the first way to listen to music through analog means. Which quickly developed into the gramophone record, which we commonly refer to as a vinyl record player . People used that as a means for distributing music for years, simply because it was the only way to viably put music into the consumers hands at the time. They were really put into play for music in around 1894 when Emilie Berliner started distributing 7 discs with music on them through the company United States Gramophone Company. The next big means of audio distribution was the Compact Cassettes invented and introduced by Phillips in 1962, which really started to truly take off commercially in 1979 when Sony introduced the Walkman. And the compact cassette killed its competitor the eight track due to its convenience of being small and having the ability to be mobile. A big issue with Compact Cassettes was the audio quality. One thing that did go for it was the mainstream adaption to making them Dolby Digital Noise Reduction, which did help keep the format going for a quite a bit longer.

The next format in the chain was the Compact Disc. It was kind of the bridge between analog and digital formats for music. It in itself was digital and sported much higher fidelity audio, and was much cheaper to make and mass distribute. It first became commercially available in 1982. This is a format that is actually still in use today, even while being massively foreshadowed by the almighty mp3. Without the Compact Disc we might not have had the digital revolution that we did starting around 1997.

The final format being discussed now is the ever-leading format of the mp3. Mp3s really took off with the Peer to Peer (p2p) network called Winamp in 1997. It provided a way to store lots of music on the computer using a fraction of the space of other formats, all while providing a fair amount of fidelity. Mp3s are by far the preferred format of my generation. The way music is distributed and pushed out to the masses is so different than 50 years ago. Now we have the option to get on our computer and download thousands upon thousands of songs in minutes, whether done legally or illegally. The issue that a lot of people are having with digital distribution is that it is extraordinarily easy to go pirate (download for free versus paying the artist/record label/distribution company) thousands of songs, and people are doing that now on a daily basis on a global scale. The old way of getting music would be to go to a record store, and buy something. Most likely in the most popular format of the time, even though it would be most probable that they would have multiple formats for you to buy in a record store. Now one must simply get on a website or application and download as many mp3s as desired. Another plus to digital music on the internet is the ability to preview songs or even listen to them entirely in some cases.

A big argument going on right now is whether or not digital distribution is a good thing. The typical online market for music supplies, 256 kbps mp3s which to some trained ears are not the greatest quality compared to 320 kbps mp3s or even uncompressed formats such as .wav or. aiff. And then using that argument some will say we are better off using analog means for good sounding music, especially gramophone (vinyl) records where the sound is pristine and crystal clear. Some even argue that a 320 kbps mp3 and vinyl are not even close to comparing fidelity wise. So that is a major pitfall to digital distribution and formats is the audio quality being pushed out the masses. One major issue with some mp3s online, are that the songs were recorded and engineered specifically for vinyl records years ago. So when people go back and remaster an old song for mp3s and online distribution they are tweaking a song that was intended and engineered specifically for vinyl, and the end result usually comes out fairly bad, due to the technically difficulties of reverse engineering something that was intended to be for an analog format over to a digital format. One of the biggest things that digital formats have over analog formats are the fact that I can reasonably hold over 30,000 songs in my pocket, and play them anywhere at anytime. Versus if I would try that with an analog format it would end up being in several crates full of vinyl or cassettes, I would certainly not be able to carry those all around, and you would lose the ability to play them anywhere. You would have to have an entire stereo system to be able to play any of them. A big plus for digital music is its reliability over its analog counterparts being where you can back it up as many times as you would like, and it will never deteriorate. Versus vinyl and cassette will warp, scratch, break, overheat, etc whereas the mp3 will stay pristine as long as your hard drive lives. So in the long run, I personally believe the switch to digital formats are the best thing that could have happened to the music industry. We do need to bump the fidelity up and standardize an uncompressed audio format for the masses, so the best quality is presented and standard. That will have to happen later once, when disk storage is no longer an issue for the website and the consumer. References

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb04/articles/onlinemusic.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramophone_record http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_storage http://www.walkmancentral.com/ http://www.irememberjfk.com/mt/the_cassette_tape_becomes_popu.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc http://mpgedit.org/mpgedit/mpeg_format/MP3Format.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3 http://www.lincomatic.com/mp3/mp3quality.htm

Images

http://images.cdn.fotopedia.com/oGrgsfdBDZM-5wpbnI-L-p8-hd.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Compactcassette.jpg http://www.sonyinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/tpsl2.png http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/10000/velka/1-1208707554nqU5.jpg http://rosalindwiseman.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/itunes-store-ss.png http://news.cnet.com/i/bto/20090517/AmazonMP3-1_610x414.png