Music in the Digital Era

The music industry has gone through some interesting changes in the last 20 years. Back in the hay days of vinyl records there were a couple of basic strategies that the record companies employed for making money…Singles and LPs. Then along came 8-tracks, cassettes, and CDs, and the Singles went by the wayside. Now with the advent of the Internet, Singles have made a resurgence and are the primary sellers for downloads. But now they have to compete like never before with the Napsters and other file sharing sites that are potentially pulling revenue away. There are a lot of reproductions floating around out there that are the result of people converting their vinyl record to CDs, especially on these file sharing sites.

The record companies are not the only ones that are having to deal with issues never before encountered in the music industry. Consumers have to be more technology savvy to insure that the music they are purchasing in the digital world meets with the same quality standards that they took for granted with vinyl records. Even with the introduction of music CDs into the marketplace, there has been a subtle sacrifice in music quality. Most people will tell you that CDs are superior to vinyl records because they are digital and do not scratch and pop like vinyl records. This is true, but if you have a pristine vinyl record and a good system to play it on, the sound is superior to CDs. This is because a vinyl records is a continuous sound wave, where as a digital recording is a sampling of that original sound wave. The sample rate on a standard audio CD is 44.1 KHZ which is translated into 44,100 data points per second.

Although it may take a true audiophile to distinguish the difference between an analog vinyl record versus a CD, the fact remains that there has been a degree of sacrifice in order for music to enter into the digital world. But that is not the end of story. As demand increases across the board for faster Internet speeds and reduced download times, digital music is being compressed in order to make the file smaller to download faster. What started out as a 44.1 KHZ sample rate may now be compressed down to 256k, 128k, or even 64k. The question is would you be willing to pay $ 1 to download a digital single at the original CD quality and wait a while for the file to download and take up the space on your hard drive to store it, of would you pay the same $ 1 to download an inferior quality product that downloads faster and takes up less space?

The answer is that the vast majority of consumers wouldn’t even know to ask themselves the question.

John Brigaitis is the adminstrator and primary author for the website Convert Vinyl Records to CDs where general discussions take place and technical details are disclosed regarding the process of creating a digital archive of vinyl records.

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