Record houses beware: MP3s catching on, becoming norm

Some supporters of MP3 say the technology will revolutionize the way we listen to, buy, and create music. Naysayers say the recording industry is too strong and powerful to let a measly file-compression technology hurt it. Both, though, are in agreement on one thing: MP3 is here to stay and its use can only get bigger.

So, what is MP3?

Courtesy of Capitol Records The Beastie Boys is a band that has done well in the MP3 world. Their latest album, "Hello Nasty" is all over the internet waiting to be downloaded.

On the Internet, millions of people are putting up MP3s on Web and ftp sites as we speak. One quick search on Lycos's MP3 search (www.lycos.mp3.com) yields several possible sites to download the Beastie Boys' entire latest release "Hello Nasty."

While not every artist has the prominence of the Beasties, it is safe to assume that if any artist's single has made it into the Billboard Top 200 in the past 20 years, you will be able to find it somewhere in MP3. They are all free.

Around the University, one of the most common places to find users of MP3s is in the dorms. With Ethernet providing extremely fast connections to the Internet, it takes less than a minute for dorm users to download the one to three megabytes of space that an MP3 requires.

Each dorm has its own network, which provides a way for all Windows users in the respective dorms to connect to each other. Allowing your computer to be connected to, or "shared," is a voluntary process. In South Quad, for example, close to 60 people currently share files from their computers. Countless others who choose not to share their computers can still use the network resources to get software, watch movies, play games and most commonly, listen to MP3s.

So, is this a revolution?

Some believe this is a death knell for the recording industry and a liberating return to an appreciation of the music itself. For if an artist has the wherewithal to make their own recording and then simply put it into MP3, the Internet allows anyone from around the world to download the file. There are numerous web sites helping out with this task. The site www.mp3.com is probably the most prestigious and well-known of these sites. For no fee they allow a band to send in a picture, a description, links to the band's webpage, occasionally a link to buy their CD, and, of course, the MP3s the band has made.

The beauty of the Internet, as many would agree, lies in its democracy. LSA sophomore Jeremiah Sim has put up MP3s of his band, Ego Trip, on the South Quad network. In one sense, "I put a lot of time into those songs and so I don't want to see them just rot," Sim said. "It's also nice to have another (digital) copy of the music and it's convenient for me. Besides, this can't hurt anybody."

Others on the campus will use it to find international artists who are not readily available here in the states. Simon Yeh, an ITD employee, gets MP3s of his favorite Chinese songs through Metacrawler, another search engine.

The entire point of signing to a label for many bands is the opportunity for more exposure. While more money certainly will get you more advertising, it is just as easy for some 14-year-olds out of Mom's basement to set up a fancy Webpage with their MP3s as it is for a record company representative.

LSA first-year student Nate Forster said he finds the MP3 phenomenon useful for more than just its democracy. He uses them for previews of albums he might later buy on CD, because the Real Audio examples most online stores provide are of poor quality and short. In addition, it was through MP3s that he discovered one of his now favorite bands, Depeche Mode.

"I found (Depeche Mode's) 'Violator' on the net and downloaded the whole thing," Forster said. Later, "I really started to like it and so I went out and bought the CD - then deleted my MP3s." Buying a band's CD, Forster says, not only gives him the packaging and artwork, it's also like "giving a vote for the artist," or a way of showing appreciation.

Is this really a democracy?

Not all are wowed by the overwhelming numbers of MP3s available. Sim, for example, has been disappointed with what he sees on his South Quad network and on the Internet. "It's mostly a duplicated way of listening to Top 40 radio," he said.

True enough, a quick browse through any of the networks will yield a startingly common number of artists and songs. Barenaked Ladies, the Dave Matthews Band, Tori Amos, Billy Joel, and the Smashing Pumpkins are just a few of the popular acts. Then there are a number of hits by less current artists: Young MC's "Bust A Move," A-Ha's "Take On Me," and They Might Be Giants' "Istanbul" or "Birdhouse in Your Soul." That these bands have mostly young, white, and suburban audiences says more about MP3s and the PC market than is flattering.

Where from here?

The recording industry, despite being a little slow to catch on, has undertaken a massive effort to figure out new, more profitable ways of downloading music. A new MP4 format is expected to be out by Christmas that will have special encoding to insure money is being paid for it.

Microsoft, too, is coming out with a new format sometime this month called MS Audio 4.0 that claims to compress files to half the size of current MP3s.

It seems that despite the new possiblities technology seems to offer us, the public has more than gotten used to the expectations of corporate industry. Although sites like www.mp3.com offer some hope for a more diverse listening market, people have and will always want the hit bands or songs. Unless newer bands can acheive success through MP3, it seems likely that the way we listen to music won't be changing anytime soon.

04-15-99