Greg Puciato, otherwise known as the vocalist for The Dillinger Escape Plan, just made our lives easier. Why? Because we had plan of writing an editorial about file-sharing and the state of music industry for quite a while now. Alas, we are lazy, and it’s still on our to-do list.
Replying to a question asked on his blog, Puciato covers topics from the state of the music industry, mp3s, vinyls and CDs, file-sharing and its effect on the people who make a living from making music.
It’s a lengthy and honest opinion piece, and you might or might not agree with everything he says, but coming from someone directly affected by file-sharing, it probably holds more weight than being written by someone who is affected by slow download speeds. Which doesn’t mean we won’t revisit the topic — we will, and it’s going to be amazing. Until that moment comes though, make the jump and read an excerpt from his text.
“I don’t see file sharing as an evil…it’s silly to say that it has any intrinsic properties of good and evil at all anyway. It’s just a new form of technology that evolved outside of what the record industry and intellectual property law structure was prepared for at the time. That having been said…I think it’s necessary to swim with the tide and not against it. I think it’s time to accept and acknowledge that the CD is a dead format. Maybe not dead in the way of the 8 track but dead in the way vinyl is.
A CD now, should be thought of as a collector’s item, or a preferred way of listening if that is the individual’s preference, in which case he is already in the minority as most music is listened to via the MP3 format. A CD certainly sounds better than an MP3, just as a vinyl does, but it just lacks the infinitely superior convenience of the digital format.
As internet gets faster and hard drives get bigger, even 320 MP3s(which I am totally fine with for 90% of my listening) will be replaced by larger more sonically accurate files like WAVs or FLAC, so eventually a CD will hold no sonic vantage point at all, and will simply be a relic that we once used to transfer digital files. A relic that is no longer NEEDED, but like I said, may be “cool to have” in the way vinyl is. I buy vinyls and limited versions of albums that I really like or really mean something to me…and stick to MP3 for the rest.”
Read the entire text at his blog (via ThePRP).
