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Originally Posted by Ratt In Clothes
These inevitabilities make me sad. Whether or not most people do, the iTunes concept allows you to buy a single song from an album rather than buying the whole thing. This will lead to a generation of drones content only to buy the songs that they see or hear on top40 radio or the MTV countdown. If you think the industy and the majority of its productions are in a sorry state now, just wait 'til people's only option is to buy what they want.
If artists understand that people will only pay for their singles, the quality of their other work will sink. On the other hand, the quality of their singles would improve as that is the product that they are effectively pimping. The artists might just remove these "B-Sides" entirely and only release singles to be heard, but on a much more regular basis. What that would mean is a greater musical variety that is readily available, but more music lost in the flow (not a bad thing, but we would have to dig deeper).
It's hard to say exactly which direction online music will go, but with these more consumer-oriented artists, the industry will wither and they will proceed them as a global, suburbanite pleasing store. And there's no culture in commerce... there's just... nothing.
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Don't let stupid people stop technology...that's like saying cell phones are a bad idea because people don't memorize as many phone numbers, when the reality is I've been detoured in an emergency situation several times in the last 5 years that never would have occurred otherwise. The cellphone has proven its worth time and again amidst people in grocery store lines carrying on meaninnless conversations with someone they are going to see anyway in an hour. People are going to be idiots no matter what. It is the world's only constant.
Thanks to the MP3 format, I now can bring all kinds of music wherever I go. I actually can't imagine why anyone wouldn't, really, outside of those obsessed with sound quality to the point of owning very expensive equipment. There are lossless formats now anyway. The point is we have jumped much closer to the freedom from having to carry around piles or records, tapes or CD's.
If the dumb people already buying crappy music have a chance to get even lazier, well that's fucking great for them, isn't it? They can't be saved anyway. Musicians that stop putting out quality product have their own problems, and those are not directly related to the format on which the music is being heard. I am listening to Hot Rats right now, something I would not be able to do if I didn't have a 20 GB IPod that came with me everywhere, because it's not a CD I carry around all the time. I am able to listen to far more music than ever before thanks to this format.
When, not if, CD's do become obsolete - and I don't think we are all that close to it, really - they will not be missed by too many people. Records, on the other hand, are worth far more from a collector's standpoint. It is true that a digital format really doesn't do much to give you something tangible to hold.
- more and more people are sticking to their ipods or mobile phones. It is technology that rules the music business 
and better devices are just welcome. 
