MP3 for You and Me

By Austin Brentley
austin.brentley@technicaltrainingprograms.com
Technical Programs Columnist

Sound engineers of yesteryear must have been extremely excited when the music industry began making the switch from analog to digital recording. This type of technology made it much easier to capture quality sound and then manipulate it as needed. No more messy tape. No more splicing and dicing with scissors. Suffice to say that digital sound recording technology was to the music industry what the Internet was to business.

Unforeseen Consequences

What the sound engineers did not anticipate, though, was how easily transferable digital recording technology actually was. True, as a sound engineer, these recent advances in recording technology certainly made your job easier. But it also made the life of consumers easier as well. Beginning with Napster, any person around the world could sit at his or her computer console and download the entire Beatles' collection within a matter of minutes (depending on the users connection speed). Using an MP3 format you can fill up a 20 gig hard drive with 5000-7000 songs easily. You remember that song that you heard on the radio the other day; the one that you can get out of your head? Well if you have an Internet connection, it's yours.

Easy and Illegal

Any song you could possibly want is sitting in cyberspace waiting for your retrieval. But a word of caution; while downloading music is extremely easy, it is illegal. In fact, it is against the law to possess any pirated music. So even if your friends make you a nice birthday CD with tracks illegally downloaded from the Internet, you are still at fault. So while sound engineers might lament the ease with which consumers can enjoy the fruits of their labor, just know that anti-downloading forces have been mounting over the last several years. Every time new technology surfaces, someone loses a lot money, and someone gains a lot money. And rest assured that the RIAA will do everything it can to make sure it is not the former.

About the Author

A freelance writer and researcher, Austin Brentley is an English teacher currently living and working in Yamaguchi, Japan. His previous experience includes working for a lobbying firm in his native Washington, DC and working for various record and television studios in New York. Austin holds a B.A. in history