The Cold Cut

In the age of iTunes and MySpace, I think it's easy to lose appreciation of what buying music is all really about. My iTunes library currently stands at a paltry 17.69 GB, something which I am not proud of and am trying to fix at the moment (my iPod died a few weeks ago, along with all the music contained on it)... However, if you were to convert that 17.69 Gigabytes of music into CDs, you might be shocked at how much tuneage that actually is. Going on the assumption that each CD is 12 tracks, and on average each track on a CD is 3 megabytes, I would own approximately 500 CDs. That's a lot of CDs, and yet 15 GB is a normal amount of music to own nowadays... is that good? Or bad? My opinion falls to the former- that's not to say I haven't noticed that more and more purists are complaining about mp3s, stating they can't compare to CDs or vinyls. Although this is essentially an mp3 blog, to a certain extent they are correct.

I can see certain things about mp3's that don't match up to CDs: you don't get sleeve notes, a CD case or the anticipation of going out to buy a new release. However, the positives for mp3's more than outweigh the negatives. First and foremost, they are cheaper- £7.99 for an album is way cheaper than in the stores, and this is applied across the board on iTunes, regardless of album length. On top of this, buying an mp3 is incredibly easy: just search, click and download. Also, on most online music stores you can see interactive charts and reviews, which give you an idea of what's good and what's bad. Another great thing is that mp3s can be bought individually- if you like one song from an album you don't have to buy the whole thing to get it. Finally, for the space conscious of you, the only thing mp3s take up is your computer's hard drive. Of course, this also applies to the machine's which play them- when I see my old CD player in my cupboard I can't help but laugh- imagine carrying around 500 CDs with you every time you go out for a run! An mp3 player? Small and pocketable, solely because mp3s are infinitesimally small (aka non-existent)...

And there you go- because mp3s are non-existent in the sense of the word, you don't get any feeling of their size or quantity. For this exact reason, I want 30 gigabytes of music when my current 17 is enough to fill up a sizeable space in the real world. But does this bother me? Nah, not really- long live the mp3! The cheaper, better sounding, more efficient way of listening to music... and just for the unconvinced of you, some tracks from my iTunes library:

Basement Jaxx- Good Luck
Cold War Kids- Hang Me Up To Dry
Guillemots- We're Here
Justice Vs. Simian- We Are Your Friends
Mark Ronson- Oh My God
Our Lady Peace- Somewhere Out There
Rilo Kiley- It's A Hit
The Rakes- Suspicious Eyes