Burning cds is so five years ago. Its all about the mp3 dvds these days. 100 albums a go!

Yeah, and with really s**tty sound compression, 192kBps my arse, YOU CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE, Steve Jobs can blow me, stupid white headphones. I agree with the point that copying CD's can help get newer acts off the ground but I'd be more of a downloading the od MP3 to get an idea about what a band are like.

There really isn't any issue about burning CDs for friends. This is what constitutes "fair use" under existing copyright law and therefore it isn't illegal. Burning off multiple copies and attempting to sell them for profit on the other hand is piracy. The real issue is that DRM (digital rights management), copy protected CDs and other so-called anti-piracy measures have the potential to take away these fair use rights that consumers have enjoyed for decades and put too much power about how and when we listen to music into the hands of the copyright holder. Copyright is not an indefinite thing, all intellectual property is supposed to return to the public domain after a number of years. Copyright is merely there to ensure the actual creator of the work gets rewarded financially within their own lifetime. The problem with all these protected formats is that it may make it effectively impossible to return such works to the public domain despite their legal status. I know encryption can be cracked but that is a seperate, thorny legal issue. (to see what I mean, do a search in google for a russian guy named "Dmitry Skylarov" for example) Unicron, yes you can tell the difference with MP3s, but I don't think the quality is as bad as you make out. Anyway theres an number of different formats out there, not just MP3. Theres apple AAC (what people are most likely to actually be listening to on their iPods nowadays), Microsoft WMA, Ogg Vorbis, etc. You can't sweepingly dismiss them as useless. Anyway, the difference is minimal, most music that ends up on CD is initially recorded digitally in the studio these days and very few people bother record at anything above 24Bit 96Khz, even for classical music. 192KHZ recording devices have only really started to appear in any meaningful way this year, so it will be a while before they are universally adopted, if ever. Some CDs are arguably worse than a high quality software based digital music file, because a lot of CDs are poorly mastered, especially CDs released during the 80s/early 90s.

broadband is not great in this counry so yes burning cd's is pretty big, why do ye think dixons etc sell so many? my theory on mp3's and mass burning: its draining money from the industry leading to a panic attack leading to "safe bets" leading to crap music.

A theory that doesn't hold up under scrutiny, there is evidence to suggest that file sharing has actually had a positive effect on CD sales. If anything, its the industry thats slowly killing itself with mediocre output and shortsigtedness, then looking for a convenient scapegoat.

Thom Yorke said something along these lines about the CD piracy thing and the drop in CD sales over the last few years. "What they don't realise is that people aren't buying albums because they aren't releasing anything people want to listen to". The big labels are incresingly playing it safer in their release policy and although I don't have any figures to back this statement up I'd imagine that the smaller labels that are willing to take more of a risk on musicians are taking a higher proportion of the record sales. Of course you could also put this down to the fact that file sharing and compressed music files makes it easier for smaller lables and unestablished acts to get samples of their music to an audience.

I think you know the wrong people Mutch! mind you it must be hard when you live in Nepal A lot of my new discoveries have been through downloading MP3s or borrowing CDs off of friends. In fairness a lot of these MP3s have been obtained legally (Epitonic or similar) and as I said before copying/lending CDs to friends is not illegal either. My latest discoveries are Emperor X (New Order meets Pavement, sort of..) and Asobi Seksu, which means something a bit rude in Japanese, but is great indie pop nonetheless.

Well Nepal is difficult to navigate, especially here in the mountains!heh! I'm glad you can prove me wrong, cos it does open up things to everyone (well everyone with a PC and curiousity!) I'm just old fashioned. Give me tapes and a walkman that plays at a different speed any day!

Well Mutch, now you know 2. At least 60% of the music that I've discovered in the last year and really loved has either come from downloading a couple of MP3s for a sample or a friend (actually one friend in particular) slipping me a CD-R and telling me to take a listen to it becasue he thinks that I'll like it. Quite often if I really like an album I'll go out and buy a proper copy of it as well.

the highest music sales of the last ten years was the year that napster was most popular. i discovered lots of bands through mp3's. i still do. its better than the radio. and when i find a someone i like i buy the album. mp3's are very important in todays industry. its so dumb that they don't push it.

what is a ready source for MP3's? is there any sites that offer a variety of MP3's or is it the case that you have to find out what you want to hear before you can find anything you'll like?

www.epitonic.com is the best out there by a mile, the only downside is that they are a victim of their own success and are unable to admit submissions for new music at the moment, theres still tons of MP3s already there though.

The music industry is patently incapable of dealing with new technology. They painted mp3 as the bogey man and adding the likes of Lars Ulrich hasn't helped (a millionaire many times over bitching about royalties, I ask you). If they had invested half as much time in finding a way to harness the move the digital, they would be a lot better off. Personally, I have a lot of sympathy with those of us who genuinely but a lot of albums and see digital as a way of seeking out more new music. That said, it is the humble artist who is at the bottom of the corporate food chain and no matter how you slice and dice it, they suffer the most. For every one of us who go out and spend our hard earned on CDs, gigs etc, there are dozens who just use it as a free resource.

Does the artist really lose out that much. If it gets to the point where there's wholesale downloading of the artists material chances are that this artist has already built up alot of hype and probably sold alot of records. MP3's in my opinion are a great liberator for new acts coming through. It means that artists don't necessarily have to sign with big labels anymore to get worlwide distribution. Anyone that i know that does nothing but download music (never go to gigs or buy CDs) only ever downloads popular "mainstream" stuff that's already sold a tonne. It's not out of consideration but it always seems to be the way

ok i've set my self an mp3 mission, three new acts in the next three weeks. i'll keep ye posted.

Britney Spears makes millions, true, but does who you're stealing from change the act? However as has said before, small scale copying for friends/personal user is not stealing. Peer to Peer filesharing is kind of a grey area though as potentially thousands of people can end up downloading MP3s ripped from just one CD. El Duderino, you still don't need a PC to copy music. Tape decks still work for a start, there are hi-fis with inbuilt CD recorders, and now even MP3 players are starting to offer not just playback but inbuilt recording and MP3 encoding.

I disagree that music isn't selling because good music isn't being released anymore. Kerbdog and Whipping Boy were two great Irish acts from the nineties who released some pretty astounding songs. Did they sell? Hell no. Not in significant amounts anyway. The only reason I really know about both those bands is because they're Irish. There are plenty of examples out there I'm sure of record companies backing decent bands and not seeing any return. In my humble opinion the network is f*cked up. You used to be able to hear decent music on the radio and, yes, even on MTV. But they've shyed away from anything less than mainstream in recent years and the results speak for themselves.

Lots of great music is being released, but the stuff that gets the big promotion and investment from the major labels tends to be mediocre. EMI ended up paying Mariah Carey not to make albums... probably one of their sounder business decisions! Large record companies seem to be reducing rather than increasing their roster of artists. Its the rise of small - medium sized labels thats bringing us a lot of todays interesting (and commercially successful!) music. However I do take your point about there being little outlet in mainstream TV/Radio for new music. I'm suprised no one has hired a laywer to throw the trade description act at MTV. Unless the M no longer stands for Music? Mediocre TV?

Yeah, I know what you're saying. Part of the problem is that the market has changed. I don't know anyone who buys music based on marketing. That is to say I don't know any pre teens. Outside of them people buy what they hear (rather than what they listen to which is what the aficionado will do, actively seeking music he might like). So if all they hear on radio is the same old same old they'll only end up buying that, if anything at all.

To the best of my knowledge Danger Mouse (guy who did that Jay-Z/Beatles Grey album thing) got off the ground via the web. On the no good music being released anymore thing, I didn't mean to imply that I was just paraphrasing Yorke's reponse to the majors whining, but the bigger labels do seem to be playing it safer with their releases of "credible" music, we're living in an age where Keane and Coldplay can release albums and have them labled as "indie-rock", and I'm not just saying this because I dislike those bands. OK, I don't like Keane but I am partial to a few Coldplay songs but "indir-rock" they are not.