Neil Young takes on the iPod
From Fortune
In the iPod age, music sound quality has been dumbed down to “Fisher-Price toy” levels, rock star and tech enthusiast Neil Young said Wednesday at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech Conference.
“Apple has taken a detour down the convenience highway,” Young told the Brainstorm audience after taking the stage for an interview with Time Inc. editor-in-chief John Huey. “Quality has taken a complete backseat - if it even gets in the car at all.”
Young spent most of his time on stage lamenting what he feels is an increasing focus on convenience versus quality in today’s iTunes/iPod-dominated music industry. And he wasn’t afraid to criticize companies - Apple in particular - that he feels have brought down audio standards. An Apple spokesperson wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Young complained that music has become “like wallpaper” - more Muzak than music. “We have beautiful computers now but high-resolution music is one of the missing elements,” he said. “The ears are the windows to the soul.”
High Resolution Music
Neil's right as far as he goes, but he's missing a historical point. The recent changes in music have been to make it more portable. And quality has suffered. But the same thing happened when the audio cassette was introduced. The quality went out the window -- much worse than today. (can you say HISS?) But, the introduction of audio cassettes gave music a much bigger audience than Hi-Fi ever did. And as time went by, companies worked at improving the sound quality. And I'm pretty sure they will again. It's just another area where competition will improve the breed. In fact it already has. AAC is better than MP3 at the same sampling rate. And as in other areas of computerdom where expanding memory and storage is a continuing story, compression of music will become less and less important and quality will become more important. …Just the view of an old codger who has been through so many "music revolutions" I've lost count.
"Just the view of an old
"Just the view of an old codger who has been through so many "music revolutions" I've lost count."
I think that's what surprises me about the YOung comments. He too has seen this happen over and over again and must come to the same conclusion you have. so why rant and rave and shake your fist at the moon?
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Shawn King
Host/Executive Producer
Your Mac Life
http://www.yourmaclifeshow.com