Hey, Adam -

I like your essay. While I don’t like the tone of Prof. Moglen’s comments, I think they are very helpful here. For the most part, I agree with them.

Here are my additional thoughts on the “three sources of loss” you talk about:

1) Loss of the Record Store

While your point makes some sense in theory, I don’t know if it comports with experience. In Wal-Marts, Virgin Megastores, and other place where music is sold along with video games, TVs, and other cool stuff, the employees aren’t required to have any musical knowledge. I can’t remember the last time they helped me with choosing an album. And in smaller stores, my experience is that the workers are often too much like the characters in High Fidelity: possibly knowledgeable about music, but not particularly helpful—sometimes downright unfriendly—to customers. While there’s probably a fair share of musical snobbery online, there’s no shortage of places to get recommendations from knowledgeable people without the snide comments.

2) Loss of the Physical Album

I think this loss is more important than (1), and Prof. Moglen’s “piece of cardboard” remark will sound sillier if you develop this point. The artwork “experience” is one thing, but there’s also liner notes in physical releases. These liner notes play a very important role in various genres: classical, jazz, and blues, among others. The notes provide line-up information, recording dates, studio details and other information that (I’d think) is more important to the average jazz or classical listener than the average Clapton or Hendrix fan. While you can find much of this info online, it’s not typically linked to the recording itself. This could result in serious problems: you might be reading about the Sun Sessions’ version of “Blue Moon” and end up downloading some Fat-Elvis-era version instead. Unless you know where to look online, there tends to be a bit more reliability here with a physical release.

There’s also much higher quality sound quality in CDs than in mp3s. Vinyl also has some sound advantages. Although FLAC and other digital formats rival or exceed CD sound, they take up more hard drive space and aren’t as practical for the average listener as mp3s. With most people our age downloading mp3s instead of buying CDs, the average listener is probably getting a lower average sound quality. Maybe they care, maybe they don’t, but it might be worth bringing up.

Prof. Moglen’s sarcastic remark about “backing up” is unnecessary and probably unhelpful, as I’m sure you’ve heard about backing up, and probably do it now.

3) Loss of the Musical Album

Like Prof. Moglen, I’m skeptical about how much creative input most artists get to put into song ordering or selection on an album (or, for that matter, into production, engineering, instrumentation, or anything else). Also, I’m guessing Beatles releases are probably among the works most downloaded as whole albums. It’s the albums of smaller artists with less of a name that probably get overlooked: who wants to take a chance on buying (or even downloading) an album from a no-name band when you’ve only heard one song you’ve liked? This might be more of a good thing than a bad thing, but it’s another angle to develop.

I agree with the comments that your points might be strengthened if you broadened the musical areas you covered a bit. Your points have better application to some genres more than others.

Overall, I think it’s a hard essay to write, even if you just want to point out some “intangible losses to individual listeners.” From my perspective, the fact that downloading allows more people to access more music at a lower price makes any intangible losses seem very, very minor. But still, there probably are some, and I think you did a nice job at addressing them.

-- ChristopherWlach - 12 Apr 2008

I did not realize my comment was that long. Sorry...

-- ChristopherWlach - 12 Apr 2008