Vinyl records were drowned
by cassettes, cassettes were
sliced to bits by CDs, and
today CDs are waging a full
scale war against digital downloads.
Whereas people used to only
be able to buy music from
physical stores, we now have a
profusion of digital stores like
iTunes, Zune, and Amazon,
who offer MP3s for a low
price. There are also websites
that share media at no cost at
all, such as Torrent, music
forums, and Limewire, not to
mention many others. The
quality offered by media sharing websites is often on par
with songs purchased from
iTunes, which encourages
many students to download
their music for free.
“Why go to the store and buy
it if I can get it for free?” says
Ariell Ego, 19, a nursing
major. “I usually [only] like 2
or 3 songs from the albums
anyway.”
The fact that some people are
only interested in certain songs
and not the album in its entirety gives the digital download
an advantage, especially if they
are easy to find, and either very
cheap or free.
Valerie Guerrero, 18, biology
major from Bensalem, says she
“doesn’t buy CDs because I
have to spend my money on
other stuff.”
Kevin Caulk, 25, business
major, says that he “usually
gets [music] from iTunes. it’s
not that buying a CD is a pain,
it’s just that you can just download an album in seconds.”
CDs are still being pushed by
mom and pop record shops,
FYE, Best Buy, and just about
any retail location that houses
media entertainment, sometimes for a slightly higher price
than that of its fierce digital
opponent.
Gitana Rivera 18, a criminal
justice major and musician
from Bensalem, rarely downloads music. “I just buy CDs.
I prefer to listen to CDs, in my
car, in my stereo, full blast; it
has better audio quality. I’m a
genuine music lover, what can
I say?”
It seems that the CD vs. MP3
battle is waged between quality and speed. When we go
through a drive-thru, we usually get a burger, fries, and a cola
for a low price and hardly no
wait time, but when we go to a
restaurant, we have to be seated, order our meal, and
wait…and wait…and wait but,
the meal is usually at a higher
quality and more expensive
than a fast food restaurant,
right?
This same formula can also
be applied to the world of
music. MP3s are delivered
almost immediately, at a lower
cost, and they are highly
portable, while a CD requires
us to go find it, dig deeper in
our pockets to buy it, and since
nobody uses cd players anymore, it’s safe to say that they
don’t hold the same portability.
But what about the quality of
the two, who holds to be truest
and more wholesome in
essence?
Rivera says that, “there is a
difference in quality between
an MP3 and a CD. The CD
quality is much better.” While
Caulk believes that “I can’t
remember last time I bought a
CD but I probably wouldn’t be
able to tell the difference, honestly. As long as I can hear and
understand it and it doesn’t
sound terrible to me, then I’m
good with the quality.”
In a time where immediate
satisfaction is the norm, we can
see why digital downloads
have gained so much momentum while CDs slowly fade
into antiquity.