Pay more for lossless files over mp3s online? I don’t think so mate.

More piratical maneuvers by the Corporation here i see...

It all starts with music being sold via mediums that requires the music to be compressed.  Same thing goes for movies.  We had VCDs, DVDs, and then now, Blu-Rays.  As for music, we had records, cassette tapes, mp3s, and now ‘lossless’. 

At some digital locales, mp3s are now being offered for 6 quid, and for lossless files, 9 quid.  This, to put it straight, is nothing short of bollocks.  Mp3 files should be done away with completely and only lossless files should be offered for the same price as Mp3s.  You see, we weren’t getting quality stuff with Mp3s in the first place.  In fact, many a time, we were paying more or the same for Mp3s than for CDs.  That’s absolute piracy of course.  Why?  Well, for the unversed, Mp3s are comparatively rubbish in quality.  It is highly compressed, meaning, a lot of the sound information is thrown out to produce a small file size.  You could say that mp3s are ‘VCD’ quality whilst CDs are DVD quality.  But what’s going on here, analogously speaking, is that VCDs are being sold at DVD prices.  That’s corporation-style piracy for you.

Now here’s another point for you to masticate on.....

Keeping the obviously inferior Mp3s around to justify ‘premium’ prices for lossless files is like keeping bullock-carts about and charging high prices for them so as to justify even higher and premium prices for a 3-wheeled carAs lossless files become the ‘Mp3’ of today, instead of keeping it at the same price as the Mp3 of yesterday, they are keeping up with the sale of Mp3s so as to justify the higher price of lossless files.  The thing is, the public should have been given lossless files in the first place.  But they weren’t due to technological backwardness, or the desire to increase profits by selling lower quality music at premium prices, i.e. the price of your VCD or CD were sold at ‘premium’ prices from the start.  The ‘premium’ prices now being charged for lossless files can be seen as more-than-premium prices. (They're doing the same thing with spectacles.  You get cheap metal or plastic now for prices which used to give us gold-plated frames in the past.  That's piracy for you.)

It depends how you look at it of course.  You can choose to look at it in a way that makes millionaires out of so-called artistes-cum-bimbo/sluts like Lady Gaga  who have brought down the idea of music to a degenerate level, and billionaires out of music companies and labels, or you can look at things ed-logically.  Keeping the obviously inferior Mp3s around to justify ‘premium’ prices for lossless files is like keeping bullock-carts about and charging high prices for them so as to justify even higher and premium prices for a 3-wheeled car - reminiscent of the Trotter’s 3-wheeled wonder in ‘Only Fools and Horses’.  Well, that’s what they’re doing with the DVD vs. Blu-Ray, and Mp3 vs. Lossless file. 

I often wondered why i had to pay the same price or more for a CD than i had to for a record which gives you far superior quality sound than the former, or a low 128kbps quality Mp3 file than a CDAnd they aren’t even telling you that your lossless files aren’t going to sound all that great unless you have the right headphones, speakers, and ears, to appreciate the sound.  Keep in mind that technological advance doesn’t justify ‘premium’ prices just because they are better than what you had.  Rather, technological advance renders previous technology, in most cases, obsolete.  You could say that the products of the oversights of the past, i.e. old technology, is the fault of the corporation.  Hence, when they come up with new technology, they are only addressing the deficiencies of the past from which they profitted from by pretending they weren’t deficient.  Then comes advances which finally enables us to enjoy what we’ve always paid for, but were not given, and we are charged even more? 

I often wondered why i had to pay the same price or more for a CD than i had to for a record which gives you far superior quality sound than the former, or a low 128kbps quality Mp3 file than a CD which, again, gives you far superior quality sound than the former.  If we keep up with the trends to the point that we forget or ignore the past, we’ll just end up repeating our oversights of the past, and perpetuate our victimisation.  No wonder that the term ‘piracy’ can be used by Corporations, and levelled at others. 

ed