Cliff, considering how good cheap electronics has gotten in terms of sound quality, it’s a shame the source material is so poor. I tell people that if their mp3 player has a FM tuner, to compare the sound quality between the tuner and the digital files. Even the heavily modified (compressed etc.) commercial FM stations sound better than mp3s.
Unfortunately, the huge commercial success of downloaded mp3s has stalled need for lossless compression schemes. There is the FLAC method, but that only reduces the size of the wav files by about 25%. Perhaps as the cost of bandwidth and storage comes down compression won’t be needed.
As far as the future of the music industry is concerned, one problem with cutting out the middlemen is that some of those middlemen, like Sam Phillips, Leonard & Phil Chess, and George Martin, brought their own considerable talents to the music. As bad as the record biz has been, it has, after all, produced some great, great music. Artists can be self indulgent and a thoughtful producer can push them to be creative. Likewise, artists can be clueless about marketing, promotion, order fulfillment, merchandising, etc. and it’s nice to have people with those skills involved in the process.
Way back when, and the system had its flaws for sure, there was something called an A&R man. Artists & repertoire. They developed young artists, figured out which demos would work well with them, and tried to cultivate a marketable product. Sometimes the system worked and sometimes it didn’t. The successes are our musical heritage.
Aretha Franklin is a towering artist and her talent was known when she was a young girl singing in her father’s church. Columbia tried to make her into a lounge singer and that failed. It took the vision of Atlantic’s Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler to “put her back in church”. Wexler set her down at a piano, had her run through the song and then he built the arrangements around those basic takes. Without Wexler’s sensitivity and taste, would Aretha have turned out the same? Ironic considering the title, but one of her signature songs, You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman, was written by Carol King specifically for Aretha at Wexler’s request. It was Wexler who came up with the title lyric. King was still working in the Brill Building at that time, if I’m not mistaken.
Sure, the internet allows you to have a mom & pop store on the busiest intersection in the world, but in addition to talent it helps to have creative and hard working folks in your corner.
