So much for all my digital music ramblings. Here is an article that puts it much more eloquently than I could, but expresses pretty much the same sentiment:
The price would have to be reasonable. The mp3 format is a notoriously pirated format, but most people aren’t going to go through the trouble of locating, downloading, and organizing pirated tracks if they could get them all in one place, legally, for a small fee. A band selling unencrypted mp3s at a low enough price wouldn’t have to worry about piracy. In a sense, it would be like “legalizing” the mp3 format, if cheap and convenient, there’d be no reason to “black market” the music via the pirate networks. Unbound by the needs of record store shelves, trucks to ship units, and record companies, a band could charge a fee of say, $0.50 per track, so an “album” of music would run about $5-6. Of the few attempts by record companies to offer downloadable or streaming electronic versions of popular music, they’ve often set prices as high as $3 per song (scroll down to “digital downloads” and compare to the CD price), making an album cost two to three times the cost of a conventional CD, allowing companies to write them off as failures and say there is no market for electronically distributed music.
My absence in writing up this diary is due to a big redesign of musical taste. This will hopefully launch in the next couple of days.
Compilation - Johnny Cash: 'Murder' (CD; American/Legacy; 1955-1993)
Show Details
An interesting Johnny Cash compilation. The only other Johnny Cash stuff I had on CD before buying this was the 'prisons' (Folsom and St Quentin) CDs. This is a great disc, in spite of its slightly gimmicky theme and liner notes by Quentin Tarentino. The original Sun mono version of 'folsom prison blues' is here, and sitting comfortably alongside it is the 1993 recording 'delia', which is a remarkably addictive song.
Perhaps because of the nature of the subject matter, there are a few sound effects gimmicks which spice up the songs. For example, in 'Joe Bean', we get to hear the sound of the protagonist's neck breaking as he is hung from a noose.
I've never consciously collected Cash's albums, but I respect him a lot, and this disc provides a high quality collection of tracks. Cash's influence on idols of mine like Nick Cave is strongly evident. Other hightlights include 'going to memphis' and 'when it's springtime in alaska (it's 40 below)'.