I feel that illegal downloading is a far greater threat to musicians than home taping ever was. With home taping you had severe sound quality loss after just one or two generations and the costs of such operations were relatively large, not to mention time consuming. Now, it's just set up a torrent type url and there it is, in digital form and even at 256kbits it's almost bulletproof and repeatable across the whole websphere.

But...exposure is everything. The way in which music is purchased/consumed is changing rapidly. Albums are becoming something of a dinosaur in a world of quick sound bites. Sad, but true. For artists to survive now it's all about how they embrace the current technology and use it to their benefit.

I do think the problem now is that for minority interest artists its a real struggle to get yourself heard above the cacophany of mediocrity promoted in the metal sphere. And these days I find it hard to be enthused by much that I hear, it is formulaic and stunted by tech abuse (loudness wars, Pro Tools).

Or maybe it's just my age :-)

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This made me think of something shared by Ron on Facebook a while back. I went and dug it up. It is related to the topic in a way. Sound quality.

The Distortion of Sound is a documentary about the decline of sound quality and how technology has changed the way we listen to music.

It is a nice 22 minutes. Interesting and sheds some light on a few points KnickerZohnonnof made.

The Distortion Of Sound

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