Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/22/read-this-a-history-of-the-mp.html
…
1 Like
The bulk of my music collection is still in MP3 format, most accumulated during the “Tech Esoterica Years” of 1995-1999 (my personal golden age) mentioned in the article. I’m not an audiophile, so the format in at least 192Mbps does the job for me. Also I’m the type of Old who doesn’t have a lot of interest in new music, so I’m pretty much set in that regard, too.
6 Likes
same. though my collection consists almost entirely of ripped personal CD’s, most of which I bought used at… what were they called? oh, right. ‘Record Shops’. Also checked a lot of stuff out of libraries. By the time filesharing rolled around I was post-college, so I never built up the big napster-era collection.
I listen to precious little that was issued after the mid-90’s anyway, so…
5 Likes
I still remember the amazement that was “a megabyte a minute” for actual listenable quality stereo audio. My mind was blown. (Previously it was 10x that size!)
3 Likes
Back in the late nineties, there was some effort to make SD cards the next physical format after CDs for distribution of music and software. SD has some copy protection built in (as opposed to physically similar “MMC” Multimedia Cards) for just this reason.
I’m the type of Old who still buys CDs (when I can find them 
), but then immediately rips them to MP3, puts the disc in a drawer, and never looks at it again.
I’ve owned four cars in my life. The first did not have a CD player. When I bought the second, I made sure it had a CD player. When I bought the third, I made sure the player would play CDs full of MP3s. When I bough the fourth, I didn’t even realize it did not have a CD player until I got it home.
11 Likes
I remember ripping a single track from a CD as a WAV file and filling most of my 386’s hard drive
1 Like
When in high school I once borrowed a co-workers entire CD-wallet (like 50 discs) took it home over the weekend and ripped every disc to my PC for later re-write to my own CDs. Thanks MP3!
1 Like
Similar, but mainly because a lot of my old music isn’t available from streaming services. Local bands, for example, or certain classical recordings where the conductor really does play a big role – I vastly prefer Bernstein to that sleeping pill Christian Thielemann, for example.
I think the article concentrates too much on how the music labels lost the physical media chokehold, and forgets that streaming also is killing their other gate that they keep: the radio station. More people are not even bothering to listen to radio any more, and just streaming playlists from their favourite curators. The switch in radio from FM to DAB+ is coming at a time when it’s no longer a real factor.
5 Likes
i have to agree with this article. i mean, vinyl has had a good run, but it loses completely in portability, which MP3s cover quite perfectly. i have music now in almost every format i’ve ever enjoyed it in: vinyl, cassette, 8-track, CD, and now MP3. i do tend to stream a lot these days, but that’s just for variety’s sake. i still have all my purchased music that was in the other forms. it took us a year or more to rip all our CDs back in the early 90s – such a pain, but so worth it. i still have lots of holes from vinyl, though, and as much of a pain as ripping CDs were, vinyl is even worse. i don’t even know how to rip from cassette, and i’m not sure i’d want to rip much of that anyway.
2 Likes
napster really really expanded my musical taste by more than any other time in my life. i have grown to enjoy other music and genres since then. but those first few weeks of napster was a growth time in my musical life that hasn’t been seen since.
After my first of four (a hooptie), I made sure the others had CD and cassette players. While I stopped using cassettes after my current car started to eat them, I still play CDs. 
3 Likes
The music business has always been about technology, the first record companies were really just trying to get you to buy their record players, but they had to also make the records to go with them (and those companies were primarily furniture companies.)
So it’s hard for me to say the MP3 is more influential when it’s like the flip side of the same coin-- the LP created the music business as we know it, the MP3 tore it down.
2 Likes
Seconded. I do listen to newish music but I really did bebop era jazz.
When we had a rental that has a usb slot for a few days it was heaven to be able to just put in a thumb drive and have instant jukebox as well as not have to mess with a huge pile of CD’s, The current car has both so if I have a library find or new purchase I can listen right away or just RIP and copy to the thumb drive later.
1 Like
Somebody once broke into my car when it was broken down, slept in it for a few days then left me a dead seagull.
They didn’t steal my tapes.
I don’t think the format was the issue 
7 Likes
Are you Aziraphale!?
4 Likes
Yes, I have one of those cards for my Sandisk MP3 player. It only allowed random playing, but it gave a heap of popular sings from the sixties. It was annoying to get a song I wanted to hear and not be able to hear it later.
I had a gift card, it was on sale, so it was reasonable. But I woukdn’t buy another, and soon they were off the market, at least Sandisk’s. I didn’t use it after I added a microSD card to expand the player, there was only one slot.only
It was like buying a Time-Life CD set (which I’ve only bought used), you get the hits and maybe save some money compared to buying CDs (if you don’t want all the songs on all the CDs).
I’ve done pretty well finding CDs I wanted at used book sales in recent years, people now getting rid of their good albums. Paying mostly $1 per CD, I can get specific songs and not worry about “unwanted” songs.
Nah I dont’t look good in white for one. Also I do like a lot of other stuff just that is where a lot of my new to me music additions are from for the past too many years.
Seriously though when you are poking the the library stacks of the Jazz CDs and a gary haired elederly black man says you should check out this guy. Always take that advice. I ended up with a nice amount of Lee Morgan in my library thanks to that guy. So go listen to some Lee Morgan you won’t be sorry.
4 Likes
I was once at a garage sale and there was a box of really good CDs, so I was getting a good collection. Then the seller came over and said “those are just the bixes, the CDs were in the car and got stolen”. She had a really good taste in music.
4 Likes
I bought a tape from a charity shop that only had “see inlay card for details” printed on it, no title or anything, and there was no inlay card!! Who wouldn’t buy that?
Turned out to be a local UK radio show, including the cinema review. Some kind of demo tape? Still worth 50p.
3 Likes
I remember in the 90’s finding fantastic sounding mod/s3m’s (mixing MIDI with samples, basically) of NiN remixes which would fit 2-3 to the floppy disk.
3 Likes
