Neil Young imagines his guitar is an MP3 blogger
When Neil Young announced the impending release of his Archives on Blu-ray Disc earlier this week, he made it clear that there was a technical reason for his decision.
As well as making his entire back catalogue and a large amount of related items available in one collection of shiny discs, he was striking a blow against the MP3. "Putting on a headphone and listening to an MP3 is like hell," he said. His aim is to give the audience "quality whether they want it or not. You can degrade it as much as you want, we just don't want our name on it".
Which begs the question: are MP3s degrading music? Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails and Coldplay don't seem to think so, as each have distributed their music, for free, online and it's worked out tremendously. For other bands, the "leaked album" has proven a true scourge. Talking about the leaking of their LP Stadium Arcadium in 2006, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea said: "For people to just steal a poor sound quality version of it for free because some asshole put it on the internet is sad to me."
Do consumers agree? In the age of the MP3, it seems truly uncertain as to whether sound quality matters any more. Noble intentions may lie behind Young's high-grade multimedia project, but it will be interesting to see how many people sign up for it. The MP3 hungry public, who already seem to have little regard for formerly key LP elements such as artwork and tracklisting, might already have moved on.
