Came across a post on the Macworld website today. Apparently Neil Young has been voicing his displeasure at the current state of digital music, with Apple’s products getting a special mention. You can read his comments on the Fortune blog, but the essence of it is that we should all be listening to music in the highest possible quality on the highest possible quality medium and not on mp3 players. Er, sorry Neil but most mp3 players, iPods included, can play a variety of formats, including lossless. Apparently Neil is a bit of a ‘technologist’ and plans to release his back catalogue on Blu-ray for maximum quality. So he’ll be removing all his tracks from that horrid iTunes store where they are available in that awful mp3 format, right? Er. No.
A song is an idea, a concept, not a physical construct. Music’s soul is in the playing and the listening, if you want to appreciate music fully then listen to it live. If you can’t listen to it live, then you’ve already lost the majority of the atmosphere and emotion that piece will create for you, in which case it doesn’t matter if it’s on a vinyl disc or an iPod. Personally I’ll stick with my Bose and my iPod.
As for Neil Young, I’m with Lynyrd Skynyrd.
