Various observations on P2P sharing and the MP3 revolution

Aug 31 22:38 UTC 2003

I couldn't help but come up with a few thoughts when I observed some 
changes to how RealOne displays MP3 files when they are played.

It used to be that you could view artist discographies, album details, 
and lengthy biographies, as well as purchasing info on amazon.com.  
All of that has gone with a new format that promotes the company's 
Rhapsody file downloading service.  It automatically displays some 
artist highlights, shows a picture of the artist, shows a picture of 
album if in the clip info (as before), and that's it.  Some artists 
are NOT recognized-- it doesn't recognize Rolf Harris anymore (famed 
for "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport").

I wondered about all of this and decided that if the goal was to have 
people subscribing to Rhapsody, folks wouldn't care about stuff that 
would read like liner notes: hence the bios got trimmed and no more 
discographies.  If an artist was hardly listened to, you could throw 
it out, I suppose (but why Rolf Harris?)

I got to thinking and it would seem that all this downloading has got 
to bastardize the music industry just a little.  I mean, a majority of 
people will likely download what will be considered the hits and 
entirely miss what could be some real gems were they to buy an album.  
That is, I suppose, if Rhapsody and iTunes are really how music will 
tend to be consumed by the majority.