So what are they exactly then? MP3 is a new digital sound format that make it easy to distribute CD quality sound files, that are small in size and that can then be burned onto CDs, played on your computer, or be played on a variety of players including the new Rio portable MP3 player.
And what impact will MP3 have on the music industry? As stated earlier the big record labels fear this technology as it represents a major paradigm shift that they just aren't prepared to make. And to these large record labels MP3's are a new way to "bootleg" their artists work, but now in full digital sound. Of course this can be accomplished in numerous other ways, i.e. DAT, CDR, mini-disk and so on, so this isn't really their concern. These record labels fear the end of the "album" which is where they focus all of their attention.
They fear an industry where music fans pick and choose just the tracks they want to listen to and nothing more. This to me is intriguing and scary as well. Intriguing as the idea of creating a collection of digital sound files that I can listen to in the car or in my home and just hear what I want is great, and a big improvement over the old mix tape. But there is something nice to the album, and discovering those tracks that aren't being played every five minutes on the radio. So, I think it will be awhile before we see an industry without albums and some of us will continue building are collections because we enjoy the album format.
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