Home » Music » Songwriting Industry » Welcome to the Revolution- Part 1

Welcome to the Revolution- Part 1

© Kent Newsome

The MP3 revolution, that is. My writing partner and friend Ronnie Jeffrey has been singing the praises of MP3 technology for months. For a long time, I believed that the large size of the MP3 files made them inefficient as an internet transfer medium. Since each song file can be as large as 5 megabytes, it can take as long as an hour to download a single song with a slow internet connection. Even with my ISDN connection, it can take 12 minutes or more per song. I felt that MP3 use would be the domain of those lucky few with fast corporate access, DSL connections or cable modems. In other words, as broadband access goes, so goes MP3.

And I was right, at least about that. As more people get faster internet access, it is inevitable that more people will choose the better quality sound of MP3s over the current internet standard Real Audio files. But I was wrong about MP3s current appeal. It's not so much a question of whether MP3s will replace Real Audio files- it's more a question of how many additional benefits MP3 technology affords the songwriter, musician and music fan. And Ronnie was right- there are many benefits.

What led me to this revelation? It's simple. An exploratory visit to MP3.Com. I was surprised to find such a wide selection of country music. I was thrilled to find an Alternative Country section. And the best part? You don't have to download a 5 megabyte file to hear a song. No sir. You can listen to a song in streaming real audio format. Quick and simple. Then if you like it, you can download a MP3 file, or using Windows mutli-tasking ability, several files at once. After the files download, you can grab an MP3 player (more on that next month, but the one to get is Win Amp ) and hear a near CD quality song, right from your computer. If you want, you can get a program that converts the MPs file to a wave file and burn a CD. It's reasonably fast, it's free, it's legal (at least at MP3.Com), and it sounds good. And that's just the beginning.

Before I studied the MP3 process, I thought MP3s were mainly for teenage kids who wanted to find a pirated copy of the latest Korn song, just the way the multitude of "warez" sites allow them to find a pirated copy of Quake. And there is certainly a lot of that (if you go to an MP3 site and a bunch of pop up windows- like that absurd business Geocities subjects web surfers to- appear, leave right away and never return). But there are also many legitimate uses of MP3 files (I'm not trying to act "high and mighty" here. In fact, I did find an awesome version of Son Volt doing "Tulsa County" at Post Card MP3s ). It's just that none of the pop up MP3 sites offer anything of value, and I don't trust their motives- they're too similar to the aforementioned "warez" sites).

The copyright of the article Welcome to the Revolution- Part 1 in Songwriting Industry is owned by . Permission to republish Welcome to the Revolution- Part 1 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.