The MP3 Effect
Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2024 12:35 pm
I couldn't find an appropriate place to put this topic (didn't there used to be a "General Music" area? anyway...) So I know this isn't the place for it, but here goes...
MP3's are a compressed file type that trades a small degradation in sound quality in favor of an enormous file storage savings. Despite the loss in sound quality, the fact that MP3s are roughly 10% the size of lossless WAV files means that the world over, MP3s are the de facto standard for digital recordings. While there are audiophiles who bemoan what they feel is a significant reduction in sound quality, they are in the minority, and I would guess that all but the most die-hard of them even use MP3's themselves primarily.
But this post isn't about MP3s per se. It's about a larger systemic phenomenon than spans far more than music, which I'll call the MP3 Effect.
The MP3 Effect is when the quality of certain aspects of a thing is compromised as a trade-off for some other aspects being greatly improved. With MP3's, sound quality is compromised in favor of storage savings. Here are some other examples of the MP3s of other domains off the top of my head:
* A movie with beautiful cinematography watched on a phone
* Fluorescent lights
* Stouffer's lasagna
* $5 wine
* Silk plants
* Amazon
All these are examples of something which is acknowledged to be inferior to what is considered "the real thing", yet are consumed in great quantities nevertheless, to a degree that the "real thing" may be considered unnecessarily fancy or fussy, because we have forgotten how to appreciate the qualities lost in favor of the qualities gained. Fluorescent lights are ubiquitous, and their light is way less attractive than most other types of light, yet ubiquitous they remain, we all put up with it, and most of the time don't notice. With Amazon, we have lost the serendipity of discovery when shopping, the marriage of the act of the purchase with the thing itself, the value that is added to a thing when there is some friction in the process of acquisition - but we can also get that pretty bowl with a twitch, and so who wouldn't?
Yet I wonder if perhaps the cumulative effect of these many compromises doesn't cause us to experience a somehow significantly lesser world all up. Stouffer's is ALMOST as good, a silk plant is ALMOST as pretty, etc., so aren't we splitting hairs here? The fact we can get all these things so easily in the first place surely makes us the kings of history, right? Yet, though eating Stouffer's lasagna next to a silk plant under fluorescent lighting while watching 2001 on a 5-inch screen may feel like we have it all, perhaps what we really have is merely a simulacrum of "it all". Stouffer's is pretty good still, silk plants are indistinguishable unless you're paying attention, Kubrick's storytelling still comes through on a small screen, so though we all still believe it would be better watching 2001 on a big 4K screen eating mom's lasagna next to a healthy dieffenbachia by the glow of sunset, who has time, money and patience for all that? So we are content with the MP3s of them.
If I task myself with finding examples that contradict this, things in which cheaper, more convenient, "easier" versions of something simply won't do for the majority of us, any I come up with inevitably fall into the "aficionado" category. Only audiophiles care about MP3 quality, only foodies disdain frozen food, only green thumbs care that the plant is fake, etc. The people who care about these quality differences are the "fringe", the "geeks". And while most everything has its fringe geeks who care deeply about the highest quality of Thing A, it's never across the board. A cinephile insisting on watching movies in the most pristine environment may do so in a room with a $59 oriental rug they got at Target, which his next door neighbor wouldn't be caught dead owning, and who disdains anyone who doesn't appreciate the clearly superior $800 rug of the same size, but who is watching a Transformers sequel on their laptop, while another neighbor is watching their crap movie on a laptop on a cheap rug, eating a dinner which took an hour to painstakingly create with their own hands using only organic, farm-fresh ingredients, accompanied by wine that goes for $50 a bottle.
When I ask myself, what's my fringe geek thing, in which middling quality is simply unacceptable, the only thing I can really come up with is music, and even at that, it's not so much audio quality or production or even performance, but composition. Songwriting, lyric writing, arrangement, those are my $800 rugs. But I understand they are not everyone else's. Sitting here as I am under fluorescent lightning on plastic furniture eating Triscuits and powdered lemonade, I could hear Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?" via MP3 on cheap earbuds and be utterly transported by its genius. And if I swap all those MP3s for the real deals (artisan crackers by candlelight and a top-flight sound system) but am listening to Nickelback -- nothing.
So maybe the truth is we seek the WAV files in life where we will appreciate them, and put up with MP3 versions of everything else, and while we don't really have it all, we mostly don't care.
MP3's are a compressed file type that trades a small degradation in sound quality in favor of an enormous file storage savings. Despite the loss in sound quality, the fact that MP3s are roughly 10% the size of lossless WAV files means that the world over, MP3s are the de facto standard for digital recordings. While there are audiophiles who bemoan what they feel is a significant reduction in sound quality, they are in the minority, and I would guess that all but the most die-hard of them even use MP3's themselves primarily.
But this post isn't about MP3s per se. It's about a larger systemic phenomenon than spans far more than music, which I'll call the MP3 Effect.
The MP3 Effect is when the quality of certain aspects of a thing is compromised as a trade-off for some other aspects being greatly improved. With MP3's, sound quality is compromised in favor of storage savings. Here are some other examples of the MP3s of other domains off the top of my head:
* A movie with beautiful cinematography watched on a phone
* Fluorescent lights
* Stouffer's lasagna
* $5 wine
* Silk plants
* Amazon
All these are examples of something which is acknowledged to be inferior to what is considered "the real thing", yet are consumed in great quantities nevertheless, to a degree that the "real thing" may be considered unnecessarily fancy or fussy, because we have forgotten how to appreciate the qualities lost in favor of the qualities gained. Fluorescent lights are ubiquitous, and their light is way less attractive than most other types of light, yet ubiquitous they remain, we all put up with it, and most of the time don't notice. With Amazon, we have lost the serendipity of discovery when shopping, the marriage of the act of the purchase with the thing itself, the value that is added to a thing when there is some friction in the process of acquisition - but we can also get that pretty bowl with a twitch, and so who wouldn't?
Yet I wonder if perhaps the cumulative effect of these many compromises doesn't cause us to experience a somehow significantly lesser world all up. Stouffer's is ALMOST as good, a silk plant is ALMOST as pretty, etc., so aren't we splitting hairs here? The fact we can get all these things so easily in the first place surely makes us the kings of history, right? Yet, though eating Stouffer's lasagna next to a silk plant under fluorescent lighting while watching 2001 on a 5-inch screen may feel like we have it all, perhaps what we really have is merely a simulacrum of "it all". Stouffer's is pretty good still, silk plants are indistinguishable unless you're paying attention, Kubrick's storytelling still comes through on a small screen, so though we all still believe it would be better watching 2001 on a big 4K screen eating mom's lasagna next to a healthy dieffenbachia by the glow of sunset, who has time, money and patience for all that? So we are content with the MP3s of them.
If I task myself with finding examples that contradict this, things in which cheaper, more convenient, "easier" versions of something simply won't do for the majority of us, any I come up with inevitably fall into the "aficionado" category. Only audiophiles care about MP3 quality, only foodies disdain frozen food, only green thumbs care that the plant is fake, etc. The people who care about these quality differences are the "fringe", the "geeks". And while most everything has its fringe geeks who care deeply about the highest quality of Thing A, it's never across the board. A cinephile insisting on watching movies in the most pristine environment may do so in a room with a $59 oriental rug they got at Target, which his next door neighbor wouldn't be caught dead owning, and who disdains anyone who doesn't appreciate the clearly superior $800 rug of the same size, but who is watching a Transformers sequel on their laptop, while another neighbor is watching their crap movie on a laptop on a cheap rug, eating a dinner which took an hour to painstakingly create with their own hands using only organic, farm-fresh ingredients, accompanied by wine that goes for $50 a bottle.
When I ask myself, what's my fringe geek thing, in which middling quality is simply unacceptable, the only thing I can really come up with is music, and even at that, it's not so much audio quality or production or even performance, but composition. Songwriting, lyric writing, arrangement, those are my $800 rugs. But I understand they are not everyone else's. Sitting here as I am under fluorescent lightning on plastic furniture eating Triscuits and powdered lemonade, I could hear Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?" via MP3 on cheap earbuds and be utterly transported by its genius. And if I swap all those MP3s for the real deals (artisan crackers by candlelight and a top-flight sound system) but am listening to Nickelback -- nothing.
So maybe the truth is we seek the WAV files in life where we will appreciate them, and put up with MP3 versions of everything else, and while we don't really have it all, we mostly don't care.