blërg

The primary, illegal uses of the mp3 are not aberrant uses or an error in the technology; they are its highest moral calling: ‘Eliminated redundancies! Reduce bandwidth use! Travel great distances frequently and with little effort! Accumulate on the hard drives of the middle class! Address a distracted listening subject!’

Sterne’s presentation of the mp3, both in terms of philosophical and technical purpose, was extremely helpful for me to better process the origin of the audio container technology.  Unlike many other technologies, which are designed to fill an existing need but still result in collateral damage, mp3s still fulfill the original purpose that MPEG established over 20 years ago: standardization and maximum compatibility.  It was designed to free us from the commodity-based mentality of the use-value and exchange-value paradigms.  The continuous bifurcation of exchange-value and use-value end up destroying each other, according to Attali.

I liked reading Sterne’s article, especially because he delved deeper than just the surface controversy of mp3s.  His comparison of mp3s to mollusks hit home for me (yes, I know it’s an odd analogy, but it works).

This is key: although mp3s exist as software, people tend to treat them like objects (and indeed, the argument here is that we should analyze them as artifacts) perhaps because they are used to handling recordings as physical things.

It is indeed the micromaterialization of the mp3’s presence that causes me to think this way as well.  I don’t refer to my music library as 40 gigs of compressed audio files or as 320kbps tracks.  I still refer to my music in terms of albums, artists, and track numbers.  The simulation of mp3s as material objects pushes the technicalities of each file to a secondary position.  I won’t talk about the technical details of a song unless I’m specifically asked for it.

I also hold the mentality that my mp3s tend to be temporary substitutes to albums I plan to physically buy in the future.  Most of the time, I will test out an album in mp3 form with every intent to purchase a tangible CD if I feel it is worth the price.  This of course ties my mp3 mentality back to one of commodification, but I feel that the divide here is interesting.  Ultimately, while I’m neither an audiophile nor a music pack rat, I feel that people’s views of mp3s versus CDs is dependent their particular circumstances, whether they are casual listeners or audio connoisseurs.