dacs.doc electric

Think about how the Internet has changed how you live. I use the Internet to read the news, check the weather, communicate with friends and family (I only use stamps to pay bills - for now), video conference, shop, and much more. The Internet has also changed how many businesses operate. I buy books online at a discount, rent movies, order software, buy stuff at auction, and comparison shop in minutes at dozens of stores - all without leaving my keyboard.

But the most dramatic change is coming for the music industry. The Recording Industry Association of America claims to lose about $5 billion dollars per year to piracy, including illegal and counterfeit CDs, sampling, pirate recording, and now online piracy. Online piracy may account for the huge drop-off in purchases by 15-24 year olds (4% decrease in 2 years). What is happening?

MP3, the most popular music format on the Internet, is a way of compressing music from CD without losing quality. It enables a "pirate" to download a typical song in minutes and then play it on their computer without paying a royalty to the artist or record company.

MP3 stands for MPEG 1, Audio Layer 3, and is similar to the compression used to send satellite TV signals. A typical song on a CD may be 25 megabytes (MB) in size, but when it's compressed using MP3 may only be 3MB. This size makes it perfect to transfer on the Internet, and a flourishing underground trade in MP3s has started. You can even fit hundreds of songs on a CD with MP3.

Music is compressed into the MP3 format using a "ripper" program. This program takes music, in digital or analog format from a CD, record, tape or other source, and compresses it using the MP3 specification. This results in a much smaller file that sounds almost identical to the original.

You can even take a bunch of MP3 files and create your own custom CD. If you have a CD writer (around $200 now), and a $1 blank CD, you can make your own custom CD. The only catch is that some players are too sensitive to play these copies.

There are many programs to play MP3 files, but the clear leader is Winamp. Winamp is an excellent shareware program that costs only $10 to register for personal use. They designed the program so other people could add functionality, making the product more interesting. Skins give the program a new interface look and feel such as sports, metallic, cars, and other creative designs. This is like selecting a new screen saver - it's not going to make the program work better but it sure is fun to do. There are more than 2,000 skins at Winamp.com.

Plug-ins are my favorite add-on for Winamp. They take the music and display light shows that react to the music, show the music spectrum in a waterfall-type display, apply 3D effects, and more. I love watching a song and trying different plug-ins to see the mesmerizing display that it produces. A great source of more information, software, articles, and more is MP3.com.

The format has gathered so much support that companies like Diamond and Sony are making MP3 portable players so you can take several hours worth of music with you (no CD's to carry around). There have been announcements of car players, and even stereo components coming to market soon. This widespread commercial interest in the format has the music industry scared.

The old way people used to find MP3 files was to search engine such as Yahoo and look for MP3. Recently, Lycos started the first commercial MP3 search engine - with more than 500,000 songs. Even though Lycos only lists where the songs are located on the Internet, the RIAA has threatened to sue them for listing illegal copies of the music.

The RIAA and others are working on a way to allow you to download music and not be able to copy it freely. The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) may be late but it may be the compromise that makes music cheaper and still gets the artist paid for their work. It's my belief that people who don't want to pay will still find ways to steal things, but the majority of people who are honest will pay a fair price for music.

Although this sounds like a great way to get some free music, please keep in mind that if you like a song you should buy the CD. The artist makes the majority of their paychecks from people like you and me that support them by buying the CD. If we don't buy the CDs why should they record them in the first place?