Saturday, July 16, 2016

[uffggnqt] Sound is cheap

In the past, publishing a sound recording was expensive, consuming a physical medium with very limited space: vinyl record, tape, CD.  Typical limit was about 15 songs on a CD, and then there is the packaging and shipping cost of the medium.

Nowadays, both with much higher density media as well as digital downloads, the cost of publishing sound is much, much lower.

A performer records a song, and then a sound engineer mixes it to make it sound just right.  In the past with limited and expensive media space, it made sense to publish only that final mix.

Nowadays, however, also publishing lots of different versions, or even the unmixed studio recordings (a track for each microphone), costs but a minuscule amount more than publishing just one track.  Of course, this requires a very different artistic philosophy than before, perhaps embracing remix culture, one which not all artists may agree.  However, artists can continue publishing just the one gold master if they wish.

Inspired by, how many songs can be published on a DVD, using modern audio compression?

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