Yesterday I bought a CD from Discogs. It’s one of the early albums by the legendary Swedish funk 4-piece The Creeps -  ‘Now Dig This!’.
It’s original release in 1988 never made it to the shores of the UK so for the past 21 years I’ve been listening to it on Vinyl.
I could have bought ‘Now Dig This!’ straight from iTunes, but I wanted the artwork and sleeve notes. You know what it’s like – if your a music fan you like to get the whole package.
So as delighted as I am to have my CD making it’s way to me from Norway it throws up a whole load of discussion about music formats. The last time I bought a CD was 2 years ago from Amazon which was again, another rare gem from the late eighties that was fortunate enough to make the grade for a CD pressing back in the day.

So away we go…. First we had 78′s, then 33′s, then 45′s, then 4-Track, then 8-Track Carts, then Cassettes, then CD’s, then MiniDiscs; And now here we are at Digital Format Central with the current world champion undoubtedly being MP3 (there are of course newer digital formats such as AAC, FLAC and ALAC; but for the purpose of this article let’s just stay with MP3 as it is most certainly the widest used format in the world today). Each format brands itself as better than what had ever stood before it and in doing so tends to cause a migration process from old format to new in most cases.

What’s next then? There has to be something. There’s a clear pattern here that spans the course of Music History. Is MP3 as good as the human ear will ever require?  Have we really reached audio listening utopia?

It would be easy to say that the relationship between video and audio will become closer; that the new formats and listening experiences of the future will be more ‘visual’. I can picture some kind of futuristic media centre that at the touch of a button will present you with a 4-dimensional representation of your favourite band playing live on your kitchen table.
A cool concept indeed and no doubt on the horizon. Yet that doesn’t fulfill the true requirement of Audio and why people ‘listen’ to music. Such a concept wouldn’t work in the car, or let’s say on a beach when you are laid back with your headphones on drifting away with your own thoughts whilst soaking up the rays.
No, Music is fundamentally a ‘listening pleasure’.
So… is that it then? Has the music format reached that ‘cats eye’ moment of perfection?
Maybe so. That is until ‘digital’ itself gets upstaged by the next great technological revolution.
Next topic ‘death of digital’?
I think I’ll just leave it at that. Something for you to think about the next time you stick your ipod buds in your ears.