"These days, CD technology has displaced the cassette in the mainstream, and mixed CD's have become the new cultural love/letter/trading post. For those of us who think that digital delivers a harsher sound than analog, it's a sonic nightmare dealing with the new world reality of MP3's. They're even more compressed and harsh than CD's, and in the case of vintage grooves - be it Led Zeppelin, Bad Brains or Pavement - sound even more detached from musical vibration.
But even if MP3 music sounds lame, as long as it's recognizable in form, free and shareable, it's here to stay. It will get better as more sophisticated methods of replication emerge. For now, its clunk is glamorised by celebrity ITunes playlists. ITunes has become the Hallmark card of mix tapes - all you gotta do is sign your name and personalize it.
Once again, we're being told that home taping (in the form of ripping and burning) is killing music. But it's not. It simply exists as a nod to the true love and ego involved in sharing music with friends and lovers. Trying to control music sharing - by shutting down P2P sites or MP3 blogs or Bittorrents or whatever other technology comes along - is like trying to control an affair of the heart. Nothing will stop it."
- Thurston Moore
