By David Antony Clark
On this site many of our CD's have links to Digital Download sites beside them. You may wonder why we would happily direct customers to an alternative service ...
Firstly let me say that, until recently, I was convinced that the downloading of music from the internet would bankrupt the music industry, do me out of a perfectly good job, and possibly end western culture as we know it. But I’ve changed my mind: I’ve become a download enthusiast. Why? Read on …
What exactly is downloading?
In a nutshell, it’s taking recorded music, usually from a CD, converting it to a computer file, placing the file on a website, and inviting people to download it onto their computers - normally for a fee. Once you have the music on your computer, you can play it there or move it onto a portable music player like an iPod.
Downloading can also refer to the process of streaming whereby you can listen to music off the provider’s website in real-time: not unlike listening to a radio program, only you select the music you want to hear. This is often done via a subscription process.
Why would I want to do this?
Convenience and portability, mostly. If you purchase a portable music player like a higher-end iPod, you can store literally hundreds of CD's in a palm-sized device: thousands of songs. These can be your own conversions of your private CD collection, and/or songs you have paid to download from an internet music provider.
Or, if like me you have a smaller unit, you can store songs on your computer and move a few CD’s across as your mood takes you and charge off into the world with it: hiking, jogging, skiing, driving.
If you are a teacher, you can collect a large range of material on your portable player and move about the school plugging into stereos, TV sets, boom boxes and, via an adaptor, your car stereo for the trip home. I’m currently learning conversational Spanish from CD’s converted to MP3 format and loaded on my player. Great when commuting!
What is MP3?
MP3 is the name of one of many processes used for converting audio from a CD or record to a small handy computer file that can be played from your computer, portable MP3 player, or downloaded from a website via the internet.
iTunes uses a different format called AAC; Napster uses Windows Media Player (WMA). But consider MP3 the industry standard.
But doesn’t the quality of the music suffer in the process?
Yes it does. But if the conversion process is done well, any difference in the quality should be greatly outweighed by the convenience of having highly portable music. To most listeners the difference should be minimal.
Isn’t downloading just for teenagers?
Not anymore. For example, the world’s largest independent classical music label Naxos, is now alive with its Classics On Line and doing very well indeed.
Is it more expensive than buying CD’s?
This will depend on what you expect to pay for a CD, where in the world you live, and from whom you are downloading. But rest assured, greater minds than ours have thought long and hard as to what we are prepared to pay for the convenience of downloading music.
As a rule, downloading is cheaper than full-priced retail and in some case, considerably cheaper. Also you won’t have the dispatch fees that you typically have when purchasing from a mail-order site like us or Amazon.
I only have dial-up. Can I download?
Yes you can, but bring a sleeping bag and lots of warm cocoa – it may take a while!
How do I get into Digital Downloading?
The best-known download site is, of course, iTunes. Using it as an example, you would sign-up from their homepage giving your email address. You would then download and install their own proprietary software and follow the instructions.
From the iTunes software you can, among other things, audition millions of songs by searching genre, album, artist, etc. If you wish to purchase a single track or an entire CD or CD’s, you enter your credit card details which you can have securely stored for future purchases. With a good broadband connection, downloading can be remarkably fast.
There are many other highly reputable download sites. View our complete list here (well, it'll be here soon!)
What’s in it for UCA?
Well, we don’t make as much money if you chose to download rather than purchase the CD; that’s for sure. But we don’t have to do as much work either. No manufacturing, packaging, freighting etc.
Also, with downloading we can very easily analyse what people are buying and tailor products to meet demand. For example, we have noticed that parents in the United States are downloading our Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes CD in droves, so we are developing a sister resource of Mother Goose Activity Songs.
Also, everybody probably benefits, along with the environment when it come to freighting CD’s to the world. To supply our 29 current digital download partners, we send only two physical CD’s to a wholesaler!
So for a company like us based in a small, remote country like New Zealand, digital download is a largely a positive.
Conclusion
Downloading is here to stay and it’s the future. The advantages are increasingly outweighing the disadvantages for a growing number of folk: speed of access, home browsing, lower cost, less environmental impact etc.
The major counter-argument is a somewhat diminished sound quality, but for most folk, no biggie!
And appreciation of high quality music does not exclude the advantages of mobile listening. I, for example, have a large collection of classical CD’s which I enjoy playing on my higher-end stereo system. But I’m also a keen hiker and earlier this year I trekked to the Sherpa capital of Namche Bazaar, Nepal, in a driving snow storm, listening on my MP3 player to Bach’s B minor Mass. It didn’t make the trudge any easier, but it did lend a vast, expansive baroque setting to the experience. Try doing that with a gramophone, amp, and pair of speakers! Thanks technology!
A comparison of online music stores - for the more technically minded.
Last Updated: August 15, 2007