In Defence Of The mp3.
1 May
The way that we feel about the different mediums used to transport songs can tell a lot about our age. I suppose it’s like how people think the television was better when they were young because when you were young even Neighbours was good.
In my experience those who are slightly older than me tend to talk about the warmth of vinyl and the relatively faceless nature of mp3s. They bemoan the loss of 12″ artwork and the smell of a record. Presumably they don’t mind only being able to listen to records at home and having to get up a flip them over half way through.
Then there are those (mostly younger than me) who will quite happily play an over compressed mp3 through the tiny speaker on their mobile phone. This wouldn’t bother me if they used headphones rather than blasting out the latest Basshunter abomination like a cheesy call-to-prayer to other cretins.
Personally my favourite medium is the mp3 for a variety of reasons. They are cheaper than CDs for a start (the fact that the record industry charged us £12+ for an album for all those years makes me less sympathetic about their current plight). They are much easier to get hold of, you can go from 1st listen to owning the track in minutes. Even if you count the cost of downloading via pay as you go mobile broadband the average album is cheaper than via any other medium.
You can also skip through files and rearange them into mixes and playlists. Whilst you could do this with tapes it took much longer and the eventually wore out. You can carry your entire music collection around in your pocket and listen to anything anywhere. On a recent train journey I took my laptop with a mobile broadband dongle and my mp3 collection. I felt like I had access to every song ever (bank balance permitting), stick that on your turntable 
