the only difference is that, prior to the inception of the cd in 1983, those driving the industry were interested in making the best sound possible, to extract dollars out of the *average* audio consumer. now, the industry is *only* interested in generating more revenue from developing something cheaper to manufacture.
I disagree. I'd say the industry has *only ever* be concerned with money *but* there's always been that element of quality that drives the industry to some degree.
People love new toys to play with, they'll buy a new format if it's available.
Obviously there's the person that doesn't give a rats ass. Regardless of that fact, there's some level of quality that's going to be acceptable that has to be maintained.
Next is level that they care, and are willing to pay more provided it's no effort. Perhaps they even buy audio video magazine or something. They may even consider themselves an 'audiophile'; Obviously not to the 'lunatic fringe', but the point is that they're willing to pay more, and they're going to snap up a new, 'better' format like hotcakes.
Also, thing is that a huge number of kids these days care about sound quality in a big way and spend thousands of dollars on audio gear for their cars. Sure the paradigm is different but I've hear some cars that sound pretty sweet.
MP3s apply mostly to the mass produced pop shite, ie, Britney Spears or whatever. Which is one market, it seems huge cause Britney sells 10+ million albums. However once you start getting into the lunatic fringes with audio though, you also get into the lunatic fringes of recordings.. the economics of which is totally different. I happen to have my system tweaked out cause I like to hear what the artist intended. Much electronica, much of which is on the borders of the main stream, say Amon Tobin or whatever, is obviously geared toward high end audio gear. An album might only sell 20,000 copies, but there's no behemoth industry to support so those guys are never going to go away.
I could care less if 'the industry' moves to mp3 cause I don't listen to that mainstream crap anyway.
On the other hand I recognize that the recording industry is trying to lock down formats to squash independant artists, not to fight piracy as they claim.. so much great stuff can be done in digital with a home studio these days.. promote yourself on the internet, you're off to the races. The recording industry is finding themselves less and less necessary these days.
I would be happy with lossy enocoding if it was MP4/AAC.. that's what I encode in and it sounds great. It's totally sufficent for critical listening. In fact lossy encoding has great potential to *increase* quality.. you could increase the bit rate, compress it and drop it on a standard cd. Instant increase in quality. No need to change over your factories.
