I only call 'em "records".

Originally posted at my old blog. Moved here for archives sake. I've moved a few of these over here. They're dated, but they're still me...

With much thanks and love to my editor for making suggestions.

Music is as essential to my existence as air, food and water.

Today, we pay our final respects to MP3.com

I've got a healthy CD collection at home. Last time I checked, there's close to 300 CDs...with everything from Classical to Pop to Jazz (lots of Jazz), with Country, Blues and a little Hip-Hop thrown in for good measure.

The weekends are constantly filled with music in my home. First thing I do in the morning - even before I'm completely awake - , I fill the CD changer and just let the music fill the house. You could hear anything from Sinatra and the Rat Pack to Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash to Boney James and Rick Braun.

One thing that I love to do is go through record stores...and yeah, I'm old enough to remember records, those wonderful pieces of pressed petroleum. But I admit, I love CD's more than records. They're transportable, they can store more music, and they're shiny too.

But to me, they sound better than MP3's, and that's the crux of this rant.

Recently while browsing through one such nationwide chain store that sells said CDs, a clerk came up to me and asked if I downloaded MP3s. Yes, I have downloaded in the past my fair share of MP3s, but I told him I didn't. I preferred CDs, which sound better.

I do still download the occasional MP3s. It was just easier to tell him this because I had no desire to hear about the latest "MP3 Download Service".

There are times when there's a "hit" song by an artist I normally wouldn't buy, but the tune is catchy, and I'd like a copy of it. (These are rare today, given the poor quality of new artists out there.) More often than not, I'm searching for old songs that I can't find anywhere else, such as John Rowles' "Cheryl Moana Marie" or Tony Harris' "I'll Forever Love You" - songs which few people my age have probably ever heard of.

Recently, Apple has released iTunes for Windows (previously only available for Mac). I did download and install it on my test machine at work However, I doubt I'll use it to purchase my music. The compressed MP3 file just doesn't sound as good to my untrained ear as a CD or it's vinyl predecessor.

iTunes and other of that ilk (Napster 2.0, Microsoft's forthcoming, unnamed service, etc.) are yet another sign of the instant gratification and dumbing down of the world...where we're willing to sacrifice quality for speed.

See, when you "rip" a track from a CD and convert it over to an MP3, you're losing a lot of the original song. Some folks will tell you that it sounds just as good as the original, but it doesn't. Even with the best compression out there, you can't take a 30MB original WAV file and turn it into a 3MB MP3 without losing something.

It's not to say that MP3's didn't have their uses. Suppose you're looking for something new, someone who hasn't made it onto the radio because the corporate suits who control radio don't believe they can make a profit from them - they're not packagable or don't have a "look" that can sell merchandise.

What was the easiest way to find new music like that? The Internet. Download a MP3 of someone new, take a listen, see what you think, and then buy their CD. It's a win-win situation: You find someone new you like and the artist wins because his or her music is getting discovered.

But those new artists, those undiscovered gems, have lost their home. Perhaps the last good place to find these artists, MP3.com, is about to disappear. They've been bought out by CNet, and they plan to turn what was once a wonderful clearinghouse into yet another iTunes/Napster clone. Today, December 2nd, is the last day you'll be able to download music from them.

All that music - all those artists who quite possibly deserve to be heard - will be lost to us. Doesn't matter if they're good or they suck. Some corporation has decided that they don't want us to hear them, so the powers-that-be will delete it, depriving us from ever knowing there might be something better out there.

As for me? You can still find me cruising the record store, trying to find something different, something interesting, some undiscovered treasure waiting to be listened to and enjoyed the way it was meant to be...not compressed down to 128k.