I've heard a lot of people say or imply that Steve Jobs and Apple have ruined music. One of the more famous people being none other than Jon Bon Jovi himself, who is attributed to this quote, "Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business." - Bon Jovi.

I think the people with this opinion have some valid points.  I also think that these people are overlooking a lot of the other, finer points of the debate. Yes, Apple and their terrible sounding 128 kbps iTunes songs and their cheesy headphones have done awful things to sound quality. In my opinion that's not even up for debate.  Disagree? Then read on. Is the music listenable? Sure, it is. That is, until you hear the "real" recording played back on average to decent equipment. Then you’ll get to hear what it's really supposed to sound like. Or, in other words all the music that’s not there in your compressed music file (MP3, M4A, MP4) that you don't get to hear. Compression is a terrible thing to do to music, by saving disc space you lose the air, space and sound stage around the different instruments, which dramatically degrades the sound quality.

Yet, it’s easy to understand why they started there. Back when this was all being dreamt up, storage was at a premium. There were no readily available and inexpensive 64GB SD Cards. In fact, the original iPod's used small disc drives. The engineers had nothing (affordable) that would support more than a few songs ripped at a "proper" bit rate.  Now a days however, even 64 Gig SD Cards are quite affordable.

So the upside was that Steve Jobs and Apple rekindled an interest in music by making it more portable and more easily available. Another benefit to musicians is that with iTunes, people actually paid for their music instead of "stealing" it. Apple started a new industry and finally got people using their computers for music. At one time this was considered a bad thing by many is the music industry. Now there are some excellent ways to get great sound quality from your computer. There are quite a few articles in past blogs about some of the great options.

The other side of the Steve Jobs and Apple debate, is that we have an entire generation or two of people that don't have a clue what music is "supposed" to sound like. They’ve been conditioned or desensitized from an actual musical listening experience. People that are used to walking around with Apple headphones in their ears, don't even know any better. They would be amazed to hear all the music they've never heard in their favorite tracks. That's true even just going from listening to music on average gear to really great gear. The amount of music or open space in the performance is so much more obvious once you get to hear what you have been missing.

If you want to hear the real music, start with a minimum of a FLAC file on a PC or an AIFF on a Mac. Then send those files to your portable device or home computer based music system.  I plan on getting more into this in an upcoming blog so I am not going to go into more detail on that here.

To bring this to a conclusion, did Steve Jobs and Apple ruin the music industry? My answer is a little of both. Did they get people conditioned to a bad musical experience and sound quality? Yes, they absolutely did. However, are the same people’s actions not also responsible for the following?

1. Create an entirely new computer based music industry?

2. Make people interested in listening to music again?

3. Make it easy for us to take our music with us, thereby making music a lot more personal?

4. Allow us to buy just a single song when the rest of the CD sucks? (Maybe that’s why the music industry is upset?)

5. Make it a lot easier to choose what music we want to listen to? (via playlists and other software programs)

6. Make it easier to store lots of music easier?  (NAS and other hard drives)

7. Easier availability via instant downloads?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     I think it’s obvious what side of the argument I come down on. The initial damage of having poorly sounding compressed files is now being built on. The benefits we enjoy now and in the future, I think will more than make up for the bad experiences. The same way a generation or two became used to bad quality music, the next can learn to appreciate the improvements in computer sound quality that are now being offered.