MP3 is not for me

I've owned an MP3 player for around a year now. It's actually a Walkman device that's built into my phone. It works well enough but I still haven't filled any more than a quarter of it's memory and use it rather infrequently. It's rather odd as I used to have a Walkman cassette player which I used all the time but I've never really taken to an MP3 player at all. For some reason it doesn't seem to fit in with the way I listen to music.

I'm not a huge fan of the MP3 format. It is often described as near-CD sound quality but I can tell the difference quite easily. It tends to be the sibilant sounds that show this up mostly. For this reason, many digital re-masters now try to accommodate this. It can work quite well if done in the initial mix (Rammstein's latest album is like this - although this leads to a truly brutal sound) but it can be applied to older recording. The Beatles remixes have compressed the sound to accommodate MP3 but, from what I've heard of them, they have made a real mess of the mix. However, I can get used to this minor distortion - in a similar way that I became accustomed to the racket that noctule bats made when I lived in Newcastle. After all, I mainly listen to music in the car and it's not as if that is conducive towards high fidelity.

One aspect that stops me using the MP3 player more is the discomfort that the ear pieces cause. I've tried various types of headphone but they all cause some form of ear-hole pain. The only ones I can use well are the big studio-style cans which don't exactly lend themselves to portability. There is always the option of plugging the player into another device - a hi-fi or computer for example. In fact, I find it easier to listen to music if I'm not actively attached to the device which is playing it. But this doesn't account for why I dislike the whole MP3 concept.

If I come down to it, the one thing that I can't take to is the hassle factor. If the MP3 player could house all the music I would ever possibly use I'd just get on with it and rip every CD I own to the player. However, all the players have some limitation (although I-Pods do have a large memory). Even if I had enough memory for everything then I would still have to rip new CDs or back up everything whenever I downloaded something new - in which case I may as well have the CDs as a ready made backup device. When simply listening to CDs on their own I can grab whatever takes my fancy and listen to those in the car. Of course, I don't have my entire music collection to hand but a handful of CDs will keep me amused for quite a while.

The one thing that may change my mind is streaming services such as Spotify. The idea here is that, for a monthly subscription, you can have access to any music you like without further charge (as long as the subscription remains current). This really appeals to me but I do have some reservations. For example, what music is not included? I believe that the Beatles catalogue is not available. Will music remain available on an ongoing basis or is it subject to censorship? Further, what would happen to the subscription rates in the long term. Spotify premium (the advert free system) is available at £10 per month. As much as this appeals to me, I can buy a lot of new music for £120 per year. If it is a matter of curiosity, there are many other avenues available to try out new music for free before buying.

So that's me. I'm not exactly a Luddite but I do tend to be quite conservative where technology is involved. If an innovation can be entirely life enhancing then I will take to it wholeheartedly, but technology should serve me and not the other way around.