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To: Buckey who wrote (96)	4/12/1999 8:49:00 AM
From: Kevin Hamlin	Respond to of 776

People should be clear about MP3 and what it is already doing to the music industry. 1) There are already hundreds of sites and places (Mirc for example) where you can download songs for free. I've cruised the Mirc sites before, which I would estimate represents a miniscule fraction of all the downloading going on. Despite this miniscule fraction, collectively, there are probably a several hundred people downloading songs on Mirc that take them on average about 20 minutes per song. This goes on 24 hours per day. Now start doing the math. Every downloaded song is lost profit. 2) You do not need anything more than a standard internet connection to do downloading. Most MP3 files are about 3-5 megs big...which with a 56k modem takes about 20 minutes. No big deal at all. 3) You do NOT need to be some techno-nerd to do any of this. Some sites are extremely user friendly. For example: mp3.lycos.com Give it a try, by artist or songtitle. The only other thing you need is an mp3 player, which is a free download at tucows. "WinAmp" is a good one. Basically, it looks like an audio player on your screen....nothing big or new. It just happens to play mp3's. 4) Someone here said something to the effect that "this was nothing new....we have done this for years with cassettes." Well, this is something new. The reason sales were sustained in these other formats was that people were willing to pay for "first generation" recordings, i.e., they didn't want a "tape of a tape", which gave them degraded sound quality. With MP3, there is no degredation of sound quality at all. Pure digital. Pure cd quality. No loss. Now to me, that is a BIG difference. 4) In the words of a few friends I know..."I have bought my LAST cd." Is this scary for the music industry? Absolutely. Will they be able to stop it? Don't think so. Just my thoughts. Kevin