Neil Young: "It’s not that digital is bad or inferior"

Neil Young is no dummy. He’s got a great perspective on what is wrong with the music industry: 

“It’s not that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s being used isn’t doing justice to the art,” Young said. “The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice.”

I’ve been asking the same question for years: Why doesn’t the music industry offer full quality digital downloads? Apple Lossless and FLAC may not be 100% perfect but they’re fairly standardized and allow for downloads that are still smaller than uncompressed audio files. I see FLAC versions of albums being posted on torrent sites all the time. The demand is there. And, just like MP3’s, you can curb a good portion of the piracy by simply giving people what they want. If given the choice, most people will choose to buy an album rather than pirate it.