Music failing?

Everyone knows by now that UK biggest music CD reseller has failed. HMV has disappeared.

Most of the blame from news writers is on the internet and music downloads. Which is possibly true. The nature of the delivery of music has changed from vinyl disks, to LPs and 45s, to CD album sales, and finally to downloaded MP3s and internet streaming.

But. The factors affecting the demise of HMV are many:

- Amazon delivers CD by mail from outside the UK VAT region and does not pay VAT. So making them cheaper

- Amazon and Apple iTunes deliver over the internet, MP3 or AAC tracks of inferior audio quality to CDs.

- Even worse are the internet streaming suppliers who's audio quality is appallingly bad, and which forces the record companies to use immense tricks of limiting and compression to get any dynamics into the sound

- Listeners today have inferior equipment, cheap earpieces, small loudspeakers, poor amplifiers

So, there are both commercial and technical issues here. All of which debase music and inhibit its distribution, not improve it. Music companies must be reeling over HMVs demise as this is their last bastion in the high street through which they can sell CDs, and now they are largely in the hands of Amazon.

Poor product, poorly delivered

It is my opinion that they have only themselves to blame. Music today is poorly recorded, poorly delivered and poorly reproduced. The few audiophiles that have seen the light are roundly ripped off by manufacturers offering equipment that rarely costs less than 1000's of pounds.

It does not have to be like this. Good quality, well delivered music could be marketed if only one company (a revived HMV?) could gather together the elements of recording, delivery - by high quality audio digital files such as 24bit/96kHz in FLAC format - together with internet marketing and reproduction equipment that does not cost a fortune.

Will anyone do it. or are we condemned to awful music for years to come?