Lo-Fi Generation

Hand held devices and easily compressible formats have turned our consumption of media into a strictly lo-fi affair whether we want it or not. I just happened upon this link off of Warren Ellis' blog and I find the data to be rather disappointing, but not surprising in the least. Don't get me wrong, I think the proliferation of music by any means is fantastic and anything that get more exposure for obscure bands is great, but to think that there is a whole generation out there getting their music primarily through YouTube fills me with dread.

Lo-fi for lo-fi's sake is one thing, but when you take any recording and compress it to the level of YouTube or many other sites, you lose so much. Even your legitimately lo-fi music ends up sounding shite. It's bad enough you can't get any decent bootleg recordings anymore because the only devices people are using are their smart phones, but I'm horrified to think of a whole generation willingly subjecting themselves to sub par recordings.

I suppose it's happened before though, my generation grew up on cassettes that rose in popularity due to their portability, but were vastly inferior to almost everything else at the time. I can only hope that the youth of today are taking advantage of the the resurgence of vinyl and when they do purchase physical media, at least it's high quality.