5 minutes

In music and movies

Abdullah Al-Qamzi

Abdulla.AlQamzi@emaratalyoum.com

November 29, 2020

I was struck by news about Spotify, the most popular online digital music platform in the world, that the platform had launched initiatives to enter the Arab music market, which has been severely set back by political turmoil in the past decade.

Between the lines, the news says that Spotify wants to rehabilitate an area that lives on the sidelines, and return it to the world it left behind, by presenting initiatives to promote this market, educating Arab consumers and convincing them to pay online and leave piracy.

The truth is that the news is very optimistic, and "Spotify" or "Apple Music" and "YouTube Music", and other platforms have proven their success in saving the music industry in general, and the great thing is that the user can establish a music library in his account on the platform, and transfer an entire album to it. With the click of "Like"!

This talk is not new, but I am quoting it to compare the situation in the past decades, when music lovers used to buy cassette tapes and CDs from record stores, then the situation developed and they began to ask for unavailable ones via the Internet, from travel, or resort to piracy.

Then came «Apple» invention «iPod» and its multiple storage capacities, and the user became able to carry all his favorite music in his pocket, then came streaming music platforms, «Spotify», and its sisters, and the situation changed into something strange and inexpressible. Who among us has imagined since 20 years that he will reshape his musical group that he collected during 20 years, for example, via a platform on the same smart device in one or several days.

The same is true for movies. When you search for a movie, either you find the "Netflix" logo on its page or the "Google" logo. Either you subscribe to the first or rent / buy it digitally with the click of a button, while in the past you gasp in the local and foreign markets looking for about him.

Some music and sound system experts say that these music platforms do not give the user the quality of CD-ROM sound, and are not close to the quality of the vinyl phonograph, and they may have the right to criticize, but did this stop the subscriptions to those platforms?

Or in other words: does each ear distinguish the difference between the two sound quality?

Yes, some ears can distinguish and some cannot or do not care.

The same is true for movie lovers, some of whom do not accept to watch a movie whose picture is less than the highest quality, regardless of the level of work itself, and if one of us sails into old films from the productions of the middle of the last century, he will notice that they definitely have a picture quality lower than today's digital standards. An important fact is that broadcasting an old movie digitally over the Internet is clearer than broadcasting a new movie on a satellite channel.

One of the wonders of this time is that you do not own the song that you include on your list in any music platform. If the platform disagrees with the producing company about the rights, the song will be removed from your list.

The same is true for a movie that you buy digitally via the Internet. If a dispute occurs and the film is deleted, you are forced to return to the "Stone Age" and watch it on a disc, if you have a CD player!

One of the wonders of this time is that you do not own the song that you include on your list in any music platform, and if the platform disagrees with the producing company about rights, the song will be removed from your list.

Abdulla.AlQamzi@emaratalyoum.com

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Abdulla.AlQamzi@emaratalyoum.com