El Ten Eleven
So, I don’t listen to only metal. A few weeks ago, I was told to check out the work of El Ten Eleven. I’m not entirely sure how to describe what genre of music they are. Wikipedia calls them post-rock, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. Genres of art are the most frustrating topics ever, since the only way you can know what anyone is talking about is if you already knew what they were talking about in the first place. They have a light, instrumental only, sort-of-rock sound. It is impossible to describe, which is why I urge you to just listen for yourself; which brings me to my next topic.
At the bottom of El Ten Eleven’s merch page, they have their newest album Every Direction is North on sale, online, for $10 via paypal, available in both mp3 and FLAC. As anyone who has seen my music collection can tell you, I have an irrational affinity for music available in FLAC format.
As a quick overview for anyone who doesn’t know, mp3 (and many other formats, known as lossy compression formats) achieves significant compression by discarding some of the data that is not considered to be critical. You’ll most often see lossy formats in use with audio and video. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. To quickly sum up, it is a free-to-use (no patents or royalties, and the format is openly documented) audio codec, and it does not throw away any of the original data - so it retains all of the sound data as the original, and as such will sound identical to the original. The downside: it is only about half the size as an uncompressed file. An album in mp3 is maybe 80 megabytes - in FLAC, it is 400. Many people will say that the human ear is not sensitive enough to tell the difference between a high-bitrate mp3 (more of the original data is kept with a higher-bitrate), and a pristine track. They’re right - I can’t tell the difference. However, I did say that all of this is irrational. Storage is cheap.
Anyway, back on topic; I was overjoyed that they provided the album in FLAC, since it was of a higher quality than the album I had already pirated. So, I forked over the $10 and downloaded their stuff. At this time, I was surprised by how low-tech the security was on their online store. After paying them at paypal, they simply gave me a link back to another part of their site where I could download their music. Go ahead, see for yourself. As a computer security enthusiast, I’m amused by how easily a non-paying person can get the material that is supposed to be reserved for paying customers. On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder if the apathy is on purpose. El Ten Eleven does not lose anything if I publish that link. In fact, if it wasn’t for piracy in the first place, they never would have recieved that $10 from me, since I never would have heard of them. So much in the way that I tried out their music, I suggest you do the same. Download their album, and if you like it enough to support an independent artist selling their music online, pay the $10 for the album.
This situation draws a little bit of insight on the copyright battle that’s going on between the recording industry and the supposed ‘pirates’. If it wasn’t for piracy, and a security hole, none of you ever would have even heard of El Ten Eleven, and neither would I. That’s at least $10 that El Ten Eleven wouldn’t have right now if it wasn’t for piracy. How many more people will buy their album now that I’ve told you about it? If one person does, then it is worth it. And if nobody does - El Ten Eleven neither gains nor loses anything. How is that not a good deal for the artists?
