Categories: Articles

The Distortion Of Sound

We have everything that we need at our fingertips. Is that a good thing?

Need an article on something? There’s a site for that. Need a video tutorial on any topic in the world? These a YouTube channel for that. It’s hard to imagine how we did anything before the Internet came along. People are consumed with culture in a way that we have never seen. Watching movies, watching television, listening to music, reading a book… whatever your heart’s desire is a mere swipe of the finger away. The question (and it gets raised time and time again) is this: how much quality do we have access to in a world of quantity? Most of the music we discover now happens on YouTube, but just how good is the quality of this music. Whether it’s a MP3 or a YouTube video, the music is heavily compressed to make is as accessible as possible. Does anybody care? Is it just musicians and purist who really notice the nuances between something that was created in a studio instead something compressed down to a MP3 file and pushed out through mediocre earbuds? Well, it turns out that musicians are really feeling the sting, and that consumers are suffering because they’re not getting the full spectrum and audio experience that the music was created for. A wonderful mini-documentary titled, The Distortion of Sound, was recently published online, and it examines the massive decline of sound quality and how technology has dramatically changed the way we listen to music.

Do you simply want more music or a richer music experience? Please watch: The Distortion of Sound…

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.