Issues of the World of Music

An Emerging Technologies Research

Presented to
The Faculty of the College of Computer Studies
De La Salle University – Manila

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Bachelor of Science in Information
and Communications Technology Management

By

Esguerra, Jean Nikolo Alfonso

Cacho, Erwin Joseph
Ontog, Jino Victor
Momongan, Jan Michael Vincent
See, Kenji

Ms. Pineda, Ma. Victoria G.

EMTECH Professor
ABSTRACT

The Music World could be as simple as creation, presentation, and distribution, but that is what
we assume. It is not as simple as what we think of it. There are many issues regarding music, one thing
comes to mind is of piracy, which will also find its place here. We decided to focus more on the
presentation of music.

One of the main issues we‟ve come across is about the Loudness Wars, the increasing loudness of music
through the years. It had led to the harshness of music which leads to the listeners easily fatigued.

Do all of us want to have music that is up so loud that we ourselves have no complete
control of the volume? What could help fix this problem?

The transition from Optical to Digital format had also made its way here; this led to the easy acquisition
of music through the internet, file sharing was made, which also helped in mass piracy.

How could we maximize the digital format? What could possibly help the artists lessen
their loss of profits due to piracy?

Another issue would be the effect of music to the listeners, many articles over the internet have claimed
over music helping develop the minds of people but they are mostly pointed out to classical music,
studies with other genre of music have yet to be completely approved, there are even claims on other
certain genres of music producing negative effects.

How does music help in developing our thinking? What other benefits does music give
out to listeners?

With all these issues, information about it is just around the internet, this will help us learn about the old
and new music we have these days, and who knows? These things could likely help us in picking out
music we want to listen into.

INTRODUCTION

Who can live without music? People from the early ages listen to music, some became artists, and
became famous because of their work, some make profit from music, and some just listen for relaxation.
The EMTECH Symposium which was held last month in De La Salle opened the eyes of our group and
some students regarding the perception of music. According to Prof. Lester Demetillo, music is
omnipresent “People don‟t need to hear something to say that it is music, even silence is considered
music” this means any sound that is created is considered music; this also includes the sound of silence.

The research paper would discuss the following issues: Loudness wars, Transition from Optical
Media Audio Format to Digital Media Audio Format and Effects of Music to People. The loudness wars
will discuss and compare how the reproduction of music has changed with the use of modern software. It
will discuss how the volumes have increased overtime and its pros/cons and how the problem should be
addressed. The second issue is Transition from Optical Media Audio Format to Digital Media Audio
Format. It will cover the evolution from CD audio that the Major recording company has been pushing to
the emergence of Digital music format. It will also cover the issue of using the DJ hardware which uses
CD formats, against the DJ software which uses Mp3s. The last topic is the Effect of music to people. The
issue provides discussion about the study that listening to music provides benefits for people. It will also
discuss how the different genre of music affects the behavior and IQ of a person.

ISSUE: LOUDNESS WARS

This has been going for so many years now, and yet, people do not necessarily know that it is
happening. Mostly the people who know of this are the ones who are familiar with old records.
Audiophiles are very familiar with it. Our parents or grandparents may ask why we have louder, harsher
music these days, they hurt their ears. At first we have no idea, they may just be too old, and so it may be
the reason why they have sensitive hearing. But through comparison of old and new music, listening to
them, or using softwares, we could easily see the difference in the wave forms of the old and the newly
produced music, thus explaining the difference of their music, to our music.

Just what is the Loudness Wars or Loudness Race? There are many articles around the internet
which explains this event. A short video about the loudness war or loudness race is available in YouTube
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ).

A simple explanation can be derived from the word itself. It is a war which involves loudness in
music. How does it happen? We could probably believe that there is a limit to the maximum volume. We
could describe it like this, a song, which is made up of different musical instruments, they have different
loudness levels. The drums would be louder than the other instruments, and then a little softer than the
drums would be the guitar or the bass. In music, we have what they call, dynamics, how loud or how soft
the music is. Then we have the dynamic range, which is the range between the loudest and the softest part
of music. When it comes to the loudness wars, the dynamic range is decreased so that the song would
appear louder than the other songs. This means, the softest part would be nearly as loud as the loudest
parts of the song, making it appear as a „louder‟ music, which gets the attention of people.

PROS

Just what are the advantages of louder music?

1. It gets the attention of the listeners.

2. It sounds better when played „loud‟.

CONS

But it also has its disadvantages:

1. It would be difficult to separate the different instruments due to having almost if not
equal amount of volume.

2. It sounds really weak when played on low volume; this is when the quality suffers the
most.

3. Listeners are easily fatigued when listening to these. (Donahue)

COMPARISON

(These 2 pictures do not have sources for they were captured by us using Exact Audio Copy for the
reading of the WAV files)

Seal
Kiss from a Rose (1994)

Seal
A Change is Gonna Come (2008)

Clearly, we could see the huge difference between the 2 songs. The first one, which was made 14
years ago, had so much space, it had a huge dynamic range, the other one, released just recently, is almost
full of sound, there seems to be no space at all to let our ears rest. This is a result of the loudness wars;
even soft music is produced up loud.

When it comes to the quality of music mastering, the early 90‟s produced the best sounding
music. It is called as the “Golden Age of Mastering”. (Donahue)
 As was said in the disadvantages above, the quality of music today is actually really bad, loudness
hides it, but it shows when it is played on low volume. The drums become weak along with the other
instruments. Instead of having that warm feeling, music today is just too harsh. We could listen to them,
but not that long. Audiophiles tend to buy Vinyl instead, since they are marketed to them as to having hi-
fidelity sound, they are the least affected by the Loudness Wars.

Another problem would be the remastered music. “It's not just new music that's too loud. Many
remastered recordings suffer the same problem as engineers apply compression to bring them into line
with modern tastes” (Levine, 2007)

Since it is a trend, even the old, better recordings are now reproduced to have the same sound as
the new ones, which results to it, sounding worse.

SOLUTION

If only the recording industry would stop racing over loudness, and instead, just focus on hi-
quality music, then we won‟t be having such a hard time with this problem. We have a volume control;
we should be the ones who decide how loud we want our music to be. There is a non-profit organization
which approves whether an album is certified not going with the trend of the loudness wars. It is called
Turn Me Up! (http://www.turnmeup.org/). The best solution would be to resist records which go with the
Loudness Trend. But this would prove to be very difficult.

RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION

For those who really want to at least be able to listen to better music, some tools could help
repair, and lessen the harshness of these new recordings. A very expensive software would be the iZotope
RX (http://www.izotope.com/), with a little help from internet guides; it could semi-automatically repair a
song. It would not be able to recover the song in its original state, but it could add a little more dynamic
range to the song with just few adjustments.

Hopefully, music loudness will reach its peak and will revert back to how it was in the „Golden
Age‟. It would bring back the warmth and spacious feeling of music. Back to when each instrument could
be distinguished from the other. We could only hope for that day to come.

ISSUE: TRANSITION FROM Optical Media Audio Format TO Digital Media Audio Format

TO

Access to music has been easier in today‟s technological advancements. But back in the late 80‟s
and 90‟ albums are sold in the form of CD and here in the Philippines Album CD‟s cost around 450 to
550 pesos for the foreign artist while for the local artist it cost 200 to 250 pesos. The big bang of the
Digital media audio format happened in 2001, when Apple, a computer company came into the music
arena and released the iPod. (Holmes, 2006)

Audio CDs are used to store music, and it is standard medium for sale of commercial audio
recordings to the present day. (Wikipedia) The audio CDs have the capacity of 700 megabytes and can
store up to 80 minutes.

On the other hand the Digital Media Audio Format, uses digital signals for sound
reproduction.(Wikipedia) In leman‟s term this is the music that have been copied from the CD‟s. The
digital audio can be categorized into three: Uncompressed, lossless and lossy format.

Uncompressed format doesn‟t use any compression, so the sound quality stays the same from the
source. An example format for the uncompressed format would be the .WAV file. The lossless format
compresses the music but it does not delete information, an example for this is the apple lossless which
usually around 40mb in size per song. The lossy format will compress some musical information that is
redundant. This means it will cut the file size from 50mb down to 5mb. (Webopedia)

The transition from Optical audio format to the digital media format happened in 1999 when the
emergence of file sharing allowed people who have digital ripped copies of the albums to share with
everyone, with the use of the internet. With growing popularity of file sharing, it caught the attention of
the big companies because the copies that the people share are a form of piracy. (Holmes, 2006) Laws
have been passed to protect the artist and their work. Companies tried different strategy to stop the file
sharing but it was too overwhelming and the use of digital audio was just few clicks. Digital Music
Players came out and one company that catered to the people was Apple. They released the iPod which
made use of a hard disk carrying thousands of songs without sacrificing portability. It killed the
walkmans, which made use of CDs. Along with the iPod Apple also launched iTunes. iTunes has the
protection against rampant piracy, by of selling songs online for 99 dollars per song (Hart-Davis and
Holmes, 2001).

The DJ industry is also moving from the traditional CDs to software. The traditional DJ CD
players cost at a minimum of 20,000 pesos per each and a set at a minimum of 50,000. Software
developers got an idea of developing software that would simulate the use of the traditional DJ players.
The advantage of the software would be first, in the economic aspect. Buying the software would only
cost around 50 dollars or if we convert it to peso it‟s around 2,300 to 2,400. The ease of use is quite an
advantage, because almost everything is generated for an easy mix. The use of MP3s is one of them;
another is the use of autosync feature. This doesn‟t require skills to do a mix properly. A disadvantage of
using the DJ software is that not the all capabilities of a traditional CD player are available in the software
version. Some may be available but hardware is really needed to perform the feature properly. Second, it
is not well accepted using software in DJing, since it doesn‟t require the skills because of the “auto”
feature. (DSS DJ vs. DJ equipment)

In conclusion, Digital audio formats are really a genius invention and the trend would go through
even though the companies are still pushing on the CDs and eventually Bluray Disk which is relatively
huge in capacity. The transition to the digital world is that everything is on the internet and the emergence
of web 2.0. is also a significant issue since it would allow collaboration of work where people could share
resources over the internet. As a recommendation, recording companies should make an extensive use the
iTunes to sell their songs on the net, since people nowadays are too lazy to go out because everything is
on the net. Another recommendation is the user large capacity optical media like the Playstation 3. Blue
ray games has this copy protection and it people will not be able to play the pirated content.

For further research on the issue of Transition from Optical Media Audio Format to Digital Media Audio
Format check out the following sites:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6950845.stm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipod

Holmes, Thom, ed. 2006. The Routledge Guide to Music Technology.

Hart-Davis, Guy and Rhonda Holmes. 2001. MP3 Complete

http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Computer_Science/2005/digital_audio_forms.asp

http://kristina-digital.blogspot.com/2006/10/evolution-and-trends-in-digital-media.html

http://www.randomhistory.com/2008/08/04_ipod.html

DSS DJ vs. DJ equipment, http://www.myxoft.com/compare.html

ISSUE: EFFECTS OF MUSIC TO PEOPLE

Music is a part of our life. It can reflect a person‟s mood and personality depending on what type
of music the person listens to. Music can make people happy when they are sad, calm when they are
angry. What we do (or don‟t) realize is that music can ease our worries and anxiety, increase a person‟s
productivity and concentration, inspire us to do something. With the right music, music can produce good
and bad results. Music can affect us consciously or unconsciously, and below are some examples taken
from Matters of Opinion by Norman M. Weinberger of how music affects people:

INFANTS HAVE ADULT-LIKE BRAIN SPECIALIZATIONS FOR PROCESSING MUSIC

Adults show cerebral lateralization for processing contour, the pattern of rising and falling pitches in a
melody; the right hemisphere detects changes in contour while the left hemisphere notices the
preservation of contour when the same pattern is repeated in another key. To determine the developmental
stage at which contour processing is lateralized, 8-9 month old infants learned to respond to melody
changes by turning their heads to see an animated toy. Their pattern of responses was the same as adults,
indicating that brain specializations for the processing of musical contour are present at a very early age.
(Balaban M.T., Anderson, L.M., & Wisniewski, A.B.,1998)
BACKGROUND MUSIC ENHANCES COGNITIVE PROCESSES

Many students have background music present while they study and many believe that this is beneficial.
This idea was examined in a study of 30 undergraduate students who performed two cognitive tests, one
in silence, the other with background music. Music was found to enhance performance, as indexed by
more questions answered and more correct answers given. There were no differences in heart rate, so the
effects were probably not due to different levels of arousal. The authors suggest that the type of music
used by an individual may determine its effectiveness. (Cockerton, T., Moore, S., & Norman, D., 1997)

MUSIC TRAINING INCREASES THE AMOUNT OF BRAIN THAT RESPONDS TO MUSICAL

SOUNDS

Animal studies have shown that learning can increase the amount of the auditory cortex that responds to
behaviorally important sounds. To extend this line of inquiry to humans, the authors used magnetic source
imaging, a brain scanning technique that can pinpoint responsive areas of the brain, in highly skilled
musicians. They found a 25% enlargement in area of response to piano tones compared to non-
instrumental pure tones of similar frequency and loudness in musicians compared to subjects without
instrumental experience. Enlargement was greater for musicians who had begun studies at earlier ages.
Therefore, it seems that music making in humans increases the amount of the brain that is allocated to
processing musical sounds. (Pantev, C., Oostenveld, R., Engelien, A., Ross, B., Roberts, L.E., & Hoke,
M., 1998)

MUSIC DURING EXERCISE PRODUCES PHYSIOLOGICAL BENEFITS

Many people exercise to music but the potential benefits have not been well studied. In this investigation,
the authors determined the effects of music during treadmill running in ten well-trained adult males
averaging 25 years old. Extensive physiological measurements were obtained repeatedly, including blood
samples, before an after running either with or without music. The music condition showed significant
decreases in heart rate, blood pressure and the amount of lactate secreted. The latter indicates the state of
the muscles as lactate builds up during muscle use. As the performance on the treadmill was the same in
the two conditions, the reduced lactate suggests that music may reduce muscle tension, increasing its
effectiveness. Overall, the results indicate that music can facilitate exercise and perhaps reduce stress
even in well-conditioned individuals. (Szmedra, L. & Bacharach, D.W., 1998)

MUSIC INTERVENTIONS MAY REDUCE MATERNAL DEPRESSION AND ITS EFFECTS

ON INFANTS

Maternal depression may have negative effects on infants in the neonatal period or even prenatally. At
birth, infants can exhibit abnormalities in behavior, physiology and biochemistry which may be caused by
prenatal exposure to a biochemical imbalance in their mothers. This article emphasizes the importance of
early intervention and discusses the use of music to alter the mothers‟ moods and reduce abnormally high
arousal in infants, while rendering them both more responsive to techniques that improve their
interactions. (Field, 1998)
HEAVY METAL, RAP MUSIC, AND ADOLESCENT BEHAVIOR

There has been a known issue concerning about music having effects on adolescent behavior. Music such
as Heavy Metal Rock and Rap music could possibly have negative effects on the behavior of its listeners
particularly in adolescents. There has been some study regarding this issue by Kevin J. Took and David S.
Weiss in the journal of Adolescence (1994, 29, 613-621) did a test where they had subjects of 12-18
years of age of both male and female who were under some treatment of various behavioral and
psychological problems. Results showed that teenagers who preferred listening to Heavy Metal and Rap
music had poorer school grades and more behavioral problems in school, and more sexual activity, drug
and alcohol use and arrests compared to those that did not. The results also showed that males were more
likely to have this problem than females. From the results one could make a conclusion that the music
caused, to some extent, the behavioral problems however upon further analyzing the backgrounds of the
subjects revealed that most of the troubled group already exhibited behavioral problems even before
listening to Heavy metal and rap music. Thus another conclusion could be that the subjects preferred to
listen to those kinds of music because it could relate to the problems that they are having. Until now there
is no concrete evidence if listening to Heavy Metal and Rap music is the reason on the behavioral
problems of adolescence. But from their findings there is a possibility that music could promote the
problems in the already troubled teenagers. (Kevin J. Took and David S. Weiss, 1994)

MUSICAL PREFERENCES TO INTELLIGENCE LEVELS

Recently a PhD student from California Tech name Virgil Griffith did a study on the different kinds of
music that students all over the US listened to. She then made a graph grouping the Music that the
students listened to with their SAT scores. The results showed that those with high scores preferred to
listen to music of Beethoven while the lowest score preferred listening to Rap music of Lil Wayne.
Though the graph also showed that some Rap music has high ranks and some classical music has low
ranks. Dean of the Institute of Music, Dr Ras Marcellino, said music could play a part in developing
intelligence. He cited the “Mozart factor”, where parents play classical music to young children as mental
stimulation. “People believe that if you played them Mozart their intelligence would improve. There‟s
nothing conclusive but it looks likely,” Dr Marcellino said. (Rakowski, 2009)
Source:

http://musicthatmakesyoudumb.virgil.gr/mtmyd/MusicthatmakesyoudumbHuge.png
CONCLUSION

Having all of these issues, we are left to think, does music have to continuously go down in terms
of quality? Do we have to suffer the consequences of having to ride all these trends? The loudness wars,
does it have to keep going? The format of the digital media, do the listeners today deserve the inferior
quality of lossy compressed music? How music has affected us so far, will it improve the next
generation‟s thinking? Or will it sink them down? Only one thing is certain, music is forever changing,
and it will never disappear, it is all around us, we just have to enjoy it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Donahue, M. (n.d.). PerformerMag : Articles : The Loudness War. Retrieved March 11, 2009, from
PerformerMag.com: http://www.performermag.com/loudness.php

Levine, R. (2007, December 27). The Death of High Fidelity : Rolling Stone. Retrieved March 11, 2009,
from Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/

Balaban M.T., Anderson, L.M., & Wisniewski, A.B. (1998). Lateral asymmetries in infant melody
perception. Developmental Psychology, 34:39-48.

Cockerton, T., Moore, S., & Norman, D. (1997). Cognitive test performance and background
music. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 85:1435-1438.

Pantev, C., Oostenveld, R., Engelien, A., Ross, B., Roberts, L.E., & Hoke, M. (1998). Increased auditory
cortical representation in musicians. Nature, 392:811-814.

Szmedra, L., & Bacharach, D.W. (1998) Effect of music on perceived exertion, plasma lactate,
norepinephrine and cardiovascular hemodynamics during treadmill running. International Journal of
Sports Medicine, 19:32-37.

Field, T. (1998). Maternal depression effects on infants and early interventions. Preventive Medicine,
27:200-203. http://www.musica.uci.edu/mrn/V5I3F98.html#F98rpubs

Kevin J. Took and David S. Weiss (1994) Adolescence, 29: 613-621

Rakowski, I. (2009, March 12). US student Virgil Griffith does 'study' aligning musical preferences to
intelligence levels. Retrieved March 12, 2009, from NEWS.com.au:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,25172226-2,00.html?from=public_rss