Jammin' with Groat - Beatles never sounded

This is Jeff Groat. Ordinarily, he writes our weekly sex column but this week he’s traded in his fuzzy handcuffs for a pair of headphones. This is what he had to say about it.

By Jeff Groat [lifestyle bureau chief]

The Beatles never sounded worse.

This past week, Apple reached a deal with The Beatles to sell the Fab Four’s music over iTunes, making the list of big name holdouts that much smaller.

Within the first two days, sales have skyrocketed.Over 40 years since The Beatles broke up, they continue to sell music – they even ranked in the top three of total album sales last year.

Ironically, the sound quality of their music arguably is worse now than it ever was.

Yes, digital music has been around for years – CDs and MP3s changed the industry for good and the iPod is Apple’s greatest success story.

Convenience and a brilliant marketing campaign mean that everyone carries a sizable collection of albums and songs around with them in his or her pockets, now for a lot of people this will include Sgt. Pepper’s and Revolver.

But something’s missing.

Digital files are compressed to shit – a computer program decides that certain bits of data are very similar to other bits and deletes them, making file sizes more iPod-able.

The problem is that these extra bits of sound info are what give a magnum opus like the entire fucking Beatles’ catalogue its rich and textured sound.

So go ahead, buy some digitized music. But do yourself a favour and buy a turntable and some vinyl, and crank it.