Reply to Am I being terrible about this? Thoughts on bad mp3 purchases.

Hey everyone. I wanted to talk about something that really annoyed me recently and in the past.

I bought a lot of vinyl back in the day; mostly tech house records. I had no desire to DJ really. I just bought them to record and listen to. I would let a friend DJ with them though. Over the years I built up a nice and large catalog. So obviously I have nothing against vinyl, but over time my purchase habits would change.

I started DJ'ing with Traktor and bought tons and tons of mp3s. I changed my stance of vinyl to only buying it if that was the only format available.

So on to my complaint. I bought a release from a digital release from a deep house label a couple of days ago. The mp3s were ripped straight from vinyl records (pops, clicks, and all) I felt really cheated. Why on earth wouldn't they use a digital master from their hard drive or a CD?

Then I had to ask myself "Are all of their releases like this? I don't want to spend money with them if that's the case."

I feel like any number of things could be at play here. 1. Maybe it was just a dumb mistake? 2. Maybe the label just doesn't give a poop. 3. Maybe they are thumbing their noses at the customer because they are angry that vinyl is not the leading format and they can't earn as much from sales?

Whatever the case, I believe it's not wrong that I should expect a high quality digital copy with no pops, hiss, and clicks.

It makes me believe of an even worse case I suffered years ago when I bought a bunch of mp3s from a drum and bass label. This very prominent drum and bass label vowed against and hated digital releases for years. They refused to offer them despite numerous customer complaints. When they finally gave in, they did this same thing but took it even further, seemingly taking any old crappy copy of their vinyl and converting it to mp3
instead of using a digital master source. Even using a brand new copy of vinyl to make the mp3s was beneath them. It was quite upsetting.

So what do you guys believe? Has this been a problem for anyone else?

Also, I have bought mp3s where half of the song is cut off.

Last but not least, don't even get me started on the mp3s I have bought that are pushed so hard that even the softer elements like pads and chords and clipped and distorted. Yuck.