Word For The Day Archive

Corrupt/Corruption

Political humor aside, when we use these terms in the context of making music, we are generally speaking of data files or media that for one reason or another have become unusable. The usage comes from the standard definition, which is (among other things) to spoil, taint, or alter from the original. Computers and programs running on them expect data, whether in RAM or on disk, to be organized in a specific way. If something happens to the information to alter this organization it is said to have become corrupt, which usually results in it no longer being usable, or at least requiring efforts to repair it. Often times when media fails it is because the formatting data on it has become corrupt.