Addressing the "D: Dive Into Media" industry conference on Tuesday, rock icon Neil Young said that digitally compressed music should burn out and die; and vinyl technology should ultimately rule the roost in the music arena.

According to Young, digital music - comprising MP3 as well as CD - should be discarded on the technology scrap pile, in support of the vinyl technology which has been in use for several decades.

Young said that while digital music could not be described as "bad or inferior", it is actually being used in such a way that it was not doing justice to the creative talents of the artists.

Noting that "the MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording," Young stressed the point that the digital age had given the people a questionable choice --- that of selecting between the 'convenience' of digitally-compressed music and the 'quality' of vinyl.

Young - who expressed a similar opinion at the Sundance Film Festival a few days back - also put forth the argument that piracy was more like one more form of music distribution. Terming piracy as "the new radio," Young said that piracy was one of the ways in which music goes around.

Meanwhile, adding weight to his arguments in favor of vinyl, Young said that even though Apple's late CEO Steve Jobs was "a pioneer of digital music," he listened to vinyl when at home; and added: "If he'd (Jobs) lived long enough, he would have done what I'm trying to do."