Is the CD passe?

[Billster]

Story Here

 

 

Online giant iTunes cracked the top ten music retail outlets for the first time ever, and the only places CDs actually sold well were stores like Target, Best Buy and Wal-Mart. And yet it remains too early to say that the CD is dead, as in buried in a casket underground. It's certainly terminally ill, condemned, a dead medium walking. Indeed, sales of CDs still dwarf digital sales, to the tune of $6.45 billion to $945 million worldwide. But CD sales are sliding, a little faster and steeper every year. People tend to buy less music as they grow older, and the CD audience is pretty much exclusively aged 30 and up. Very few teenagers buy CDs

 

 

Money quote:

 

 

"The record labels' main business model is to sell plastic," says Garrett Kamps, managing editor at Rhapsody Music Services in the San Francisco area and an occasional Houston Press contributor. "They manufacture and distribute plastic. Of course they have to put something on the plastic to make it more appealing -- but the music is secondary."

 

 

There's some choice stuff from consumers in the sidebar, too. Read the article.

[ShakaCthulu]

 

Originally posted by Billster Story Here Money quote: There's some choice stuff from consumers in the sidebar, too. Read the article.

 

 

I don't think so...maybe in the not too distant future, but cds still got some life in them...SACD and DVD-A haven't been able to phase them despite being out for quite awhile. I think mp3 stands a better chance of usurping CDs than SACD or DVD-A, but I really hate that Itunes charges almost as much for a full album of low quality 192kbs MP3s as alot of the redbook CDs. Look at Beck's new album...for about the same as the ITunes download you get CD quality audio, plus some of the most brilliant packaging ever...the cd comes with a crapload of stickers so you can make your own album cover. I dunno, maybe as storage becomes cheaper and bigger 320kbps will become the norm.

[UstadKhanAli]

The problem, of course, is that a lot of people may not give a rat's ass about 192kpbs MP3s vs. their shiny aluminum disc brothers. Consumers have repeatedly shown that they love convenience. And having an iPod and easily shuttling around MP3s is really damn convenient.

 

I'd say that the CD isn't dead yet, but it's starting to smell funny.

[Will Chen]

CD's are my generation's vinyl. My son will look at my collection the same way I looked at my mom's 45's.

 

I still love CD's because I think an album is a piece of art unto itself. The order of the songs selected, cover art, liner notes, everything. Here's an example. The inside of John Mayer's Continuum CD there is a grainy picture of a studio control room with the quote "This is what my heart looks like". That's beautiful and it made me feel a connection to him as an artist. With the trend of smaller and smaller MP3 players, album art will be forgotten and that's a very sad thing. With a really good album an individual song can have additional meaning within the context of the album as a whole. This is lost as well.

[ShakaCthulu]

 

Originally posted by UstadKhanAli The problem, of course, is that a lot of people may not give a rat's ass about 192kpbs MP3s vs. their shiny aluminum disc brothers.

 

 

Sad but true, my friend. No matter how creative people get with packaging their CDs or albums, I fear convenience will always win. WalMart for the Audio World.

[ShakaCthulu]

 

Originally posted by wbcsound CD's are my generation's vinyl. My son will look at my collection the same way I looked at my mom's 45's. I still love CD's because I think an album is a piece of art unto itself. The order of the songs selected, cover art, liner notes, everything. Here's an example. The inside of John Mayer's Continuum CD there is a grainy picture of a studio control room with the quote "This is what my heart looks like". That's beautiful and it made me feel a connection to him as an artist. With the trend of smaller and smaller MP3 players, album art will be forgotten and that's a very sad thing. With a really good album an individual song can have additional meaning within the context of the album as a whole. This is lost as well.

 

 

My mom was going to get rid of her huge carry-case of 50s and 60s 45's, including some great MoTown stuff. I was like "NO WAY, are you crazy!" Thankfully, I talked some sense into her. Those records were my introduction to listening pleasure as I'd use my Grandfather's old cabinet system to listen to them...all while wondering what the hell that 8-track slot was for.

[UstadKhanAli]

I like CDs. I like being able to have lots of liner notes and art. And even though the CD booklet is tiny, I still like it.

 

This is perhaps especially true for people like me who purchase CDs of music from other cultures.

 

Close to half of my CD collection contain CDs from other cultures. I have jillions of African field recordings, a lot of music from India, most of the Ethiopiques collection from Buda Musique, Javanese gamelan, music from all over Asia and Latin America, and tons of other stuff.

 

And almost all these releases have extensive liner notes. The information is not only educational, but greatly increases my admiration for the culture and music that I'm listening to (and in many cases, the madmen who managed to lug very heavy analog equipment deep into the jungle to record groups of people and cultures that frequently no longer exist or are in danger of extinction!!).

[Rabid]

For me the CD will not be dead until I can buy 320kbps unprotected files.

 

It would be interresting to see a breakdown of CD and download sales by type. I will buy modern pop and hip-hop, very old rock, jazz and latin as downloads because the quality is not very good to begin with. Audio compression cannot do much more damage. On the other hand, I would never buy "Dark Side of the Moon" or or "Airdrawndagger" as a download.

 

I just wonder how many kids have listened to something like "Dark Side of the Moon" uncompressed and through a good set of headphones?

 

Robert

[where02190]

I sold my entire CD collection about a year ago, sans a few that were out of print or extremely rare, after putting the entire library onto a couple HDD's in itunes.

 

I doubt I'll ever buy a CD again unless I must have it and cannot get it via download. At anytime I have over 8000 songs at my disposal.

 

Artists are going more and more to using the web for liner notes, lyrics, etc, and obviously much more info can go there than on a CD.

 

IMHO the music CD as we know it is pretty much on it's last leg.

 

AFA protected files, I'm glad to see this trend toward downloading music, finally the artist has at least some protection from piracy.

[Ernest Buckley]

 

The problem, of course, is that a lot of people may not give a rat's ass about 192kpbs MP3s vs. their shiny aluminum disc brothers. Consumers have repeatedly shown that they love convenience. And having an iPod and easily shuttling around MP3s is really damn convenient. I'd say that the CD isn't dead yet, but it's starting to smell funny.

 

 

Thats pretty much where I stand. I`m in the middle of designing my CD booklet and spending about $3000 doing so and for what? The only thing that is making me get CDs is to sell at shows, hand out to labels and radios, blah, blah...

 

Anything after this may be digital.

 

As for album covers and all the other packaging, I enjoy it but I could live without it. I like it for the lyrics but you can know get lyrics online so whats the point.

[Lee Knight]

I love the sentimentality of us wanting to hold on to our CDs. Just as I did with my vinyl. Everything above is so true... then Where comes along and says the opposite and that's true for me too.

 

I love holding the package and feeling something about an artist that's not in the music. A package that somehow elaborates on the music in some way. The internet works but doesn't replace that little package... but it will. There needs to be stronger electronic ties between the music file and it's supplemental data like artwork, artistic renditions of the lyrics, photos, etc. And there will be.

 

The CD will be gone shortly me thinks.

 

[G Geezer]

Thats pretty much where I stand. I`m in the middle of designing my CD booklet and spending about $3000 doing so and for what?

 

Dam...I'm working TOOO cheap:eek:

 

[Ernest Buckley]

 

Dam...I'm working TOOO cheap

 

 

Believe me, I`m wondering what I`m paying for too.

 

EB

[doug osborne]

Is the CD passe?

 

Yes.

 

CDs have been around for just about the same length of time that 33 1/3 RPM LPs were in their heyday. There's no reason to hold on to the romantic notion that any entertainment delivery system will last forever (well, I do buy the occasional book...).

 

SA-CD and DVD-A unfortunately didn't replace CD. It's not because we didn't want better quality - don't hate yourself so much that you think you don't want better sound. Player connection complexity, lack of appropriate marketing, utter lack of breadth and depth of content releases were some of the reasons for the failure. But the big reason was that as these formats were released, consumers spoke with their keyboards and loudly and clearly stated that they wanted to download their music - nobody said that they wanted a different spinning-disc format.

 

Instead of responding to this obvious demand, record companies sued their best customers, added DRM that penalized their best customers while not keeping any of their music from being freely distributed, and even put the US Congress in their back pocket, getting the DCMA passed to restrict distribution of music in favor of large corporations with no thought to the artists and consumers, effectively cutting growth in music sales. While data transmission speeds and bandwidth have increased tremendously, and storage cost and size are a fraction of what they were, improvements in product quality have not kept up. A decade ago, plans were clearly proposed that could have kept music sales up - put every song owned by every record company up for sale at fifty cents each, with half of this going to the copyright holder (and maybe a high-rez or surround version at a dollar each) - but record companies ignored reality by focusing on blockbuster acts instead of their long-term interests in a changing world.

 

Hey, Rabid - you can buy 320kbps unprotected MP3s from eMusic (they have lots of great music, but none of it from major labels).

 

There will always be some form of physical music distribution. As souvenirs at concerts, luxury albums with added printed and graphical content, gifting, products for people who just don't want to mess with a computer, etc. But this will shrink to probably a third of all music sales, probably within this decade. This may be a spinning disc - I hope not, so we aren't forever stuck in Sony/Philip's grip - flash memory of some sort, or something we haven't yet built, but the format is a detail.

 

I've only bought a few CDs this year - a few at the Tower Records clearance sale, Beatles Love for the surround DVD, etc. I buy some downloads from eMusic, and discover new music on XM.

[jackpine]

I'm finally taking the dive myself. Removable drives are so cheap and with the right encoding process the music quality is acceptable.

 

Yup... I'm about 75 disc's into encoding my whole CD collection.

 

I've found myself listening to stuff I haven't heard in years.

 

The CD is a relic.

[PBBPaul]

 

Originally posted by jackpine I'm finally taking the dive myself. Removable drives are so cheap and with the right encoding process the music quality is acceptable. Yup... I'm about 75 disc's into encoding my whole CD collection. I've found myself listening to stuff I haven't heard in years. The CD is a relic.

 

 

I've just recently finished doing this. It is very cool and now I've got in excess of 400 hours of music at my mouse-clicking fingertips. I ripped everything at 320kbps so the sound quality is pretty good.

 

That said, I'm not selling or tossing my CDs yet. I do have a sentimental attachment to actual media. I also have yet to tackle all of my vinyl. There just isn't enough time.

[Ed A.]

The other thing about holding on to your CD collection, even after you've imported everything into iTunes, is that the CDs are your proof that you didn't "illegally" download the music. Maybe I'm paranoid, but the RIAA can't say anything if I still own the CDs I've ripped.

[dparr]

I miss the old days when you would go to the record store, buy a album, take it home and peel off the shrink wrap. Then while the warm analog music played loudly on the stereo you would study the artwork and liner notes. There was nothing like the smell of a new album! The double albums were even great for cleaning your seeds.

 

Then the CD's came out! I thought they sounded harsh compared to albums but they were said to sound better and last forever. The thing is they didn't sound better nor did they last forever. The artwork suffered and you needed a magnifying glass to read the liner notes.

 

Now we have files to download to your computer. You just pick a song you like and burn it to your hard drive or portable player. The sound quality is even worst than the CD's and the idea of having a group of songs that flow from one to the next are all but gone.

 

I sometimes think that the more technology advances the less human we become.

 

Being 50 years old I guess I'm a bit set in my ways. When I buy something I like to be able to hold it in my hands. Another point is if you play out a lot it really pays to have a CD to sell. At some gigs I make several hundred dollars off of CD sales. That would be hard to do with music downloads!

 

The best musical experience will always be live music. I hope that we never lose that!

 

David

[blue2blue]

 

Originally posted by lhm1138 I don't think so...maybe in the not too distant future, but cds still got some life in them...SACD and DVD-A haven't been able to phase them despite being out for quite awhile. I think mp3 stands a better chance of usurping CDs than SACD or DVD-A, but I really hate that Itunes charges almost as much for a full album of low quality 192kbs MP3s as alot of the redbook CDs. Look at Beck's new album...for about the same as the ITunes download you get CD quality audio, plus some of the most brilliant packaging ever...the cd comes with a crapload of stickers so you can make your own album cover. I dunno, maybe as storage becomes cheaper and bigger 320kbps will become the norm.

 

 

Quick note: iTunes sells 128 kbps AACs, not 192 kbps MP3s. (I'll let others argue about which format sounds better. But the 'classic' MP3 has no DRM capabilities, limiting its usefulness in online sales. But eMusic DOES sell unprotected MP3 VBRs [created with the excellent LAME codec in the past, and likely still] and, at least when I was still an eMusic subscriber, they sounded pretty good.)

 

PS... I don't think we'll ever see widespread adoption of Sony's SACD (or whatever they're trying to rebrand it as now... "Direct Stream Digita" now, right? [Here's the Library of Congress' write-up on the format: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/fdd/fdd000230.shtml])... there seems to be growing skepticism as to whether their one-bit delta-sigma sampling REALLY avoids a lot of the problems with digital audio conversion or whether it presents a DIFFERENT set of problems. And then, of course, there's the widespread antipathy toward climbing in bed with Sony ever again on one of their proprietary formats.

[doug osborne]

 

Originally posted by blue2blue ... I don't think we'll ever see widespread adoption of Sony's SACD (or whatever they're trying to rebrand it as now... "Direct Stream Digita" now, right? ...

 

 

DSD is the one-bit acquisition system, developed and still used by Sony for archival purposes.

 

Super Audio CD, or SA-CD, is the failed disc format that that can carry up to six channels of DSD (as well as a two-channel Redbook layer).

[the stranger]

I've bought at least 30 cd's in the last three months. I guess I'm out of touch.

 

I also burn them like it's going out of style (wow, a pun!). I love the CDR format and I hope it sticks around for a while. It's ultra cheap and might as well be considered disposable.

 

If the record companies had any sense, they would treat them as such and lower prices.

[elsongs]

Originally posted by Ed A. The other thing about holding on to your CD collection, even after you've imported everything into iTunes, is that the CDs are your proof that you didn't "illegally" download the music. Maybe I'm paranoid, but the RIAA can't say anything if I still own the CDs I've ripped.

 

Unless those CDs were "recorded" on the "Maxell" or "Verbatim" labels

[guitarmonster]

I must be 'out of touch' as well.

 

What gets me is that MP3 is a decidedly inferior format soundwise. Are we really going to 'progress' to inferior sound in order to gain a little convenience? C'mon, there have to be more audiophiles on here like myself who won't accept that. If they can combine the sound quality of CD with the convenience of MP3 then, OK, maybe.

 

Besides, I also like having a physical, tangible product. If I hand you a CD and say, "here's my band, check it out," then I'm fairly certain it'll happen. But if I have to say, "I have some music, you go to such and such site, and hit this link, and you can download it..." I just don't believe it'll happen.

 

I for one still enjoy buying an album, taking it home and actually listening to it. Have we really reached a point where people will no longer have 'music collections'? Perish the day!!

[Ed A.]

 

Originally posted by fretwizz You've got nothing to be paranoid about if you've done nothing "illegal".

 

 

But ripping your CD collection to AAC or MP3 files, then selling your CD collection while keeping the ripped files would most likely be considered "illegal" by the RIAA. Keeping the CD collection proves that you have a right to fair use of the ripped files. Chances are that there is no way this could be enforced by the RIAA even if you did sell your CDs, so I don't think there's really any possiblity of being sued by them. I wonder if there is any legal precedent for this?

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Originally posted by blue2blue Quick note: iTunes sells 128 kbps AACs , not 192 kbps MP3s. (I'll let others argue about which format sounds better. But the 'classic' MP3 has no DRM capabilities, limiting its usefulness in online sales. But eMusic DOES sell unprotected MP3 VBRs [created with the excellent LAME codec in the past, and likely still] and, at least when I was still an eMusic subscriber, they sounded pretty good.)

 

 

I was wondering about that when someone said it was 192kbps because the iTunes MP3s don't sound very good to me, and when I rip 192kbps MP3s in iTunes from CDs or my own mixes, they sound really good. Thanks for telling us about that.