It's Semi-Official: CDs to Die in 2013

[realtrance]

I'm increasingly (with the single, notable exception of Netflix) divesting myself of everything online.

 

Online for me these days means email, and Netflix.... and that's it!

 

I have a wonderful LP, book and CD collection which I will never get rid of. Computer games collection too, though that I think increasingly I will just throw in the trash.

 

iTunes is great for redundancy and portability, but it'll never replace my music collection. And I'll never rely on corporations to feed me; they've done a horribly crappy job of it my whole lifetime, and they're only getting worse at it.

 

In fact, I think the world of the large-scale business corporation is numbered; they're increasingly simply not viable as either political or economic entities, and doomed to stasis, decay and fragmentation. Everything that goes with them will be whisked away by the forces of history as well.

 

So in the meantime, enjoy corporate media feeds online as a convenience, if you consider it worth the nickel-and-diming. But don't count on it as any kind of basis for the future.

 

The future is people entertaining themselves locally, in their own communities. The more that comes back -- and it is coming back, rapidly -- and the less we have to rely on recorded music for distribution, the better for all of us.

[Jeff da Weasel]

Do you folks have any idea how low the royalty rates are for streamed music?

 

The problem here -- and no offense intended -- is that 95% of people on SSS think like consumers, and why wouldn't you? That's primarily what you are. Well, any hope that independent musicians ever had of actually making money (much less recouping recording costs) on selling music is gone, gone, gone. The CD sales model was okay. Even the download model was pretty good. But once the move to streaming is complete, you have no chance in hell of ever sustaining a living as an independent musician based on sales of recorded music.

 

I could give you the optimistic story of how this will promote a massive resurgence of live music performance, but ultimately, that portion of the business has always been driven by the recording side... you hear a band's song, you like it, maybe buy the album, and then go see the show. But with little impetus to record, no one hears the song, and no one comes to the show.

 

And then, fewer and fewer companies see a reason to make equipment. I'm telling you, it's not only the CD that's about to die.

 

Have a nice day.

[scarecrowbob]

"Much of this change is just a way to squeeze more revenue out of listeners. $18 once for a CD people notice, but $10/month they don't."

Yah, but in the 10/mo vs 18/cd thing, the math works out highly in favor of the listener.

And int he 10/mo vs 0/pirated dl, it works out much better for the artists.

[Hard Truth]

One massive solar flare or a huge man made magnetic pulse and the Internet and alot of equipment is dead and there goes the music download industry. Hell, there goes civilization !!! ....

 

 

This genuinely worries me. Even without a catastrophe, people are not making new backups of their old hard drives. People are going to lose most of their correspondence, family photos, home movies etc.-much of the evidence of our current existence (except for the continent of plastic waste floating in the ocean) due to failing and obsolete digital storage media-esp hard drives.

[Bookumdano2]

Hold on a sec, let's not get carried away. The material in the cloud has to be stored somewhere .

 

 

It is stored somewhere. But in the longterm plan, "you" don't get to do that. "You" don't get to hold that drive or make copies of it. And I'm not talkin about your photos of the kids.

 

Where's the hard drive? Well, In Apple's case, their 500 million dollar hard drive is sitting in North Carolina. And I think there's another one somewhere else and a third being built. Have you been noticing these things popping up? I think Apple is in the midst of building a huge solar farm for them too. Check this out-

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-06-08/tech/30072633_1_netapp-hp-gear

 

As I've said before, as part of getting the world jazzed about clouds, and the (faster than you can even begin to imagine) approach of holographic, non-equipment based gizmos.....the underlying thing to remember about wherever and whoever the clouds are is "all your hard drives are belong to us".

 

But that's for later. Longterm. For now, I think it's still groovy to have physical media and hard drives and stuff for creation and self-distribution.

[Wayne2]

"Much of this change is just a way to squeeze more revenue out of listeners. $18 once for a CD people notice, but $10/month they don't." Yah, but in the 10/mo vs 18/cd thing, the math works out highly in favor of the listener. And int he 10/mo vs 0/pirated dl, it works out much better for the artists.

 

 

It depends, light user or heavy. Also factor in the cost of all the equipment that the listener has to buy that's designed to die every three years.

 

Nothing appears to work out much better for the artists. I don't have the answer to that riddle.

[Surrealistic]

It is stored somewhere. But in the longterm plan, "you" don't get to do that. "You" don't get to hold that drive or make copies of it. And I'm not talkin about your photos of the kids

I can see where you're coming from and in some cases - particularly in the "audio-visual arts" for want of a better term - it has more than a grain of truth in it. However, the likes of HP (as mentioned in the Apple cloud thing) along with plenty of other tech companies want to sell their kit as long as there are buyers prepared to buy it. Why would they stop? I just don't see that happening. I see the other "good" side of the cloud idea as meaning everyone is holding the world's data instead of just the chosen few - everyone has the keys to the kingdom. Okay, that's idealistic but I don't think it's any more out of kilter than the opposite view.

[rasputin1963]

I sound like an oldster, but nothing beats an artifact which you can hold in your hand.

[A. Einstein]

And then, fewer and fewer companies see a reason to make equipment. I'm telling you, it's not only the CD that's about to die.

 

 

Something which can't survive goes away.

[The Bard Rocks]

An interesting thought: suppose 1/3 of all hard drives lost everything they had - how much total information would be lost? Then think, if 1/3 of all cloud "drives" were lost, how much total would be gone? Nothing is fail-safe; it all breaks down eventually (except for plastic in landfills).

[Goobers]

Do you folks have any idea how low the royalty rates are for streamed music? The problem here -- and no offense intended -- is that 95% of people on SSS think like consumers, and why wouldn't you? That's primarily what you are. Well, any hope that independent musicians ever had of actually making money (much less recouping recording costs) on selling music is gone, gone, gone. The CD sales model was okay. Even the download model was pretty good. But once the move to streaming is complete, you have no chance in hell of ever sustaining a living as an independent musician based on sales of recorded music. I could give you the optimistic story of how this will promote a massive resurgence of live music performance, but ultimately, that portion of the business has always been driven by the recording side... you hear a band's song, you like it, maybe buy the album, and then go see the show. But with little impetus to record, no one hears the song, and no one comes to the show. And then, fewer and fewer companies see a reason to make equipment. I'm telling you, it's not only the CD that's about to die. Have a nice day.

 

 

Feel free to reassure your clients, I believe your final point is the opposite of what's happening:

 

As the layer at the top shrinks, the layer on the bottom is growing. Everyone I know is {censored}ing buying music equipment, whether they play or not. Especially for my male friends in their 20's, they're spending their money buying cars and music equipment.