The compact disc’s last stand

True / Slant ^ | 22 March 2010 | Michele Catalano

[ShadowAce]

Yesterday, I got a text message from my cousin asking if my son wanted any CD shelves, because he was getting rid of his.  I texted him back “LOL CDs.”

Our CDs – thousands of them – are stacked on a floor to ceiling shelf unit in the garage. All those compact discs have been ripped onto the various computers in our house, shrunk down to invisible little bytes that take up no space in the house.  All of our subsequent music has been bought in digital form (save for my occasional vinyl purchases).

If there was any doubt that the compact disc is dying, look no further than Universal’s announcement that they will start selling most CDs for ten dollars or less.

The Universal Music Group could rewrite U.S. music pricing when it tests a new frontline pricing structure, which is designed to get single CDs in stores at $10, or below.

Beginning in the second quarter and continuing through most of the year, the company’s Velocity program will test lower CD prices. Single CDs will have the suggested list prices of $10, $9, $8, $7 and $6.

[…]

“We think [the new pricing program] will really bring new life into the physical format,” Universal Music Group Distribution president/CEO Jim Urie said.

I think Universal is wrong in thinking that the problem is pricing.  We live in an age of instant gratification.  You hear a song you like, you plug in your iPod, go to the iTunes store or whatever the Zune equivalent is and that song is yours ten seconds later. Who wants to go to a store to buy music? Or even order a CD online? Sure, you never have to leave your computer chair to do that, but then there’s the waiting for it to be delivered. Digital music purchase is the ultimate in home delivery.

Way back in some year I don’t care to remember – let’s call it 1981 – I was working in a video rental store. It was one of the first of its kind on Long Island. For just $75.00 a year, you got the privilege of paying $3.95 a night to rent a limited selection of movies, mostly MGM classics, low budget horror movies and tons of porn.  My boss may have not had a lot of foresight when it came to stocking movies, but he was smart enough to know when a gig was going to run out. He saw the prices for VHS movies coming down and knew it wouldn’t be long before he couldn’t charge ridiculous prices to pillars of community who called ahead for their copies of Bad Girls and Debbie Does Dallas to be slipped into brown paper bags.

So he sent me to a trade show, where I was to listen to talks on the future of home entertainment. I spent an entire Saturday afternoon in a hotel conference room at JFK Airport watching haggard salespeople talk about the future.

That’s where I saw my first compact disc.  The salesman held the disc up for all to see and proclaimed it be the Next Big Thing. He talked about the bulkiness of vinyl, the scratches and skips on our records, the difficulty in storing large collections of music. He held the CD up to the light and made it shine for us. It was like magic. How could all that music fit on one little disc? We were mesmerized.

My boss didn’t think CDs would ever become a thing. He cited the tiny little album art and liner notes as the main reason compact discs would never catch on.  I’d call him shortsighted, but a year or so after that he turned the video rental store into a video game store and made a boatload of money. Most of it off of me.

Later in the 80s I was working in a record store when we had to clear a small space next to the classical records for the arrival of compact discs. Everyone dismissed them. The jewel boxes came housed in cardboard boxes the size of a small child. The prices were exorbitant.  We called them novelties. They’d never catch on. Even though the big name artists were all latching on to the new technology, touting the cleaner sounds, we were all “Yea, call me when the Butthole Surfers release something on CD. We’ll stick to our scratchy vinyl.”

Six months later, half the record wall was replaced by new shelving for CDs. A year or less after that, the cassette department was gone.

CDs had a nice, long run but it was only a matter of time before something came along to push them off the shelves. Turns out it was a thing that needs no shelf space. The ease of buying digital music – and, of course, the pirating of – have done to the CDs what Georgetown did to my NCAA bracket: made it damn near obsolete.

Universal can throw as many life preservers as they want to the drowning medium. Fact is, compact discs will some day be looked upon with the same curiosity as today’s teenagers look at cassettes.

[kitkat]

***I’m sorry - but as photographers having had 2 external hard drives crash and 1 we’re not able to open at the moment has made me LOVE CD’s. I like having that initial back up for the master copy of our pics.***

I had the same thought, and I don’t even have any tunes on my computer. But, if I did, I’d hate to start all over again collecting the music.

[America_Right]

Close! The Wall and Wish You Were Here.

[magritte]

Wow...I think it was Bop Til You Drop by Ry Cooder, maybe Jeff Beck - Wired ...

[norge]

Blanks aren't where you build a market for a media type...

Understood. But my use is utilitarian. However, in my experience with MD's, I am amazed that they didn't rise to a higher level of use, given their flexibility and durability vs. CD's. To me, it is a far superior format.

[Old Student]

“USB memory sticks have taken over that function.
The cost per gb keeps going down.
I have two or three of them that I can carry in my pocket, and have never filled any of them.”

Thumb drives die, too. I've killed about six of them, so far, starting with 128mb. The latest to die was a 4gb. Flash is not an archival format. Music and documents, both.

I'm a graduate student at OU, and having them die is PITA.

OS

[csvset]

While we are talking about music and the various formats, later today I hope to use my USB turntable to play my LPs and then burn them to a CD.

I received it as a gift last Christmas and am now just getting around to playing with it.

The software that comes with it has so many options and features,(many that I'll undoubtedly not use), but, if I can convert LPs to CDs, then I'll be happy.

[I still care]

I buy MP3’s of media I like and enjoy. I buy hard copies of things I adore and don’t want to risk, especially expensive cd’s. For instance, my Ella Fitzgerald songbooks. (These are not reallybooks; they are just the name of certain series).

Also, MP3’s come without any notes. As a real music lover, I like the notes along with info listed such as musicians.