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.

[Tuscaloosa Goldfinch]

But but but - won’t those crash too?? (memory sticks, I mean)

[cavador]

I was cleaning out some cupboards in the shed last week and found a whole box of these I had forgotten about=

[Señor Zorro]

Amazon MP3 is DRM free with very reasonable licensing.

Because the MP3s are DRM-free, you can play them on any MP3 device or even burn your own CD.

[norge]

Oh, I forgot one more thing...they are completely re-recordable.

I’ve been using them in our recording business for over ten years, largely because they are so flexible and we have multiple uses (and re-uses) for them. Out of perhaps 1000 MD’s we’ve lost two.

[jjsheridan5]

I gave my entire cd collection (200+) to a flea market that was raising money for a dog rescue organization. It was the most rewarding thing I had ever done with those cds.

Honestly, with all the options available, I can’t see a single good reason to have all of that clutter lying around.

[Pontiac]

So, when the next solar super-storm hits (google 1859 Carrington event) or we get hit by an EMP. Music (along with many other things) effectively dies. Except those of us with vinyl.

A lot of good your vinyl will do you with out something to play it on after EMP. (Unless you have an old tube amp and a turn table manufactured before the advent of diodes)

But as far as the storage medium is concerned a CD is as good as a LP for surviving an EMP or Solar Flare.

If an EMP or Solar Flare worries you build a faraday cage room for your electronics.

[zeugma]

One of the things that really annoyed me about CDs is the fact that even though there was so much more room on a CD than there as on an LP,very few groups ever filled it up. To this day, your average CD has 40%+ dead space on it.

I still like CDs, because the sound is better than MP3s, but I rarely buy new disks. Second-hand stores rock.

[zeugma]

OK everyone, what was the first couple of disks you bought?

For me, the choice was easy.

1) Dark Side of the Moon

2) Sgt. Pepper

[rawhide]

Fact is, compact discs will some day be looked upon with the same curiosity as today’s teenagers look at cassettes.

Showing my age. I can remember looking back at the records my dad had as old-fashioned, when 8-tracks were in!

[AlexW]

“But but but - won’t those crash too?? (memory sticks, I mean)

Sure they can, but not any worse then a CD.
They are cheap enough now that you can make duplicate backups
on more then one.
They are like having a hard drive in your pocket (no pun intended :P)
I have not even seen a CD in over a year, even though I have boxes of them from the past.

[IYAS9YAS]

I hope you’re right. That’s music to the ears of a tech-challenged, set-in-his-ways old codger like me.

Funny to see the word "codger" when replying a post about CDs.

To me a codger still has slate 78s. I'm only 41.

[meyer]

All that seems to be true, but one of the most puzzling things to me was the lack of interest in the Mini-disk, as opposed to the CD.

The Mini is smaller, protected from scratches, and is completely editable, from deleting to adding to manipulating content. And they were pratically indestructible.

I don't know why the mini never caught on - were they compatible with all the regular CD players? How much music would they hold? The CD caught on partly because it held the equivalent of an entire vinyl record (I still have 240 of those in storage, though I doubt I'll ever play them again). There was no significant change needed on the part of the consumer other than needing to buy a CD player.

I'm not sure that having an editable format is desirable, particularly if you want to maintain a somewhat permanent archive of the music.

[raybbr]

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.

Seems to me this woman doesn't understand economics. The fact that they are dropping the price, would indicate to me, that they want to sell MORE CD's not less.

How she derives the premise that the drop in price portends the end of CD's is beyond me.

[Seruzawa]

On top of the DL problems there’s the other issue that few bands and artists produce enough good material to justify a full CD purchase. Most CDs have only 1 or 2 decent tracks. It’s cheaper to just buy tracks you like.

[calex59]

Ditto, I keep my music on my computer(music I paid for, BTW)but I keep it backed up on CDs along with many other things I want to keep in case my backup drives fail. I learned that lesson the hard way, back in the day.

[vanilla swirl]

“A lot of good your vinyl will do you with out something to play it on after EMP. (Unless you have an old tube amp and a turn table manufactured before the advent of diodes)”

I do have some old tube equipment. The storage medium is, of course, not the problem. And, depending on the event, not all solid state electronics will be fried.
My point is simply that the more that music becomes just “magnetic ones and zeros” the less stable it is.
(oh yea, I’ve got an old “Victrola” I could modify and use ;-)

[fedupjohn]

OK everyone, what was the first couple of disks you bought?

Allman Bros "Live at the Filmore East" &
Doobie Bros "Which We Once Vices are Now Habits".

[Seruzawa]

After that kind of EMP listening to music will be the least of our problems.

[shorty_harris]

I second the use of OGG. I even think it sounds better than an equivalent MP3 (although I'm not a very good judge of sound quality). It supposedly gives you better sound quality and smaller file size.

I use Cowan players, because they play OGG, and sound great, and I've been happy with them.

If I find an artist I like, I'll usually buy the CD, then rip to OGG or FLAC (lossless compression), and store it on my music server (a little Atom based, low power unit I built), where I stream it wirelessly anywhere in my home.

[Drew68]

Apple iTunes is generating more than a billion dollars of downloads each year.

More than a billion dollars? Wow. In 1999, consumers spent nearly $40 billion on recorded music.

Some are paying for recorded music but many aren't. They're either pirating the music for free or listening to the songs they want to hear on Youtube playlists. The current business model is finished.