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.

[shorty_harris]

Mine was “Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown!”, bought around 1990. I still have it.

[Pontiac]

My point is simply that the more that music becomes just “magnetic ones and zeros” the less stable it is.

Stability can be produced in a number of ways.

One way that lends itself to a digital medium is multiple backup copies.

With digital storage mediums it is relatively cheap and easy to back up your information (music) in a multiple of different devices and mediums.

With vinyl it is not cheap or easy. But there is hope. Last year I read about some engineers that had invented a machine that used a laser to read vinyl records and converted the recording to digital files.

I would think that the device might be commercially available in a few years.

[Still Thinking]

I like the convenience of MP3s but understand that compressing the files means some loss of sound quality, which may be only theoretical or what dogs can hear.

If you're ripping the songs yourself from a lossless format to MP3, the program will usually let you trade off between compression and quality. I suggest you make copies of the same song at numerous decreasing levels of quality and listen to them till you find the point at which you can just begin to hear the loss of quality, then just rip a level or two better than that. Everyone's ears are different.

[6ppc]

The more I look at this I think I want to use a format that I can use on a smart phone as well as at home. Looks like the best alternative to the iPhone is Droid. Do you know if it supports OGG and/or FLAC?

[Mama Shawna]

You got that right. Some friends of ours own Quimper Sound, one of the last privately owned record stores in Wa. State (in Port Townsend) and they are doing a booming business in vinyl. Just recently bought a 50k+ record collection from a guy who had over 100k albums (owned a bunch of record stores back in the day). They are slowly growing through them, and have found some real gems, such as Hearts Dreamboat Annie signed by all 5 members of the band! They have them all stored in their garage, and take them to the store as they go through them. I suspect they’re keeping their favorites!

[shorty_harris]

I don’t have first hand experience with Droid, but a quick search on the Motorola web site shows that it does support OGG. I don’t see FLAC listed anywhere, but I personally wouldn’t use FLAC on my smartphone because of the large file size.

[6ppc]

One more question...if I store my master copies in FLAC so it’s lossless, I assume there is software available to convert FLAC to OGG, MP3, etc?

[ßuddaßudd]

heh lol ,,, he said Butthole Surfers

[TChris]

CDs will be around until another permanent, physical medium comes along to replace them. If flash memory gets to be cheap enough and permanent enough, it might get there.

CDs are still necessary because none of the e-formats are permanent.

[shorty_harris]

One more question...if I store my master copies in FLAC so it’s lossless, I assume there is software available to convert FLAC to OGG, MP3,

I believe so (I haven't actually tried it). When I rip a cd, I make both FLAC and OGG files at the same time.

[Perdogg]

I knew a young lady in the office who took all of her CDs and downloaded them onto her computer then to her ipod, then trashed her Cds. I guess the RIAA lawyers will track her down and sue her.

[dmz]

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.

<><><><><

Hope your stereo has no solid state components, or your vinyl will be pretty worthless as well. Of course, a megaphone attached to a sewing needle would suffice, once you figure a means to get your vinyl spinning at 33 and a third.

I, however, will still have my 6 string acoustic geetar to make music with.

[NonValueAdded]

Here's my understanding of the CD dilemma. First, a CD is a sandwich with an aluminum layer that receives the encoding. If the edge seal is poor as could be expected with a cheap product, there can be oxidation and with that data is destroyed.

Next, while everyone worries about the clear underside getting scratched, little concern is given to the top of the CD and the substrate is just underneath. Write on it with a sharp instrument and you are adding "data" to the CD. Ditto for the type of ink, say from a permanent marker, that could penetrate. That is why the use of clearly designated CD marking pens is essential.

Physical labeling is the final concern I have for you. The adhesive can warp the underlying substrate and heaven forbid you aren't happy with the alignment and peel up the label to reposition same.

Didn't want to add to your woes and if you are using CD's as a cheap backup with next week's CD replacing last week's, little problem ... as long as you heed the labeling advice. But if you are counting on Sam's Club cheaper by the spindle CD's for permanent archival storage, remember the old adage, "you get what you pay [or vote] for." Over time, they WILL degrade. The trick is to re-master them before that happens.

[6ppc]

Makes sense. Disk space is cheap so no big deal.

[dmz]

...if I store my master copies in FLAC so it’s lossless, I assume there is software available to convert FLAC to OGG, MP3, etc?

<><><><><

Trader’s Little Helper. Don’t think it does OGG, but it does both flacs and shns in both directions (encoding and decoding).

And it’s free.

[Major Matt Mason]

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

1. Richard Thompson, "Across a Crowded Room", 2. The Jam - Snap! (Greatest Hits). I bought them in '85, at New World Record in Williamsville, NY before I even had a CD player. New World Record saw the handwriting on the wall and closed their store a year or so ago. Too bad, I bought a lot of good music there.

[discostu]

I bought The Wall with my CD player and Dark Side the next day.

[discostu]

Mini discs cost too much, and at their size were just way too shopliftable. Products that give both buyers and sellers a reason to not like them tend to fail.

[norge]

They were not compatible with CD players, and you had to buy MD equipment to record and play back.

They hold the same amount as a CD, but the disc is much smaller, and it is in a plastic case.

If MD’s had gone commercial, I’m sure they would have been protected from editing. However, for a compilation of your own music, they are fabulous. I’ve transferred hundreds of cuts to a CD, my favorite single cuts. But once encoded, that’s it. With an MD, you get tired of a song, you can delete it, and put it back in later, if you want. And you can move cuts whenever and whenever you wish.

But again, the drawback is lack of a universal player.

[Yardstick]

machine that used a laser to read vinyl records and converted the recording to digital files.

Now that's pretty cool.

BTW, does anyone know what the half-life of a vinyl record is? I think they're made of PVC vinyl which is pretty stable stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if PVC is basically 'forever'. Which raises the question of what CDs are made of. The material had to be clear for the laser, which meant they couldn't be PVC. I wonder what kind of plastic it is and what its lifespan is.