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.

[Future Snake Eater]

Yeah, I use Amazon MP3, too. The prices are about the same as is the selection, but no DRM and usable on my iPod or my wife’s Zune.

[cvq3842]

Yes, thanks. I have tried to find the best balance between sound quality and file size.

But I will still keep the old CDs, as long as I have room.

[Future Snake Eater]

I believe the ASUS Xonar D2X sound card has the 24-bit/192kHz capability.

[Liberty Valance]

[norge]

Mini discs cost too much...

MD's currently cost me about a buck and a half to 1.70. But I don't have to replace them, because they are virtually indestructible.

Don't know how much I paid when I first started using MDs, but CD's were about 8-10 bucks each, at first.

I'm talking about blanks, of course.

We still buy DVD's and CD's in bulk, but I have no idea the unit cost. And we dupe them for $3+, so they can't be too different from MDs.

Your point about shoplifting is probably right on. And I've never seen a commercial MD with The Beatles or Rolling Stones.

[Still Thinking]

But I will still keep the old CDs, as long as I have room.

Me too. If I had just the digital files, I'd want a backup, so why not keep them? Just in this case I had the "backup" before the "working copies".

[Earthdweller]

MP3 players break too easy like everything else that is made out of the country...end of story.

[discostu]

Blanks aren’t where you build a market for a media type, you build it with pre-recorded. VCRs were driven by the movies available, CDs by the music. And MDs had a small selection (which is typical for a new media), and that selection cost a lot more than CDs. While CDs cost more than LPs the big perceived benefit of better sound, MDs never had that over CDs. Without that perceived improvement there’s no driving force for the people to pay more. DAT ran into the same problems, it’s actually a pretty great format, but there’s just no driver for the buyers.

[Still Thinking]

But if CDs are a dying media, I suppose I had better purchase the titles I want before they pull the plug.

I wouldn't worry about it. As people rip everything they own, they'll probably sell the physical discs on Ebay or garage sale them. Plus you can always download whatever songs you want and burn your own compilations to CD. That way, you don't get two good songs followed by 15 tracks of unmarketable dreck.

[TexasRepublic]

“but one of the most puzzling things to me was the lack of interest in the Mini-disk”

I was an early adapter of CD’s and said if a recording unit ever became available, I would have one. The recordable MD’s came out before recordable CD’s, so I bought the very first MD model Sony came out with and and still have it. I used it for field recordings. The Atrac codec was better than .mp3’s but still not as good as CD’s. Pop music sounded okay, but not symphony orchestras. Sony did a horrible job at marketing their proprietary stuff and did not come out with digital input/output until too late.

[TexasRepublic]

“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.”

CDs are made from polycarbonate plastic. There could be different grades of plastic. I have 2 Telarc label disks that cracked after 20 years sitting in ideal storage conditions. I see lots of vinyl records that date to the late 1940s, but none of them cracked just sitting there like the CDs.

[sionnsar]

And the worst thing about the 8-track is that it wants to change tracks, cbong, right in the middle of the drum solo of In A Gadda Da Vida.

That's why I have InAGaddaDaVida on a 16GB microSD card in my MP3 player. Ripped straight from the original vinyl LP.

[sionnsar]

Geezer Geek ping.

This is a very low-volume ping list (typically days to weeks between pings).
FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off this list.

[gathersnomoss]

I carried a trunk of 8-tracks in my Buick Skylark. It held 64 cartridges. It was huge.

Ka-chunk.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Do you plan to have some memories of them on your tombstone....

If we still get tombstones in a few years.

[CholeraJoe]

We’ll probably all be buried in mayonnaise jars.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Has the mini-CD totally gone away...?

[Terabitten]

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. Thanks in advance for any responses; I’m not an expert so I may just appreciate the info without replying.

You're both right and wrong about the compression.

Think of it this way: Imagine a three minute long film clip, that's 180 seconds, right? Now imagine a "sampling rate" of 1 sample per second - one frame of video each second. It'd be unwatchable. Now imagine a sampling rate of a million frame per second - it'd look great.

MP3 works the same way. 64kbps (kilobytes per second) will make a voice-only recording that you can understand, but it won't sound great. 256kbps is, for all intents and purposes, the same as listening live.

Here's a resource: mp3 bitrates

[Terabitten]

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.

I agree. It's also a realization that CD's have been overpriced for years.

You should be able to buy a cd of ANY non-new music release for well under $5.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Searched on archival cds

Found this:

Archival Gold CD-R

*******************************EXCERPT******************************

Don't trust your precious memories to just any storage media. The innovative materials found in Archival Gold CD-R's make them one of the most reliable storage mediums available. CD-R's are known to deteriorate quickly due to Earth's common elements: ultraviolet light, heat, and humidity. Using N.I.S.T.'s (National Institute of Standards and Technology) accelerated aging process to test the longevity of CD-R media, the Archival Gold CD-R's have been shown to safely store your images for more than 300 years.