Posted on 01/12/2008 8:58:36 AM PST by george76
CD’s are still a nice archival format.
I just pulled out a copy of Ted Curson’s “Tears for Dolphy”. It includes the complete instrumentation, dates and location of the studio it was recorded in, a cover photo big enough to see, composer credits on the 9 songs it includes, and four pages of liner notes by jazz critic Alan Bates.
That CD is one of several hundred on the shelf in front of me. It’s fast and easy to find what I’m looking for among them.
I’ve downloaded a lot of them into iTunes, which is great for on-the-go listening. I appreciate not having to take my collection with me.
But I still think CDs are a better format for serious music collectors than iTunes.
It is probably the case that most music listeners are not serious music collectors, however.
CDs and vinyl can't bring us the richest audio experiences audiophiles are commonly willing to pay for presently.
Since 5.1 audio (die, 7.1, 10.2!) is a such a favored, existing field in which to construct an appreciably more enjoyable musical over CD audio, and the fact that there's so much material already prepared in 5.1, which would be a great loss if it's not carried forward. SACD ad DVD-A weren't able to reach critical mass, as has been the case with many such BetaMax or HD-DVD-type ventures. Unencrypted, grass-roots DVD5.1 hasn't yet caught on well, and licensing there hasn't led to popular commercial products, partly because of the entrenched audio industry it threatens. I think removable Terabyte platters have a good chance of being all we need. Terabyte platters will be made of similarly appearing material as our current CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, HD-DVDs, etc.
DVDs and Blu-Rays will not be acceptable for several reasons, one of the biggest being DRM. But another reason is having to pay license fees to DTS and Dolby, audio formats that offer little useful, once storage media can handle 24-bit 96kHz audio streams without compression.
Where audio streams were previously compressed, once bandwidth in playback are sufficient to get open-source compressed high-def video and 8 independent audio streams simultaneously, the licensing gig of DRM middlemen will be finally be up, and garage based musicians will have the ball in their courts.
I'm tempted to say data-DVDs should be able to handle unencrypted rates such as those required to do the job above, making it a potential for surviving format, but in addition to the unfortunate lack of success of current DVD5.1, it's yet to be seen whether Philips, Matsushita (now Panasonic) and the DVD-Forum's patent strangle hold could ever allow that potential to take hold, or whether defectors to relatively-attractive Terabyte platters would keep users from data migrating to reasonably-positioned data-DVDs. Those existing patent consortia probably will exact some continued life for themselves from the Terabyte platter manufacturers.
HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray's 50-100GB data size just won't be able to compete with a relatively open-source and royalty-unburdened Terabyte platter.
Digital Cinema and 4K has migrated to models that deliver full, unencrypted 24-bit data and license-free JPEG2000 video encryption, furthering the demise of DTS and Dolby, though a Dolby denied that a couple of days ago on the CES show floor, using information internal to Dolby that he said he was unable to share. (Stereography from Dolby ala "Beowulf" doesn't uniquely excite me, however, and that Dolby has picked it up and runs with it only strengthens the argument that they're looking for new products.)
HF
This is a great article and yours is a great post. That is exactly what is happening except that you have still missed one of the implications of your dream model of the music industry.
The CD audience has splintered widely and irretrievably. Classical fans are buying; celtic folk is doing OK; bluegrass is making a little move; the White Album still sells pretty well. What isn’t happening is a sufficient volume of new, multimillion, “popular” hits.
The problem is connected with bad marketing by the companies who are complaining. They are used to having control of the tastes of the CD buyers. They are having a hard time adapting to a world in which the consumer controls the industry.
It won’t be long before the marketers who are actually selling stuff now— Amazon? CDbaby? the survivors of the major music publishers? will figure out how to push some of these products and the industry will rise like a Phoenix.
Hip-hop has been a nice ride for a while, but the residual riches that followed Sinatra, Elvis and the Beatles and Stones just hasn’t materialized.
You are going to have this kind of thing in an industry that depends on pure popular taste.
Don’t believe anything that says that there is a problem with the medium or the physical format. The problem is that the record company marketers don’t have a clue what the audience wants. They don’t have enough marketing pull to make the market, and they have no clue how to profit from a fractured market.
Little guys are still publishing great music in dozens of different genres.
My daughter is paying her way through a good college on her CD’s. Many thousands of people have heard her perform. No record label has ever touched her career and probably never will.
“They don’t usually notice what’s going on until it’s a done deal.”
There was talk on another thread of RIAA going to congress to get a law requiring digital tattlers in all digital players, so that some investigator can check to see if you have a bunch of ripped CDs on your storage media.
Congress can certainly jump in and “help”, and RIAA and others are pestering them for solutions, so I would not rule it out.
I should somehow check out the iTunes site, just wondering if there is a decent oldies selection. Meanwhile, I just get my tuneage the old fashioned way, I go to the used disk places to replace vinyl I have or used to have, or I check stuff out of the library. Right now I’ve got Spirit “Time Circle” anthology, Steve Hackett “Please Don’t Touch”, a best-of Robert Palmer, and another one, along with three videos.
I don’t know why a person would bother with XM or Sirious except for maybe in the car. With internet radio stations of all types
you can get software that creates individual MP3’s of each
song they’re playing while the shows streaming
http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/sr32/
You can also purchase wireless speakers to listen to the shows anywhere in your house
http://shopping.msn.com/prices/shp/?itemId=572659387,ptnrid=169,ptnrdata=17939316
Thanks for the ping, but what is a mempile?
Sorry if I’m asking something obvious. English isn’t my native language.
That is _exactly_ what the world is coming to. An engineer working in a recording studio will be more on the order of a consultant polishing almost finished ideas presented to him/her.
Oh, okay.
Don’t ask me about high-tech things, I’m just a simple Mizrahi! :)
I do not believe that for a second.
8-)
I’m just a simple Mizrahi! :)
Hopefully not simple in my mind, but we are “the primitives of Israel”.
London? Do they still produce music in England? The last group I've heard of coming out of the UK was "Spice Girls," and that was 10 years ago.
Where has all the British music gone? Back in the 80s, half of the groups were out of the UK!
Now all we have is Hip Hop and Gangsta Rap...
Garbage is the word for it.
I thought Mempile’s invention was the best news of the day, and wrote about it on my blog:
http://xenohistorian.wordpress.com
So, is this a disc that I can use to burn all my mp3s to one disc? This would be good news for me as I have a huge pile of DVDs filled with my mp3s & it’s such a mess.
Thanks
I'll pay them .88 a song direct, as long as the license agreement gives me the right to keep it on my hard drive, copy it to my mp3 player and back it up on a CD.
Three copies, three different formats, absolute enjoyment of what I paid for, and perfectly legal.
I hope a great band out there is paying attention.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.