Replace Your Music....Again

sethadam1 writes "I was not at all surprised to find that experts are predicting the death of the compact disc in as little as 5 years. This article over at Ananova suggests the next format of music will be little fingernail-sized cards. As cool as these sound, is anyone else worried that sneaky industry folks might try to distribute all new music in DRM'ed WMA files?" Yeah, this description sounds basically like bigger Magic Gate, that wonderful situation where you can pay more than normal to get DRM. Update: 11/13 16:45 GMT by H : As RobertB-DC pointed, this is sort of a dupe - see our previous article.

Already here in Montreal

[denisbergeron]

You can buy music in a fingernail card in Toysrus with rhe little reader for 10$ (Can) and you can buy card with two or three song for +/- 5$ (Can)

Indy Musicians

[PurdueGraphicsMan]

One thing I can't help but wonder is how these changes in the medium we distribute music on will effect the low-budget independant musician. As a musician that's tried to produce albums without the help of a record label I have to wonder if a medium like this could do wonders for bands with no money and big dreams. I know a few years back it was rather expensive just to produce cds in bulk and cds are very inexpensive. But now, if they have these little polymer chips, it should be of almost no cost to the musician. Anyone else follow my thinking?

No way, not that fast

[scovetta]

5 years in a very short time on the market as pervasive as the music industry. I still buy videotapes (no, not Betamax), but how long have DVDs been available? Consumer demand will keep CDs rolling until either (a) the quality of this new media is much better, (b) they offer some added value (cheaper?), or (c) CDs are simply no longer produced. I doubt that (c) would happen because the RIAA goes into fits if their revenue drops 10%, how'd they like a 50-60% drop because people don't want to buy chip players (for their homes, cars, walkmans, etc)-- it's too big of a change, too soon. Maybe 10 years...

Player inclusive

[Anonymous Coward]

I could imagine that those cards could play the stored music by themselves, to make it impossible to reach the digital data

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Form factor won't work

[RobertB-DC]

Yes, we all know this article is a dupe [slashdot.org], but Ananova slanted the data to look at CDs in particular.

The problem with replacing CDs with this technology is the form factor:

Scientists say each paper-thin device could store more than a gigabyte of information - equivalent to 1,000 high quality images - in one cubic centimetre of space.

I have enough trouble finding my CDs in the car without having to worry about them blowing away in a stiff breeze. If size were the issue, CD Singles would be released on half-size discs... in fact, many pop albums don't seem to have more than 30 minutes of music anyway.

The best way to incorporate this technology in a consumer-oriented music distribution would be to enclose it in a larger plastic enclosure with an interface to the player. Something like this [geocities.com], perhaps?

Re:No thanks

[gricholson75]

That's why you make a new copy every few years.

Re:Benefit of the upgrade

[metallicagoaltender]

Considering things of that nature are already available with current technology, shitcanning CDs in favor of these little cards isn't really necessary.

However, if they're willing to sell these things at a reasonable price as the primary medium for music, and end the gouging that exists with CDs, I'd consider it a step forward. If it's just a new medium the industry can overcharge for, then screw it.

Re:Indy Musicians

[valdis]

A co-worker has a band, and they've released like 8 or 9 albums. Last I asked him, the break-even point for CD's was a press run of only 500 or so. And once you have a good master, a second press run is a lot cheaper.

I think their biggest expense for their last album was studio time, even though they did it in a small local (downtown, in the evenings, upstairs from some store that closed at 5PM) studio.

Re:Indy Musicians

[PurdueGraphicsMan]

Good points.

You bring up a very good point with studio time. However, if there was a way to easily produce these chips from a home studio (like CDs) then not only would the artist be able to record the album with no costs (other than studio equipment) but they would also be able to create and distribute very high quality recordings (the chips) that wouldn't loose quality over time.

I've tried to create my own cds and then burn them on to store-bought CDRs and I've noticed that they don't work very well on low-end CD players. If I could create my own high-quality chips that never loose quality and will sound the same on every "player" that would be the way to go.

Just my $0.02

Recorded Music is Dead

[Sleen]

Its not just the death of cds, but recorded music that is coming. Lets face it, there is nothing special about buying a protools rig, some microphones and cruising the highschools for some talent. The recorded medium is already dead. The emphasis will shift away from automatic music generators, autotune, and all the dj's masquerading as talent.

Music was, and is still a PROCESS, not a file, in the system.

More and more musicians, even the electronic ones are adopting the discipline of creating as opposed to REPAIRING music.

For superior event driven acoustic phenomena, I recommend these tools [nativeinstruments.com]

5 years? It's not even proven technology!

[nerph]

From New Scientist [newscientist.com]:

To store the memory, the researchers use the wires and the diode surrounding the PEDOT blob to run either a high or a low current through it.

...
In their paper in Nature, the researchers describe just one such junction. But for a memory application, the device will need many more.

So they've gotten it to work with one BLOB of this polymer! I haven't read the Nature article but elsewhere I can't find any mention on how they plan on achieving the suggested density. This sounds like a cool idea but there also seems to be a lot of Marketing Hype(tm) mixed in.

Re:fp

[mirko]

They have very few to catch consumers this time : when the CD was out, they argued the quality was better and so on.
Now, we all have CDs which is an uncompressed, perfect 16bit copy of music.
As of yet, most people are really happy with their CDs because the recorded stuff is in stereo (originally, so there's very few interest converting it to 5.1) and they won't easily differentiate their 16 vs 24bit resolutions so, it will be damn' hard to sell them something new.

Re:What?

[PhxBlue]

I'd rather have just a plain audio CD. I can record it in the format of my choice, and then do any of the things you describe above. If it's provided in a digital file format, it may or may not allow me to make CDs, load it onto portable devices, etc.; but if it's in an audio format, I control the format it takes once I record it onto my hard drive.

Re:Why?

[fishbowl]

My riovolt runs a battery charge out pretty quickly playing a CD, because the disc spins the whole time. But when playing MP3's off a cd, it only spins the disc when it needs to read and decode. Runs much, much longer on a battery charge.

If we could get CDDA ripping speed faster, we could have players that simply rip the audio from the CD and play it from RAM.

Re:Benefit of the upgrade

[balloonhead]

Of course they'll do the same as with CDs. Even though tapes cost more to produce, they're less expensive. It'll be the same with these.

However, the good bit is - now they'll drop the prices of CDs to what tapes are now. I can't see a reason to change - CDs offer considerable advantages over tapes (particularly not having to FF and REW to the right bit) which these wouldn't offer over CDs. Except size, which is not a huge benefit when we have cheap MP3 players which we can easily use to carry music around if we want to jog to it.

Re:Indy Musicians

[WaysideWeasle]

My band just finished recording our first album. Looking at duplication, it's going to run close to $1,100 for a run of 500 CD's, but $1,700 for 1000. There's so much more cost savings at 1000 CD's than at 500. But to bring this back on topic, I'm curious if this new technology will make it cheaper to duplicate and distribute music. If so, then the indie musicians could very well put a huge dent in the Record Label's income. But I can't stop wondering...Why does someone need all of that storage space for an album? I can understand it being used by consumers to compile playlists and such, but most bands put out 10-13 songs on an album, and I can't see how the file sizes could require GB's of space, unless they plan on placing each track on the album instead compiling them. I could then envision the label's encrypting each track so the consumer would have to go through great lengths to rip the songs. Imagine having to rip 23 tracks per song individually. They could then even place the tracks in random locations on the memory card and create a program that instructs the device that reads the card what order to read the tracks in. Sounds like a lot of trouble to prevent people from sharing music, which someone would figure out how to crack in weeks anyways.