Is the CD Becoming Obsolete? 645
mrnomas writes "What's to blame for the declining CD sales? Is it that manufacturers are putting out more and more 'safe' (read: crap) music while independent musicians are releasing online? Is it because iTunes is now the third largest music retailer in the country? Or is it just that CDs are becoming obsolete?" Quoting: "Forbes.com [ran] an article showing that CD sales are expected to be down 20% in 2008 (slightly higher than the 15% drop initially predicted). Why such a drop? What's truly happening is a gradual shift away from physical media to downloadable formats. What this indicates, so far, is that US sales of digital music will be growing at an estimated rate of 28% in 2008, however physical sales will drop even further, resulting in a net overall decline.""
Not yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Informative)
That said, yeah, a lot of new music has been so overprocessed and made loud [performermag.com] that the they don't really benefit much from a CD. Still, people who listen to classical etc will be able to tell the difference.
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Interesting)
The music industry should realize the CD is a fading format. They need to start pushing 192khz audio dvds. They have almost the same manufacturing cost as CDs. And considering the number of homes that have surround sound system in the US, this is quality that could easily be appreciated.
(under 25 and appreciates good sound quality)
Hmmm, move up market... nah... (Score:5, Insightful)
SA-CD or DVD-A could have been their salvation, but that would have required pushing the format (all new releases in SA-CD/CD Hybrid discs, so you can use your old CD player and play the material). Houses have LOTS of CD players, 2 cars, home stereo, maybe the master bedroom and a teenagers room. Nobody is putting SA-CD players EVERYWHERE, but they might have bought 1-2 of them if all new CDs supported the new format.
Teenagers like to listen to music... SA-CD boomboxes would have helped make that a reality. But they decided that hey, let's try to collect $30 a SA-CD, and crushed the market. If they had moved up market, and included AAC/WMA/MP3 files ON THE DISC, people might have traded the MP3s online (but they can do that now with a simple CD purchase) and preserved/grew the market.
However, they decided to focus on "plugging the analog hole" and "preventing piracy," making the formats more complicated, players more expensive, and didn't release Hybrids... who the hell was going to buy a SA-CD that they couldn't play in their car. I remember my dad diligents copying every new CD, that went in the stereo case, to a cassette deck for the car for a while... that's unnecessary when Hybrid tech exists, and impossible when you don't make it easy to copy the new SA-CD to CD.
The desire to listen to music on the iPod in no way endangered CD sales inherently, but that would have required more effort to release good CDs, not overcompress the music by making everything LOUD, and encouraged better quality hardware... companies like Sony that do hardware and software could have raised the bar with inexpensive SA-CD bedroom stereos that sounded okay...
However, CDs sound better on a decent system than MP3s, and SA-CDs no doubt sound better, but the refusal to support SA-CD killed it. Digital audio is damned convenient, busy moving my old CD-Jukebox (400 disc, takes forever to change CDs if you want to mix up tracks) to a lossless media server, but there was no reason for the studios not to make that a reality, other than laziness and a fear of change.
Alex
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But as insightful as your post is, why do you say
I'd say FLAC+WMA would be the premier choice, the one being high-end for audiophiles, the other being playable on dang near any modern (car) stereo. (And yes I could have said MP3 instead of WMA, but Fraunhofer's licensing is even more bonkers than Microsoft's.)
People don't care about sound quality (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Not yet (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a degree to which the psychoacoustic models that schemes like mp3 use actually clean up the noisy mess that all or most all CDs present. The way these schemes hollow out the back of the sound produces something clearer and more delicate - more like live music straight from the amps. Except it really sounds quite different from live music. Good vinyl, on the other hand, can be indistinguishable from live performance if your eyes are closed. CDs never had that. So it's easy to walk away from them. All the discussion of "lossless" misses the point that at the rates CDs are sampled there's already a high degree of loss. Music is inherently analog; digital has to get an order of magnitude better (at least) before it'll be so realistic that it's worth a premium.
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Funny)
Ohhh. really. I have a pair of thousand dollar cables to sell you.....
Realistically most ears can't hear the distinction between new vinyl and a CD / MP3. I can't tell reasonable bitrate Mp3, CD, or vinyl. They simply are good enough for most.
Re:Not yet (Score:4, Informative)
Are you a Kimber cable rep? The silver low resistance cables rock!
http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AU
The link is for those who don't believe anyone would pay a grand for a patch cord.
It is real.
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Re:Not yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not yet (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Funny)
I was just noticing the other day, it gets really quiet around here after I blow the dust out of my keyboard with that canned air stuff.
what does Bob Dylan know? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what does Bob Dylan know? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:what does Bob Dylan know? (Score:5, Informative)
Whate his Bobness was complaining about was the cheapo pc based mixing software and
associated hardware which young musicians were using instead of analog mixers tape decks etc.
And he definately had a point. A combination of low quality hardware, poor digitising algorithms
and sloppy mixing does produce audibly awful results compared with say an inexpensive 12 track mixer
and a good old tape recorder.
Are you honestly claiming... (Score:5, Informative)
Are you honestly claiming that you can hear frequencies higher than 22.050 kHz? Or noise components below -96dB? CDs may have poor sound in practice for all sorts of reasons, but the basic sampling of the analogue original is not one of them. Careless, thoughtless production and over-processing I can all too readily believe in, but not problems with the essential theory at the heart of it.
Re:Are you honestly claiming... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah...but, why do it? I mean, it is 'fun' to p
Re:Are you honestly claiming... (Score:5, Funny)
Its possible. Are you completely sure that the grandparent poster isn't a cat?
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Re:22KHz (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, you're wrong. The SHAPE of a waveform is caused by the frequency components it comprises. That's called Fourier's Theorem. If you strip away all of the higher harmonics that cause a waveform to look square in the time domain, you get a sinewave at the fundamental frequency. All periodic waveforms are built up from sinewaves of various frequencies (harmonics) and amplitudes, but all of these components are at a higher frequency than the fundamental. So a 22kHz sinewave is the same as a 22kHz squarewave that has been filtered to remove all the higher components. And the next highest component of a squarewave is at twice the fundamental, or 44kHz.
I will concede is that practical real-world filters can be poor, and any harmonic that leaks through to the A to D conversion stage produces aliasing artifacts well down in the audible range that do sound terrible. So the filter ahead of the A to D is the most important thing in the system in most respects. Making a really good filter in the analogue domain is hard, which is why oversampling to 96kHz is a popular solution - not because there are any genuine audio components above 22kHz that really matter, but because it allows a simpler/more effective filter to be used (after all, it has so much more space to work with between 22 kHz and 96 kHz as opposed to 22 kHz and 44 kHz, and more space means it can be less steep and therefore has less phase distortion and 'smearing') and the resulting digitised audio will sound a lot better. The problem with this argument is that professional audio equipment does this as a matter of course, so the aliasing isn't (or shouldn't be) there on the CD, even though it is subsequently downsampled to 16 bits and 44.1 kHz. And the reason that professional gear uses 24 bits or more for the amplitude is both to give it headroom and to provide enough resolution to preserve quality while doing mathematical processing on the samples. Same reason you use long integers instead of shorts when you know you'll be multiplying them together, even though the eventual result will still fit in a short. By the time it's finally mastered to a CD, 16 bits and 44.1 kHz should be adequate for excellent fidelity PLAYBACK. So those claiming that CDs sound worse than LPs are either deluding themselves, or are really hearing the result of poor workmanship in the mastering.
On that last point, if you listen to a very high quality label CD like, e.g. Deutsche Gramophon, and the lastest poptart commodity release, I think you'll hear a difference. The theory and best practice of CD technology is sound; what isn't is the actual practice in many cases (i.e over-compression, excessive effects processing, way too many downmixes that stretch even 24-bit resolution beyond what it can reasonably do). In other words maybe what you're hearing on a bad CD are rounding errors in the processing, and nothing to do with the original sampling. It's another case of where the music machine doesn't really care about the "consumer" of the "product", they just want your money.
Aliasing (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of using 96Khz or 192Khz isn't to have a higher max freq (due to Nyquist), but having a better resolution in the audible range to avoid aliasing. A 12Khz sound played on a digital system running @ 48Hz will be nice (at least, unless you suffer from presbyaccousia). A 12010 Hz sound on the same system may suffer some aliasing (a full wave doesn't quite exactly take 4 sample to produce and the maxima could be missed, giving some kind of beating in the sound). On a 192Khz system, sound in the 12Khz range all take some 16 samples and even if they aren't quite exactly aligned with the sample rate, there's much less risk of distorting the waveform.
Nyquist theorem gives us information about the highest frequency that *could* be recorder/reproduced using a given sample frequency, *if all condition are optimal*. It does not guarantee us that all sound will be perfectly reproduced up to this frequency. In fact, the recording of a N/2 sound on a N frequency sample could also completly fail if, by chance, the dephasing was such that the sampler did measure at the exact moment when the source cross (either rising or falling) the 0. What the proponent of 96 or 192Khz are saying is, if the sampling frequency is an order of magnitute high (say N * 16 for the sampler) this is much less likely to happen, and you *mostly* have optimal conditions for *any* sound up to your target frequency, even if the sound has funny dephasing.
Re:Are you honestly claiming... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Interesting)
Translation: It is the size of CDs that affect sound. Records are bigger. Bigger is better. That's just common sense.
And the guy was *never* technically brilliant. Quite the opposite. It's somewhat strange to be lectured on issues like sound quality by a guy whose sound was.... rough. I don't deny the guy's influence, and he's undeniably recorded some important stuff, but that doesn't make him God, or even stop him being a Grumpy Old Man.
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a time related phenomena, and is bound to the survival rate of cds vs earlier media formats. Forget the BS coming out of the RIAA or the publishers they just don't want to admit to falling sales as a result of the market channel basically being flooded out and older ages groups dropping out of the buying market.
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Vinyl mixed by the right engineers and played on the right (and not totally ludicrously expensive) kit sounds a whole shitload more like live music than CD's do. This may be because CD's lose resolution as sounds get quieter, or because they lose resolution as sounds get higher frequencies, or because there is no headroom whatsoever, or because producers these days drop shitloads of compressor on and lose dynamic range
Blues albums suffer the most. Something that is supposed to be played by four depressed men in a nasty looking bar in Louisiana comes out sounding like it's been played on general midi.
Like it or not, something has been lost from music. The good news is that it's still there in live gigs and with totally rampant piracy (if we're honest) and thieving bastard record industry executives it seems that the only hope for the bands themselves is to play live more often. Hurrah!
Dave
"Mixed by the right engineers" is the key (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or someone who doesn't have TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS to drop on a record player, perhaps.
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Re:Not yet (Score:5, Informative)
This is actually due to a specific type of compression that's deliberately applied to some modern recordings before they get to a CD master. Compression was also applied to analogue recordings because some sources (especially classical music) exceeded the signal to noise ratio of even the best vinyl playback equipment, so handling the loudest passages without clipping would have meant that the quiet parts disappeared below the noise of the playback medium without compression.
"Vinyl doesn't necessarily suffer from this problem as badly, as it is an analogue medium, and doesn't have strictly defined maximum or minimum amplitudes. "
The maximum and minimum amplitudes are defined by an analogue device's signal to noise ratio, which is around 55db for the best cartridges / laser vinyl players. CD audio on the other hand has a S/N ratio well in excess of 100db, i.e. 100,000 times as much dynamic range.
"All but the very first CDs have serious amplitude problems. One of the only CDs I can think of that was mastered at fairly low levels is 'Brothers in Arms' by Dire Straits"
As was the case with vinyl when it was the dominant format (which, given the fact that I was born in 1960, was a big part of my life for many years), how well recorded something is depends on the sort of music one listens to. Most vinyl pop and rock during the 1960s and 1970s was compressed to hell and had artificially enhanced stereo because it was intended to be played on cheap record players with auto-changers, spring-balanced tone arms, and 3 watt/channel amplifiers connected to 5 inch elliptical full-range speakers that were extremely close to each other. A small number of rock albums had superior recording quality, and therefore became "reference" pieces for hi-fi retailers (e.g. Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon), but most customer demos used classical pieces because they were the only ones that didn't sound worse on a high-end rig than a cheap one. Some expensive classical releases were advertised as being "direct cut", i.e. the signal from the microphones was mixed directly onto grooves instead of being recorded to tape first because audiophiles were willing to pay a lot more for something that had fewer "lossy" stages between musicians and them, and these were commonly used to demonstrate the benefits of extremely expensive component audio systems.
"Ironically, this is one of the primary reasons for the existence of the RIAA. They did a decent job for a while with vinyl, but never established any sort of standard for CDs."
They didn't do anything with vinyl beyond selecting an existing equalisation curve (RCA Victor's New Orthographic Curve) and making it a standard. It was jothing more than recording pre-emphasis / playback de-emphasis system that reduced surface noise and groove size, while making rumble more of a problem, but there was nothing in it to ensure that the initial recording being put on vinyl had decent audio quality, hence the fact that the vast majority of records sounded very bad indeed. R.I.A.A. had no role to play with CD audio parameters, because these had already been set by the Philips / Sony "redbook" standard, which all audio CD players implement (although most modern ones also implement certain newer standards too).
Simple explanation: gifts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple explanation: gifts (Score:5, Insightful)
Ardent readers of my writings (both of you) will know that I am no great friend of existing copyright laws, that copying is an inevitability of advancing technology, and believe the regime should re-engineered and replaced with a system that preserves reputations rather than proscribes copying and/or who can manufacture things.
...But even so, I still think what you're doing is really, really cheesy.
Schwab
Re:Simple explanation: gifts (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to do this, the proper way to do so is to give the person the (wrapped, unopened) CD as a gift, and then, some days later -- not when you give it, you dolt -- when the person says they enjoyed the CD, ask if they would lend it to you. Don't say, "...so that I can rip it, because I bought it for you thinking I'd be able to make a copy for myself..." because that's tacky, too.
They say it's the thought that counts, and your thought is "What's in this gift for me?"
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That's like giving someone a six pack of beer with one missing. Sure, it could be really good beer and the six pack might exceed some arbitrary spending limit, but how tacky can you get?
I get that the gift market point is why you got modded up, but I still think that's a stretch at best. I can't think of anyone who cares about getting the actu
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Re:Not yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Get-off-my-lawnism aside, I've found that most people who are satisfied with iPod quality music have either never been exposed to proper audio reproduction, or they just don't care that much. Not everyone wants a medium-rare filet; some people just want a cheeseburger.
Cheeseburgers and blown-off arms in the same post. Take that, mods!
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Informative)
No, instead they get a data DVD, or a hard drive, or just a big file that they download. The result is the same - they're using the master.
It sounds like you saw some TV show somewhere with a guy sitting at a vinyl pressing plant who puts an optical disc into a machine and you assumed it was an audio CD. It wasn't. Music today is recorded (usually at 192khz/24 or 32 bit) by computer onto hard drives, where it can then be mastered any number of ways, including onto tape but also onto any data storage medium you like.
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Informative)
(BTW - if you need an LP cut, look up Paul Gold in Brooklyn. He is who we went with, and his work is excellent.)
Vinyl is a lot of fun!! (Score:4, Interesting)
This is totally flamebait. As another poster pointed out, you're wrong about the master-to-vinyl vs. master-to-cd process. But that's not why I'm replying...
I buy a lot of vinyl. Not because I think it sounds better, just because I like it better. Here's why:
As far as the sound goes... my LPs sound every bit as good as your CDs. Yeah, my turntable is an ornery pig sometimes, but it's usually just a loose cable or something. So, are CDs obsolete? I think so. Especially in the retail world. Every now and then, an album comes out that I want that isn't available on vinyl--in that case, I usually cave and buy the CD. Like I said, though, it's becoming more and more common to find every new release I'm interested in on wax.
PS: Between the time I started typing this and the time I pressed preview, your post got moderated down by 2. BONUS!!
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As far as CDs sticking around because of the "inferior quality" of compressed tracks goes-
Give me a break. Nobody cares. Good enough is
Re:Not yet (Score:4, Insightful)
The other thing is that, with most people just snagging a song or two from an album because they heard it on the radio, they will never really know if they like the rest of the band's work. I've bought cds for one or two songs and ended up liking the rest of the album.
I'm just kind of tired of the teenage crowd constantly crowing that the CD doesn't matter. Heck, I'm only in my 20's and I see the benefit to CDs, but that may also be the occasional DJ in me.
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Insightful)
This is always one of the big arguments people come up with against the CD, and there is such an obvious retort to it that I just don't understand why you guys don't see it:
You need to start listening to some better artists. Good bands don't put out albums with only 2 or 3 good songs on them.
And yes, that means those 2 or 3 songs you like probably aren't very good either.
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Quit being a snob! Look again at what the poster said, and then apply it to your scenario without immediately disqualifying yourself on the basis that you posess Superior Culture
In other words:
Listen to better [blues|jazz|classical|classic soul/funk|pop tripe], and a greater percentage of what actually gets put onto a CD will actually be goo
I Still Buy CDs (Score:5, Insightful)
With downloaded music, not only is the audio lossy, but then I also have to spend my precious time producing archival or car listening CD-Rs on my own separately-purchased, questionably-durable media, labeled with a Sharpie or some mediocre inkjet-printed sticker.
And what about rare music? When some remix/promo single or obscure album/12" is long out of print and not carried by places like the iTunes Store, and the torrents have all died down, I may still be able to track down an authentic, full-quality release at a used/collectible shop. I doubt I could be so lucky with old download-only releases, where any company hosting them would likely be sued out of business.
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The bent appeal of this is the irony of me launching my own personal CDs at the RIAA when they come 'a knockin', Tony Montana style, from a custom CD launcher. I was going to only download MP3s, but the mental image of me on the balcony shouting, "Say 'ello to my
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If you had a sleazy friend he might say to you: "I had sex with like 5 women today!". Make of it what you will.
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But 98% of the time, I will buy a CD and then rip it. I will get much better quality with my own rip than I will buying from an online store. Even worse are the files on P2P networks. Legal issues aside, most of them are ripped by 15-year olds that have no clue as to how to rip a high quality file (i.e. with high bitrates).
If the online music stores want to switch f
FLAC (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC [wikipedia.org]
Microsoft Media Player doesn't support it, but who uses that anyway (besides ET and n00bz)?
Speaking for myself (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe others feel the same way?
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Yeah, I voted with my feet (and wallet) a few years ago.
I go see local bands, and if they have CDs on sale at the door, I'll buy there. That's the extent of my music spending now, and I used to buy half a dozen CDs a month.
Local Bands & Indy Labels selling directly (Score:3)
Also, it's gotten to be much easier for performers to put together their own CDs, and for small music producers to build garage studios for when perfor
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track arrangement (Score:3, Insightful)
Say, aren't people doing this right now?
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As someone who, in the old days, would spend days poring over every detail of each album I'd purchase when I gathered money together, I hear you. But I think the album is largely over except as a kind of convenience package. Just a thought - how does the fact of Dylan's ever changing versions of
It's the bands (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I find myself more interested in bands that put their music out on the net and/or sell CD-Rs themselves. (Nerdcore, Wizard Rock, etc.) I can't remember the last time I bought music from someone who the RIAA 'represents.'
This seems to parallel the increasing niche-ification of magazines and their cannibalization by the web. Not at all suprising, really.
inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not just music competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the 1960s, 70s and 80s had decade-defining music. There's no such music for the 2000's. Not really that much worth buying.
A Silly Thing About Vinyl (Score:5, Insightful)
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Back in, um, '92? I went to my favorite used music store, and they had set out a milk crate filled w/ abandoned albums that had scratches and the people who brought them in weren't able to sell. I bought the whole crate for $3 and covered a wall with them.
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A record album was a fairly large thing, and, covers were small posters in their own right.
Yeah, I grew up with them, loved them, and I remember people bitching about the small size of CDs when they came out, but I never missed it. Probably because I got a booklet with the CD (probably same total area, so it was a push.)
Then the booklets got smaller and I never missed it. Probably because by then I had the web and didn't need to stare at physical liner notes while listening to an album.
Now I've got D/Ls
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I still buy CDs, and here is why (Score:5, Interesting)
2. I have a semi-permanent copy which I can re-rip as many times as I want.
3. Shiny.
Re:And here is why you shouldn't: (Score:5, Informative)
Not Just Away From CDs (Score:5, Insightful)
People are finally able to buy singles again. How much of this drop is due simply to people only buying the two good tracks from an album and leaving the other eight behind?
Re:Not Just Away From CDs (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, the irony of this is their own marketing tactics have made this possible. It's not as much the rest of the tracks are crap, but they're just not marketed, if you don't listen to them enough, you don't like them, and think they're worse, and hence not buy 'em.
And hence the "one good single and the rest is filler" talk.
To confirm this, just try to listen to a new "super album" without ever hearing the marketed single (hard, I admit). You'll never guess which is the song marketed on 80% of the albums. It's actually often decided post factum after the album has been recorded.
Forbes.com [ran] an article showing that CD sales are expected to be down 20% in 2008 (slightly higher than the 15% drop initially predicted). Why such a drop? What's truly happening is a gradual shift away from physical media to downloadable formats.
Exactly right, and this is why I'm pissing my pants laughing here watching the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray race. They seem to genuiely don't understand, that whoever wins, they both lose in the end. Just consider the amoutn of money spent on technology, production and marketing on those duds. That's funny, right.
Re:Not Just Away From CDs (Score:5, Interesting)
I would say that (for the past few years at least), good solid albums have stuck out more in my mind than individual singles have. This is especially true among independent artists.
A few somewhat recent albums that I've enjoyed as a whole (in no particular order)
and the list goes on.... There have been quite a few high-profile "popular" albums released by popular artists such as Green Day, My Chemical Romance, Justin Timberlake, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, all of which are very much intended to be played as an entire album.
At a show I recently went to, I bought the band's CD on a whim because I enjoyed the show. As the guy handed it to me (he was the band's bassist), he encouraged me to copy it, share it, email it, or "do whatever you want to get the word out." The side you don't hear is that most small artists owe much their very existence to the internet.
So, no. The album is far from dead. Even though popular music has almost completely gone to shit in the US, the independent music scene is arguably the best it's ever been.
I hope not... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate downloaded music, I hate having nothing but some files and a printed out cover to show for my money (or no cover etc. if I'm not going to back them up individually).
I love having shelves of cds, with their cover art, their liner notes etc. I love the hard, physical format of them.
I'm forever worried that I'll lose or misplace, erase or whatever the tracks I've legally downloaded...
I want physical music delivery to remain dammit!
I won't buy downloadable music... (Score:3, Insightful)
too expensive (Score:2)
None of the Above (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA, meet MPAA. Sony, Universal, Warner - you're competing with yourselves.
Re:None of the Above (Score:4, Insightful)
Excellent point. The CD is generaly compressed to sound loud. The DVD has THX cert in most cases. In most cases a 5 year old film is marked down while a 5 year old CD is still at full retail. I buy DVD's pre-viewed for either 2,3, or 4 for $20. CD's are lower quality, have higher prices, have dropped technical standards for quality and the industry is attacking their best customers.
I bought more DVD's last week than I bought CD's all of last year. Guess why?
The music cartel has failed to compete for the entertainment dollar.
How about some new permissions given in the legal copies of their product? Say a public performance license? I have a good sound system. The CD's come with a license which prohibits taking my CD's and DJ'ing a school dance or other performance. I used to do some DJ type stuff at a hobby level until I found out it was in violation of the terms. To get legal was way too expensive for 3-6 gigs a year, so I simply folded. Needless to say this reduces the need to buy CD's by reducing their value simply because their use is restricted.
That one item is one of many restricting the usefuleness of CD's and reduces their value. Inspite of the reduced value, the price remains quite high. Then they wonder why sales are poor. They need a cluestick. I'm watching u-tube at the moment watching Pink Floyd Live. I don't need the shiny disc to enjoy music anymore. Give me a valid reason to part with lots of hard earned cash for a restricted use item. I find more value elsewhere. I spend more on monthly internet than I ever used to spend on LP's and cassettes.
Money I used to spend on music is spent on better values elsewhere.
Shopping for CDs is shopping blind. (Score:2, Insightful)
Buying music at a Brick & Mortar is buying blind. Usually they only have a small selection available on preview machines.. i
Cost (Score:2)
I bought one Saturday (Score:4, Interesting)
1. I like it uncompressed, I probably couldn't hear the difference with the new iTunes DRM-free tracks, but I don't have to worry about recompressing them later and having the flaws come popping out.
2. I run linux and it's really a PITA to boot over to windows to use iTunes, and eMusic doesn't have some of the artist I enjoy.
3. The cover art and the convenience of having a disk for the car premade with a nice pressing is enjoyable.
4. I want to buy from artists I enjoy so they can keep making music
I don't see online distribution quite solving these things yet. ALthough, I will admit, most consumers are a lot more apathetic about these issues than me.
Classic responses (Score:5, Insightful)
2) the Audiophile Loudmouth. This one buys 24k gold plated CDs, listened to on a 20bit DAC feeding monster-cabled speakers that he bought at Best Buy.
3) the Pirate. You all suck, Gnutella FTW!
Face it, none of the dorkwads on here, myself included, is representative of the mouthbreathers at Walmart whose choices power the economy.
was the movie Memento based on all of you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where on earth did so many people on slashdot get the bizarre misapprehension that pop, lowest-common-denominator music is somehow more prevalent now than it's been in the past? It's always been there, at least since the 50's, and if you weren't conscious during the 80's and 90's, I assure you that the majority of music released during the decades was "safe" bubble gum pop. Think back, do you remember that music? No? Of course you don't, it was immensely forgettable and put out for a quick buck.
And I know that 10 years from now the same people who try to paint this phenomenon as new will be repeating the same mantra again and again, "remember back in the early 2000s when music was good, before they started releasing commercialized garbage?".
Not obsolete. Too #!@$# expensive. (Score:3, Insightful)
Kind of offtopic....
WTF don't companies who make boomboxes that can read mp3 CDs put DVD drives in instead? It sure would be nice to have a 4GB fully integrated solution for weekend camping. Oh well. I'll just stick to the sansa with a boomtube, I guess.
Why CDs are good (Score:3, Insightful)
I prefer CDs. (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, it seems like I'm more restricted in how I can use my music when purchasing online. It seems easier for a company to control content that way. Sure, there are ways to defeat any copy-protection, but sometimes it's a hassle.
I'd rather buy a CD, convert the songs I want into MP3s and be done with it. That way I have the comfort of knowing I have a reliable, high quality backup which I can even stick in my sound system when I'm so inclined.
So going online I'd spending as much as I have with CDs, but I end with with nothing physical to show for it. No album art, no booklet, not CD, nothing. Just some crappy 600x600 jpg if I'm lucky and an MP3. Maybe I'll embrace that medium some day, but only when it's evolve far beyond its current form.
Top 5 reasons why I like CDs (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Better quality sound than lossy formats like MP3
3. Album art
4. Out of print, import, and rare CDs (which most of my CD purchases are) may become collector's items down the road
5. Convenient backup if you lose the ripped FLACs
Need storage-independent format (Score:3, Insightful)
Loudness War (Score:3, Informative)
Serves em right (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not making a defense of piracy here, I'm just saying that RIAA members made some really BAD business decisions back in the day, the main result being that they now have to rely on a computer manufacturer to give them the digital release portal they should have built for themselves. Serves the idiots right.
CDs are not obsolete (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to OWN my music. I want it to be uncompressed, un-DRMed, and I don't want to have to pay for it all again should my MP3 player die, or my hard disk bite the big one. If I change MP3 player brands, I want my music to be compatable, and to not have to rebuy it.
CDs are great. They play everywhere. There's a CD player in my car. My car does not have an MP3 player that I can "sync" with my music library, nor does it have a way to connect my MP3 player to my Car's audio system.
The notion that CDs are becoming obsolete is absurd.
I don't pay a cent for any downloadable music that isn't the free and open and universal MP3, and even then I burn it to a CD so I can play it anywhere I want.
Besides, when you download, you don't get anything PHYSICAL. You don't get liner notes, lyrics, artwork, or even "track order". Music and albums are so much more than just collections of "singles". You lose all that on many MP3 players that you have to go out of your way to get the tracks to play in "album/CD order". And it's ridiculous to pay the same for a 20 second "interlude" track as you do for a 15 minute opus track (whether classic, pop, or rock). And finally, being forced to buy the whole CD to get a single song I liked has opened up my eyes and my tastes to lots of music I never, ever, would have heard on the radio. Generally my favorite tracks are not the singles.
So no, CDs are not obsolete. Not by a long shot.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not obsolete, but diminished... and inevitably so. (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with CDs is one largely created by the recording industry themselves, in particular, the major labels. In their continual efforts to marginalize artists and own an increasingly large portion of the market, they have drastically cut artist rosters, and increasingly relied on Big Hit Records to maintain their profit levels.
So a funny thing happened... they replaced "real" artists with those manufactured by the labels; not 100% across the board, but enough to make the hits extremely mandatory, every year.... there were no longer enough established artists with a long-term fan base to fill in the holes between hits. And art has never been something you could put on a production line.
In addition, most people have a fixed entertainment budget. When I was a kid, you could buy a record or a book, or go see a film, that was pretty much the extent of consumer media. These days, there's music (purchase or download), DVD, videogames, rentals, online subscriptions, etc. All competes for the same buck.
Legal downloads have become a kind of pressure release valve for much of the listening public. Rather than add to sales, they've reduced them.. the same people who might have chose "CD" over "Game" this month can now just download that hit or two, they only songs they really wanted anyway, and still spend most of their cash on the DVD or game or whatever. I grew up with album-oriented rock radio... I still listen to whole albums, still buy them. But the recording industry destroyed this model with their push to Hit oriented radio... sure, they'd like a CD with multiple hits, but in the downloading model, you have to win each hit purchase, not simply that first one that bags the CD. Most kids don't think in terms of albums, period. This is the same culture that took compilation CDs away from bad K-Tel TV ads and put them (the "Now that's what I call music!" series, for example) into the top 10... that's just another form of single.
I don't think CDs are necessary anymore, but until there's a lossless download available, with similar pricing, I won't be buying downloads. I did subscribe to eMusic.com sometime back, when they offered unlimited downloads (128kb/s MP3, yeah, but DRM-free), but I dropped it when they went to a limited model... which was single-oriented, even on an "indie" oriented service like eMusic. I can't see spending the same money for a lesser product. The CD is still superior to downloads, but doesn't necessarily remain so forever...
High retail costs are to blame... (Score:3, Interesting)
That really is the problem with the industry, higher and higher costs due to inflation and gas/energy prices(gas for distribution, and energy prices causing the price of everything to go up). When you can download tracks legally, and get only the tracks you want without paying for songs you don't want, you end up better off with a music download. The quality of a CD will be higher in most cases, but why pay $18 for what may be one good track on a CD that you otherwise don't know anything about. As a result of this, you have the people who will download the CD illegally to see if it's worth buying in the first place, but in sampling the music, they find the quality is acceptable, and may not go out to buy the CD.
Perhaps a better model for the record companies to go into is to push for a change, where customers can walk into a "record" store, and request a bunch of different tracks, which can then be burned to a legal CD for the price. You may end up paying the same $18 for 8-10 tracks, but at least you get a set of songs you actually want, so don't feel ripped off. In addition to this, the store is providing a service(making a mix CD for you), so you feel you get your money's worth.
Overall Quality Has Declined (Score:3, Interesting)
Production: What is interesting is the reviews I see occasionally complaining when a band "sweetens" the music too much -- in other words, adds instruments, or perhaps a whole orchestra to make the recording sound like it wasn't made in somebody's basement or garage. Let's not equate primitive production for good sound, folks.
Then there's the artists. For every great singer out there, there are a dozen Bob Dylan wannabes. Hey, let's face it, Dylan sounds like he gargles with broken glass every morning.
Songwriting quality: where are all the pop bands with something to say, other than how much they want to rape and abuse women? Rare, indeed.
Record companies: In their greed to promote the big hit single in this digital age, they've abandoned the artists capable of holding your interest for an entire album, artists with long-term playability. Pop music today is down right *boring*. The old artists are either dying off or have lost their touch (e.g., Paul McCartney should just give up music and open up a vegetable stand somewhere), while the new artists pay too much attention to what the companies tell them.
Buy CD's? What on earth for?
I'll tell you something. My fourteen year old has discovered my LP collection from the 60's, 70's and 80's (about 1200 have survived the ravages of time), and he spends his spare time digitizing them onto the computer. He loves the music and the sound of these old dinosaurs, and will "rip" an LP even where I already have the CD. He hates what's on the radio, and feels like he's found buried treasure in these old archives.
Buy CD's? Why on earth would he want to do that? He's not finished listening to my LP's yet!
And there's perhaps the real reason CD sales are in decline: it has too much competition from what people already own. Something like Windows Vista having XP to contend with, I guess.
Offer me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Offer me the over-produced manufactured shit that passes for music nowadays and I'll ignore it.
Offer me DRM-encumbered over-compressed downloads and I will walk away.
Offer me some decent new music and I'll have a listen.
Offer me some decent new music in an uncompressed, DRM-free format, and I'll buy it.
I don't want to be one of the curmudgeons grumbling about all the new music being crap, but the fact remains that I tuned out in the early 1990s, and have heard very little of interest since. My latest (in terms of production date) music purchases are Bailando con Lola by Azucar Moreno and Drama by Bananarama, both released in 2006. Hardly mainstream music, either of them.
...laura
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I miss vinyl (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I miss vinyl (Score:5, Funny)