CD: The indestructible music format that REFUSES TO DIE This is almost getting boring to report each year - but here we are again. Twelve years after sales peaked the music CD format is stubbornly refusing to die. You can shutter the dedicated record shops, hide the CDs behind fondleslabs and video games in the megastores, offer the public instant access to cheaper legal alternatives …
My prefererred format for digital music is definitely audio CD. If I buy from Itunes it's stuck on that Ipod with no way to transfer to another device. Audio CD can be ripped to Itunes, Zune, whatever you want. Buy it once and use multiple times, not buy same song and pay for each device.
I never cared much for the scratchy poppy sound of vinyl.
Unless I've missed my guess, it almost sounds like El Reg is actually disappointed at this news. They've been yelling forever that CDs are dead, but -- like the bumblebee who doesn't realize he isn't supposed to be able to fly -- folks keep buying them anyway.
Perhaps it's the fact that when you own a copy of an album on compact disc, YOU FUCKING OWN IT. No DRM-encumbered formats, no music stored in the "cloud" that the labels can reach out over the 'Net and take away from you, none of that bullshiit. You've bought an album on CD, and it's YOURS, goddammit, to do what you want with -- play it on your CD player, rip it to your hard drive to listen to without risking damage to the medium, rip tracks to use on a mix disc... man, that bad boy is YOURS.
Rather nice news about LPs, too. Y'know, a DJ friend of mine who still spins a lot of vinyl in the course of his work pointed out a little something about vinyl that I'd never given any thought to -- which is that in many cases, the supposedly poor quality sound of LPs was due not so much to the medium itself, but to the rapidly declining quality of turntables throughout the '80s and early '90s. Granted, vinyl sound qualiity is vulnerable to deterioration due to surface damage and wear, but a lot of it is also due to the fact that in the '80s/early '90s, more and more parts of turntables were made of plastic; even the more high-end tables had parts made of plastic which really should've been made of metal... and so, as my pal pointed out, if my LPs started sounding like shit in the '80s, it was at least partially because I was hearing them played on a really crappy turntable. That's also why -- even though I think the concept is great -- I've hesitated to buy one of those turntables which automatically encodes the LP to .wav: I've checked them out, and almost all of them are still using those cheap, crappy turntables with mostly plastic parts.
There is, of course, another liittle factoid which you don't hear reported much, which is that you can't encode DRM onto vinyl.
I'm kind of amazed I have not seen it here, so I will comment.
With a CD you have the legal right to transfer it to someone else when you are done
with it. With a download what you have is a non-transferable license. Now, if you
want to be clever, you "borrow" someone else's collection, load it onto your computer,
then use the Apple service to "clean" your collection transforming it into Apple format
and store it online for a cheapish price.
I can buy a used CD for $1. For a great CD it might cost me $5. Either way I'm
paying far less than the new price and I can resell it, legally, once I'm done. Hell, if I
load it on my computer, us the Apple method of cleaning, I can legally sell it and keep
all the music. Thankfully, I'm just as happy listening to the stuff on YouTube like a great
big digital Jukebox with the price of admission being a listen to a commercial once in
a while.
Most people want convenience over quality. Given the choice of filling their portable device with 2500 compressed tunes or say, 500 uncompressed tunes, the majority will go for the former. Most people aren't that bothered about lossless high bitrate music, they want something they can listen to and sounds ok.
The big selling points of CD was that it was convenient, hardy and had and most importantly a significantly higher signal-to-noise ratio than vinyl and cassette, and that above all the techno-stuff sold the system. With MP3 and other lossy formats, these benefits remain plus the easy access to new material provided by smaller file sizes.
I personally think that it's going to be very hard to sell high-resolution audio to a market that doesn't really have a need or real desire for it. Another commentard mentioned that Linn etc are providing 24/192 audio. High bitrate audio has been kicking around for over a decade but will continue to remain specialist because there is no intrinsic value in it. Most people cannot hear a difference, so why bother?
Not meaning to bang the loudness war drum yet again (well, OK, actually I am), but the fact is that the sound quality of modern music is appalling. It's just a solid wall of hyper-compressed, muffled, distorted, fatiguing racket.
The music industry is one of the only industries I can think of which creates products, then intentionally and deliberately damages and degrades them before releasing them. As a result, I flatly refuse nowerdays to pay for music which has received such shocking treatment.
The fact is that as loudness has increased and as sound quality has decreased, sales have steadily decreased. Piracy is of course to blame for a fair bit of this. But by releasing such dreadful sounding products, the industry isn't doing itself any favours at all.
I can't help thinking this is partly a generational thing. I'm 41. When I was a lad, we had tapes and vinyl - CDs were only for the rich. By the time I went to university (1989) CD players were down to a feasible price, so I bought one and as I built up a music collection, it came on CD. I suspect if I were 21 I'd have everything on MP3 stored on my laptop and/or mobile phone.
There are reasons of convenience and technology to argue for one format or another, and I find CDs still work best for me - but I do fear this is partly because I'm an old git.
The cost of a CD versus a download is directly comparable. This is wrong as the differences in the formats are massive. A CD I can do with it as I please, convert it, rip it, copy it and this fits into my lifestyle. It means I have the master at home on my main stereo, were the quality is important (even if my ears can't tell!) I have the MP3 on my Ipod for my daily driver and I have a direct CD copy for my weekend car.
As there is no DRM, I can do this. With DRM, I'd have to purchase multiple copies of the same material or move devices around. Also, should the mood take (hasn't yet in over 20 years), I can sell the CD's and make some money back, or lend it to a friend, or I could push the boundaries and read the fine inlay card they have provided.
Until MP3's are unlocked and at maximum two thirds of the price (half price would be more realistic) of the physical media, why on earth would you buy digital media? After all the record companies have been charging vastly inflated prices for decades, they didn't embrace the digital age, they thought they knew better. It doesn't make sense when they aren't having to produce the physical media or transport it, the digital cost should be a lot less.
CD's a still nicer, they're easy to sell on, to lend out, you can rip them to MP3, they have sleeve notes and artwork, not a little picture on a screen. I bought a limited edition live album the other week, signed by the band, can't sign a download, the whole thing is impersonal.
thing is it's worth buying a cd even if you don't plan on using it. It's usually cheaper, it's uncompressed and if your hard drive blows you just rip it again.
The only annoying thing about cds is that they scratch, easily. Yesterday I accidentally dropped a cd :( i've proably messed up a track... fortunately I have it ripped to a lossless format so no data lost!
Which if cared for will last, I can rip that to a low quality mp3 for the disc in the car or high fidelity format for my Android phone. If I lose the file, phone or scratch the disc I still have the original safely stored in my attic.
Also I don't know about anyone else, but CD are generally cheaper if you buy from a reputable online retailer than if I buy from Napster or Itunes mp3 or mp4. Bit like buying ebooks which are considerably more expensive than the hardcopy article.
So if the industry want to sell come up with a ubiquitous, competitive way of obtaining the music that you cannot lose and doesn't stop working when you stop paying the subscription and I can play on multiple devices and I will buy lots more music.
It is growing. Just not the parts of it that keep filing lawsuits because nobody wants their DRM encumbered dregs.
I like CDs, decent sound, reasonable price, reasonably portable. A good album is still cheaper per song than the $1.99 downloads.
I can't speak for everyone else but I still buy CDs for several reasons.
The CD represents a physical backup of the uncompressed audio that I can convert to any format I happen to need at the time. My music collection is currently in MP3 format. I use that in my car, on my phone, and on my PCs. If something were to go catastrophically wrong with my digital copies (Hard drives and Flash drives do fail unfortunately) I can always fall back onto my CDs to make new digital copies. Also if I decide to change from MP3 to a newer better sounding format I have that option without having to try and convert one lossy format to another. Converting from the original lossless CD always produces the best results.
Then there's the issue of control. If my music were linked to an online account of some kind it would mean I never have complete control over my investment. While most companies couldn't get away with anything truly shady, that fact doesn't do much to ensure my purchase would still be usable if the seller went out of business. The recording industry does seem to think it should have some right to control what it's sold to me after the sale. I disagree and I won't put myself in a position where they have the option of denying me my right to listen to the music I've purchased. Even if they promised never to use that power, I just can't accept giving them the power in the first place.
There have been newer physical formats to try and usurp the CD but so far they all seem to have some form of control mechanism in place that gives the seller the power to take my purchase away after the fact. For the most part people know this which is why I think CDs are still selling strong.
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