Report: CDs are officially over

[rick-slo]

Higher quality downloads eventually:

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-02-22/t...log?_s=PM:TECH

The percentage of those listening on good speakers will decrease though - more headphone usage instead.

[fitness1]

the day I can't buy a hard copy of a CD will be the end of my purchasing days.....period. I've got enough music to keep me busy through my "rockin' chair" years, so I'm not worried in the least.

[bbrown]

"To me, it seems the biggest change came with recording when it first became a market. The availability of a recording of music has gradually replaced the live making of music to the point where many weddings now hire a DJ instead of a band. People don't gather around the piano or have impromptu jam sessions at the end of a work day. Instead, we put on a recording, whether it is on a fine stereo system using the best vinyl or pop in earbuds connected to an MP3 player. The advent of recorded music changed all that way back when. That is the thing to complain about, if there ever was a technological impact on society - music became a thing we consumed rather than a thing we did. Now, it goes farther - instead of talking to the person next to us, we talk on cell phones, text, or use forums. I see people standing at a bus stop, not talking to each other, but instead each on a cell phone. Wouldn't it be fun if they all carried travel guitars and jammed with each other and swapped licks instead?

Tony

..........Very perceptive and important observations Tony.

[mr. beaumont]

Originally Posted by bluesbassdad

I know what you mean. I still have a shoe box full of the first CD by my son's and my blues/rock band. Listening to it today it's hard to believe how proud we were at the time.

When we did our second one, we both thought "OK! That's more like it!". Maybe. But it, too, is almost embarrassing to listen to today.

I wonder whether we sounded that bad when playing bars, but the patrons just didn't care. I do know that both my son and our female vocalist could sell a song like crazy on stage, even though each sometimes had intonation problems.

How about it!

Actually, if you want to hear clips:http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/beaumontmusic


I'm still proud of doing it...I was a ton of work...it's just not something I even want to listen to!

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by fitness1

the day I can't buy a hard copy of a CD will be the end of my purchasing days.....period.

Hi f1…
Most of my 20something friends don't own albums, or even download many songs or movies these days. They pay subscriptions to streaming services w/ deep libraries.

Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio. They think I'm nuts to want to 'own' movies or CDs. This is very foreign to the way I was raised, but fits the young-n-mobile lifestyle just fine.

I don't know if their way of thinking will win out in the end, but they have already put a serious dent in the whole concept of even bothering to download when one can stream. The provider side of the industry is sure swinging in their direction.

Even Amazon permits one to purchase and stream music/movies to any authorized device versus downloading it (as do Roku box, Apple TV, Netflix etc).

Families w/ kids at home love hard copy DVDs of movies, but that will change. My 7 & 9 yr old grandsons can make an iPad sing and dance w/ ease and they are as at home w/ the enclosure speakers on an LCD TV as w/ a surround sound system.

What's this world coming to anyway?

I was employed for a gig last year where I was expected to know more than a dozen new songs by as many artists in a two week period. Glad I could download the tunes for 99cents each or in half of the cases watch the artist play them on YouTube for free. Didn't have to buy new 12 albums to learn the songs.

[zabdart]

Originally Posted by bbrown

"[B][U]To me, it seems the biggest change came with recording when it first became a market. The availability of a recording of music has gradually replaced the live making of music to the point where many weddings now hire a DJ instead of a band. People don't gather around the piano or have impromptu jam sessions at the end of a work day. Instead, we put on a recording, whether it is on a fine stereo system using the best vinyl or pop in earbuds connected to an MP3 player. The advent of recorded music changed all that way back when. That is the thing to complain about, if there ever was a technological impact on society - music became a thing we consumed rather than a thing we did. Now, it goes farther - instead of talking to the person next to us, we talk on cell phones, text, or use forums. I see people standing at a bus stop, not talking to each other, but instead each on a cell phone. Wouldn't it be fun if they all carried travel guitars and jammed with each other and swapped licks instead?

In its indirect way, this pretty well sums up the discussion of noise as music and music as noise rather succinctly. People can't tell the difference anymore. In the days before recording, you had to learn something about music in order to play it -- because that was the only way that most people had of hearing it. With recording came the ridiculous assertion that: "I may not know much about music, but I know what I like."
Basing your criterion on your own self-confessed ignorance is absurdity itself.
We fill our lives up, not with music that we actually listen to, but on background noises to help "pass the time." In that, we are no better off than Vladimir and Estragon in "Waiting for Godot."

[mr. beaumont]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

They think I'm nuts to want to 'own' movies or CDs.

If that makes us nuts, sign me up for the looney bin. I bet they got a killer library.

[lcollins]

This is such an interesting thread!

My group is going into the studio to record our first "CD" in February. Normally, we would get our sets together and start gigging asap, as I had done so over the last 2 or 3 decades.

However, the phenomena of having 'product in the back of the room' to sell during gigs has become so ubiquitous, that we have decided to complete the recording before taking on bookings.

Seriously, from coffee shop shows to bar shows - *everyone* has product to sell.

So, although we will probably order 'download cards' to have on hand - CDs will be instrumental in our marketing strategy.

[IainDearg]

People still buying my CDs too. And my next is getting mastered tomorrow.

I think a lot of customers are probably ripping to their mp3 players and hardly, if ever playing the CD, except maybe in the car. That's OK.

As a general point, the classical and jazz fans still buy CDs pretty well exclusively - and these guys can still invest heavily in hi-fi. Niche markets though.

[Doug Young]

I don't think anyone expects that suddenly CDs will completely disappear. The original article just says major labels may stop making them, which they'll do when it ceases to make sense from a business perspective. I seem to recall reading a similar article a few years ago, saying that 2010, or 2009 was the year they would stop. But even if/when they do, for now, indie artists can still sell CDs, as long as the audience has a way to play them. But at some point, maybe not next year, maybe not even this decade, but sooner or later, we'll be trying to sell these little silver discs, and the potential buyer will be saying "man, I wish I could buy that, but I'm not even sure I have a CD player. But if you could just beam the bits onto my iPhone 17Gs, that'd be great".

[H165]

The term "officially over" tells you exactly what generation the author of the statement came from.

CD's, like vinyl, will be around forever.

The streamers and downloaders don't want this, because they want you to pay another $2k for all the poor-quality songs you already downloaded once, every time you have a computer glitch.

[BusterBFan]

I was thrilled when digital music came, very quick to ditch CDs.

H165: Yes, in the information age, it's important to back up your valuable information. We don't need thousands of shiny plastic discs to do that

[jpfeiff]

Originally Posted by min7b5

Just the other day I was talking to someone in a very popular band, that also tours internationally, http://www.stolensweets.com/ and they're excited because they're about to release a 78!

Hey--Pete Krebs is in that band! Portland singer-songwriter-rocker type. Cool to see what he is up to--they sound great...er..at least the highly compressed online mp3 sample of their 78 sounds pretty good to me...

[jpfeiff]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

How about it!

Actually, if you want to hear clips:http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/beaumontmusic


I'm still proud of doing it...I was a ton of work...it's just not something I even want to listen to!

Hey--so far I am diggin what I hear....

[Ty Ford]

I remember talking to my parents years ago about why they thought their 78s sounded better than 33 1/3 reissues of some of their favorite music. We did a listening comparison. The 78s had more snap. The 33 1/3 version had been washed in a bit of reverb. Then too, 78 rpm is over twice the speed of 33 1/3, so that'd be double the data. Also the groove of the 78 is 7-8 times wider and the material (some sort of carbon compound I guess) was harder than vinyl.

I have a 3 speed turntable with 33 1/3 and 78 phono cartridges I use when folks need transcription of old disks. I even have an 8-track tape player.

Regards,

Ty Ford