I was in Best Buy the other day, buying the new Tweedy DVD, and I saw someone buying a CD. For some reason my jaw dropped. It was as if I spotted a woolly mammoth. This creature before me was making a purchase for and item, soon to be an artifact, and she was paying in cash! How will she get points?! She might as well have been bartering with a beaver pelt.
Yesterday I read an article in the Chicago Sun-Times about the survival of the record store. This month, CD sales are down another 5% and downloads are up 65%. Although it looks like the CD may become obsolete, there are still some optimists out there. Here are some of the key quotes:
“I think there also is a large group of people who are always going to want something tangible, to hold a CD, to read the liner notes, to build a traditional music collection.” Patrick McNamara, of Insound.com
“Music stores will be like the neighborhood bar, only we won’t serve alcohol,” Laurie said. “It’s a place to hang out and discuss music and discover something new. As long as people like music, there will be record stores.” – John Laurie, owner of Laurie’s Planet of Sound in Lincoln Square, Chicago
“There will always be a need for the physical product — you’re not going to give your mother-in-law an iTunes download for Christmas, but you might give her a box set of classical music.” – EMI Music chairman Alain Levy
McNamara has a point. I do like reading liner notes, but sacrificing those was easy in exchange for the convenience of downloading digital files and storing them on a tiny hard drive. I can’t even imagine the space I would need to store my music library if it were all on CD’s. At some point, those people building their traditional music collections will get wise and begin to go digital.
And Alain and John, I’m sorry. You are both dead wrong. My parents now have iPods and I go to bars to drink. Children are teaching their parents about iTunes and someday those parents will die and the children will grow up. It’s too convenient and economical to download and if Gracenote’s deal with the music publishers progresses, we’ll soon have digital liner notes too.
CD’s are dead to me (mostly) and I won’t be sorry when they’re gone. I won’t miss holding the case in my hands, and in case you’re wondering, I’ll be able to do without the smell and taste of the CD too.
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I can’t even remember the last CD I bought. It has to have been 5 years ago or more. Drinking Buddy…the last CD I may have received was from an old roommate for a Christmas present in 2000 was a NOW! CD, which hasn’t made it into my iTunes Library.
the scary part is that your dvd may not be a woolly mammoth but it may be a manatee…on the dangered list. now that people can stream video so easily (see: iTunes, the new NetFlix, etc.) we may never have anything more than a bunch of 1s and 0s to wrap our virtual arms around. dazed and confused. moish
I think the only CDs being sold anymore are to people that hang them from their rearview mirrors – another phenomenon I never understood. I’ve never interacted with someone that does this, but I’m full of questions for them. Tacy – you should hang your NOW! CD from your rearview mirror and see what happens.
Moish – I agree.
I was at my cousin’s place in AZ (OSU-FL game) and he has a big screen LCD monitor hooked up to internet all day. I was able to toggle from internet to TV, but we found ourselves on the internet watching tv on demand more than regular tv itself. We watched SNL’s dick in a box from HearYa, ESPN highlights on demand from ESPN with no commercial interruption, and lots of YouTube.
I only watch DVR now. Now fast forwarding commercials is a pain in my ass. I want to find KU basketball highlights right now without waiting for ESPN to serve them to me on cable TV. I want music videos, only for bands I like. I love on demand everything.
I agree with DB’s observations, but I for one will miss the CD when it is gone. I look fondly and proudly at my collection of WHO CD’s sitting on my shelf (of course, I already owned all of these on tape in high school) and imagine someone who downloaded Amorica without ever having that classic CD cover. Plus, it was always a good weekend diversion to head over to Tower Records, skim some mags (for the articles) and pick-up a new CD. I went there a couple of months ago and the shelves were all half-empty without any new inventory. It was a casualty of the digital age on its last breath. Well, gotta go. I’ve got some new tunes I want to download.
Hold the phone for a minute here. At the risk of being ostracized by this community, I would like to make a confession: I still buy a CD every now and then. I’m never happy about it, though. As an audiophile, I’m extremely particular about how my music collection is digitized; there’s a difficult balance between portability and musical quality that many of the digital music stores ignore.
Let’s talk about the big boy first: iTunes. I refuse to be bound to their format (AAC, which is questionable in terms of quality), and don’t even get me going on DRM — the first thing I do when getting an iTunes track (if someone gives me a giftcard for some reason) is burn it to a CD and re-rip, which inherently compromises some sound quality.
Many of the other options either offer a music “leasing” program with an option to buy (Rhapsody, Napster), and if you do ultimately purchase, their encoding levels (quality) are less than desirable.
The only service to get it right so far is eMusic, which encodes all of its music using a high-quality tool called LAME and doesn’t force any DRM. Unfortunately, some labels just refuse to support their “subscription” model for ownership (X dollars a month per Y downloads).
Until the music industry jumps into the current century, I’ll choose quality and various freedoms over convenience, which — for now — means the occasional visit to my local record store…or sometimes maybe Best Buy…maybe.
If folks are interested, I may submit a hearya entry on music encoding practices — striking a balance between portability and quality.
Sounds like a great idea. Fire it up!
I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to encoding, but I also re-rip all my iTunes purchases to CD and delete the original purchase. I have a Roku and can’t listen to iTunes purchased music in my house unless I burn to CD and re-import. Pain in the ass.
I like using iTunes but only for singles. When it comes to actual albums, I’m afraid I’m one of those mammoths who usually require the physical product. My music collection takes up an entire corner of my place but I love it that way. I spent my entire young adulthood collecting these things. Having the digital versions just wouldn’t be the same. That’s just me though.
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