Technology tends to warp our sense of time into hyperdrive, stressing us unnecessarily.
We rail against its promises, kicking and screaming all the way, until it hits us right between the eyes. Video killed the radio star, and the CD put the 12” vinyl album in the grave. We learned to accept it, though.
Within a matter of a couple of years after the CD’s introduction, the 33 1/3 record had joined 78’s, 45-singles and 8-tracks as a fond memory. Cassettes soon followed, and the CD was embraced as the music delivery system. The trade-off was that it had effectively killed the album cover, which had become an art form unto itself, lyric sheets, if included at all, were printed in such tiny type as to render them useless and all those little bonuses we loved in albums were only a memory.
The CD is in danger of going the same route as the album. Let me rephrase that: it will go the same route.
That makes some of us jittery. We have nightmare visions of music being an ethereal commodity floating through cyberspace, barely harnessed in an iPod or a hard drive. Others of us are giddy with having libraries at our fingertips, accessible anytime, any place. Truth is, the next delivery system is probably something we have yet to imagine.
It’s an issue right up there with politics and religion. When I wrote a review of the new Foo Fighters release, I mentioned, tongue in cheek, the benefits of audio streams. It stirred up some passions, but it also opened up this discussion.
The people here, all Blogcritics, are passionate about music. Their writing proves it. And they’re an opinionated lot. Here’s what they have to say about the possible future of the CD. . .
My biggest problem with this whole notion of the MP3 replacing the CD as the primary means of delivering music to the listener is twofold. One is that while music downloads offer much as far as easy access and increased mobility, they also tend to depersonalize the experience of listening to music. To me, there is nothing that quite replaces shredding away that shrink wrap, sitting down in my stereo chair at home, putting on a new disc and reading through the liner notes or the lyric sheet as I listen (although I'll concede the point that this was even nicer when the notes were in type big enough to read without a magnifying glass, as they were on vinyl albums). To me the idea of being able to hold something tangible, and yes, "physical" in your hands just makes the whole thing more of a personal experience.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Tom Johnson
Damn, I wish I'd been paying attention to the BC Yahoo group last weekend. I'd loved to have gotten in my say about this. I'll have to do so in a comment . . .
The CD is long from dead. We're at a crossroads where the youth market could and will give them up easily but the older markets will not. While the industry aims at the young, it knows that there is still plenty of money to be made off of us long out of high school - there wouldn't be boxset after boxset released every Christmas season, otherwise.
What I believe is this: the CD is going to stick around for at least another 5 years in the same capacity it is now - ie, a slow decline in sales from year to year, and may start a sharp decline after that while digital sales continue a trend upwards. But mp3s are not the answer, nor are any downloads. Keeping any file stored anywhere on any writable media in your home is not going to be the thing that kills off CD, and I'll tell you why. Hard drives die. People accidently delete files. Errors occur. What we have now is a very flawed system and it can't continue. It won't be the way we enjoy music in the future. CDs will stick around because some people are smart enough to know this and will continue to buy them knowing that, at some point, they're going to lose everything. It can and will happen to everyone.
What will make the big change is when broadband and wi-fi make the transition to the point where it is everywhere at a price that nearly everyone can afford. And then we'll see mp3s facing extinction as music services come online where we simply pay a monthly fee for the ability pick out what we want to listen to, anytime, anywhere, from some vast central storage area. Just think - if we don't allow the labels to screw it up like they do their current catalogs (meaning they opt not to keep things available) we could actually have the entire history of human recordings at our fingertips.
Honestly, I could give up CDs for that kind of power. But for mp3s? No. Mere compressed, lossy files are not enough incentive to get me to give up everything a CD gives me - artwork, liner notes, lyrics, and, most importantly, source material for better file formats than mp3 when they become available. I'll say one last thing that I tell everyone lately: buy what you can right now. Things are going out of print and you may never see them again, or at least not for a long, long time. Get them now while they're cheap - and they are cheap. You will regret it later on when you're stuck listening on your expensive home theater system to those crappy sounding 128kbps mp3s that you ripped 5 years ago.
2 - Donald Gibson
You did a great job putting this together, Ray. Thank you for including my thoughts.
-Donald
3 - Mary K. Williams
Maybe I'd need to sit in a bathtub with Donald Sutherland to really absorb the whole topic, but on a related note, this month's Rolling Stone had an interesting piece on the future of the music industry.
Anyway, good job Ray (and others)
4 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
I put my two cents in on Mr. Ellis' last article but I get overlooked... So, I will not comment here.
5 - JC Mosquito
Unless mp3 delivers better sound quality at a lower sample rate, audiophiles will still insist a CD sounds better than an mp3 file burned at 128 kbs or less. Yes,I realize as you approach 320 kbs it's hard for some people to be able to tell the difference, but for whatever reason so many mp3 files seem to be around 128 kbs, which even for a non audiophile like myself, sound thin and annoying. And I just don't see people storing thousands of songs as wav files, which can be exceptionally large.
But what do I know - I've still got some 8 tracks stored away, just in case they ever make a comeback....
Skeeter.
6 - Ray Ellis
Thanks everybody, for the comments thus far. This thread potentially could become an extension of the article.
Tom, you bring up some interesting points. However, the industry will always cater primarily to the 18-24 demographic. That's where the money is. They buy those box sets, too--just not the ones you or I would buy. The CD as weknow it will disappear long before 5 years. I'm not saying streams will replace it, but in its present configuration, the CD will go away. It's the nature of home electronics. But anyway, thanks for your thoughts.
Don't thank me, Donald. Your insights enhanced the article.
Mary, I had no idea you and Donald Sutherland were so close. Seriously, though, I'll have to check out the RS article.
Brian, your comments in my original article weren't ignored. They stood on their own, and needed no response. Why don't you try writing for BC?
Skeeter, for a "non-audiophile," you're pretty damn perceptive. And I agree with you and Tom that mp3's are not the future. But I can almost guarantee you there's new software/hardware lurking out there that will render our musings mute.
Again, thanks, everybody.
7 - Mark Saleski
i think cds will go away if/when their sales numbers become too small a part of the entire revenue stream.
cds sales are reported to be down, but i still don't buy that downloads are the sole reason for this.
8 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Yea... I was just a little ticked that I wasn't invited into the discussion on Yahoo. That's all.. I enjoy discussing technology. I don't have the patience to write anymore & I have been trying to get involved in music again. Atleast, this lets me vent & keep the relationships I've built here
9 - Ray Ellis
I agree with you, Mark. True downloads are on the rise, and CD sales continue to decline, but I don't think the two are necessarily interrelated.
What I do believe is that the industry wants to kill the CD--and the sooner the better. How else to explain their half-assed marketing? The business is run by beancounters these days, and their decisions have little to do with music.It's all product, and they want to get it out there with maximum exposure and minimal expenditure.
I saw the same thing when CD's replaced vinyl. Prices on albums spiked, just as is happening now with the CD format.
10 - Mark Saleski
this is from one of ray's emails:
So as to avoid fisticuffs or dueling pistols, we're posting a
discussion as an aricle. I'd like to hear more viewpoints. Anybody else
(not just music writers) interested in venting their spleen for the
post?
11 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
In order for Cds to stay amidst all of these technological changes, it has to be able to hold more than 700Mb. I don't see Mp3's being the replacement due to the fact that there are plenty of people who want better quality audio. Mp3's just don't cut it on a killer system and seeing how Mp3 players are becoming larger in storage size, more & more people are going to want to store .FLAC & all the other Lossless compression formats or even .wav files. As much as I like the artwork, I have a hard time seeing the physical medium(CD,DVD)holding up. Unless, these artists/musicians embrace better recording technology as a whole,we may get stuck with an Mp format.
People are still amazed at how much crappy 128kbps Mp3s they can stuff onto such a small device. It's all a novelty that I hope will wear off.
12 - Mark Saleski
but do consumers really care about recording quality? nobody cared about sacd.
i'm not saying i don't care about it, but i think we may be in the minority.
13 - Tom Johnson
You didn't need to be "invited," Brian. If you are in the BC Yahoo group, you could have taken part. I could have, too, had I been paying attention, but I wasn't and missed out. I put my thoughts in a comment instead.
Like Mark said, CDs will go away when they don't make any financial sense to the labels, and that's going to be a lot longer than 5 years in the future. Think of how long cassettes hung on before they finally stopped producing music on them - a LONG time. Hell, they may still be producing some things on them. I know that they were still putting stuff out on tapes into the early part of this century, and that was LONG after it had been declared a dead and obsolete format.
CDs will be the same way - they will not just disappear overnight, and five years is pretty close to overnight when it comes to a business like this. They will decline and may be harder to find, but they will still be out there, and my guess is that they will become a niche like new vinyl is now.
14 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
I hear ya, Mark, but that was one of main marketing promises when it came to CDs. The whole digital quality over tapes & vinyl. A better sounding medium along with its supposed impervious material.
As for SACD & DVD Audio, People didn't want to spend the extra money on new equipment because stores like Best Buy & Circuit City did very little in supporting the technology.
15 - Mark Saleski
sacd would have fared better if the labels had decided to put out everything on hybrid format...then the better quality of the sacd layer would have been spread around in a viral sort of way.
16 - Tom Johnson
I don't think the fate of SACD and DVDA had anything to do with having to buy new equipment. The whole home theater movement proves that people are more than willing to shell out tons of money for new equipment - often over and over again as I've seen with people I work with. SACD and DVDA died because people don't really care about high resolution and surround-sound music. Music in stereo has proven to be the fulfilling, rewarding experience they need and there is little motivation to move to the next level. We don't get exposed to music in high resolution or surround like we do movies in those formats.
The other problem is portability. Stereo music is simply easier to deal with - how many cars come equipped with surround-sound systems or systems that can handle high resolution playback? Practically everyone has a CD player in their homes and cars now, but few have anything more grand than that. SACD could have addressed that issue had the format been more widely accepted since they adopted the whole hybrid deal, but by then it was already on its way out.
And, of course, surround sound means little when you're listening on headphones. The higher resolution sound quality would be nice, however. It'll happen someday, just not now. One thing at a time - people are too obsessed with their home theaters to think about audio right now. Give it a few years and audio will be the rage again like it was back in the late 80s and early 90s. Then hi-rez will have a new life and probably in a better format, too.
17 - Mark Saleski
for the record, i would like to state that i am not obsessed with my home theater.
because i don't have one....no surround, nothin.
18 - Ray Ellis
It occurs to me that lifestyle and geography has a lot to do with all this. Admittedly, I live in the Sunbelt, and people here are extremely mobile.
Perhaps more importantly, they're very image-conscious and like wear their conspicuous consumption on their sleeve--literally. iPods are almost de rigeur here--right up there with cellphones.
When it's all said and done, the average music consumer is tone deaf. That's why they hate us uppity critics. They want the convenience and portability, but most of all, they want to impress their friends.
At one time, I had over 3500 vinyl albums. My collection covered every genre, all categorized and alphabetized--something for every taste. But whenever I had a get together, all anybody wanted to hear was the latest pop hit.
I don't invite people over much anymore.
19 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Tom, I have to disagree.. The whole home theater "movement" has been based upon the cheap equipment that the major retail outlets have to offer. Convenience, the consumers lack of knowledge & cost is what drives the big "box" stores.
Alot of DVD players support the playback of those formats and weren't/aren't that expensive but people already had a DVD player & alot of them(at the time) didn't want to spend the money on a surround sound package that wasn't "all in one". I'm sorry but that's what it was like because I used to work for both Circuit City & Best Buy...And it sucked!!
People love a true audio experience beyond CD format but they just don't want to spend the money on the right equipment.Hell, People still don't believe that quality speaker wire has anything to do with quality sound.
how many cars come equipped with surround-sound systems or systems that can handle high resolution playback?
Acura TL
Lexus GS
I'm sure there is quite a few more(if I did more research) because cars have perfect acoustics nowadays to listen to music. Plus, more & more people now do their listening on the road.
Utlimately, these progressions in audio formats have less to do with surround sound than they do with ending "Generational Loss".The whole movement is based on trying to recreate analog digitally. As consumers, we are just seeing the marketing & profit end of this technology. Unfortunately, we don't get to see what these companies are working on from year to year. At first, when I heard about these formats,I also heard that Sony & the likes were already working on higher streaming formats as well... So, I think that for your basic consumer it won't mean much till someone can truly show the benefits and when they can lower the price.
20 - Mark Saleski
i dunno...surely there is a percentage of people who truly care about audio quality, but i bet that number is pretty low.
even if there were better solutions (hi-rez streams, etc.) at the end of the chain, there's still the problem of the recordings themselves. most modern pop and rock recordings make almost no use the the available dynamic range and are compressed to death, the result being a very loud sound and not much else.
21 - Ray Ellis
But does the average American care? I don't think so. If they dis, American labels would have been forced to adapt the higher standards of Japanese and German , even Criterion, pressings.
22 - JC Mosquito
Has the average North American ever cared about sound quality? Oddly enough, I'd say yes. ALbums like Boston's debut, Floyd's Moon and Supertramp's Crime of the Century all sold in part because they sounded great even back in the day when many people had tinny tiny audio systems. That's why those albums are still big sellers on CD.
For rock and roll, I'm not saying sound quality has to be great, but it helps if it's at least a couple of notches above good enough.
23 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Yea..Maybe they don't care or they just don't understand the importance of some this technology. Music makes such an impact on people,right?! If we can get to a point that the recording of said precious Band/Artist could be identically copied and contain exactly what that band or artist actually sounds like live,nuances and all,wouldn't that be really freakin awesome.
24 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Now that I think of it...I feel JC is right. Plus, we are for the most part the average American consumer.
25 - Mark Saleski
brian, you are in no way the average american consumer when it comes to audio. lookit that audio store you pointed people to. most people would be scared off by it. there's too much good stuff there.
seriously. people look at my system, all full of tubes and whatnot, and give me a look like i'm some kind of freak.