are CDs becoming obsolete?

[miss understood]

A question to chew over..

A year and a half ago or so my friend sent me a link to a free week-long trial for the Rhapsody subscription service. For $10 a month, you were allowed to stream (not download) about 99% of the artists and music you could conceivably ever want to listen to--not just Matador stuff a la GBV, Interpol, Pavement, etc (I'm pretty sure they have almost the entire catalog) but also more mainstream rock (i.e. the entire works of everyone from Dylan, Neil Young, Stones, Pink Floyd, et al to more contemporary types like Wilco, Blur, etc), classical, jazz, world, spoken word, comedy, on, and on on...

At first I was more than a touch skeptical, chiefly because you couldn't actually *download* and *own* the music, just stream it over a special Rhapsody player. After a little while, though, I came around, and in a *big* way. For one thing, I came to realize that actually owning the mp3s of what I was listening to didn't mean very much. That is, when you can instantly play Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61 or Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier or Kind of Blue, literally anywhere that you have a dedicated Internet connection, the idea of "owning" my own copy became kind of meaningless...not to mention the obvious benefit of never needing to take another CD to the office, where I have music playing for between eight and ten hours a day...

Not long after that, I got an iPod, which I use on the subway, on the street, when I take drives in the car, etc. To use the iPod, I had to rip the CDs I owned onto my computer (or the ones that weren't already ripped), then left the mp3s there.

The result of all this? I *NEVER* use my CD player anymore. It's sad, really. The damn thing is just collecting dust. I buy CDs, rip them to my computer, and either listen from there or transfer them to the iPod. Now, most every CD I've bought in the past year is sitting in the case and also collecting dust.

Is this true for any of you? I'm trying to figure out if I'm a bizarrely isolated case or if my feeling that CDs will be going the way of the dodo in ten years or so is at all rational. Thoughts?

[disclosure: despite realizing how street team-y this post sounds, I do not now, nor have I ever, worked for Rhapsody, Real, or anyone affiliated with that wonderful company...not to say I wouldn't welcome it, but..] :)

[Thor]

You know, I was thinking about this on the walk home from work this morning.

I've never got into the net downloading thing where you sign up and buy singles or get streams as you mentioned, etc... most everything I have has been purchased, with a small inevitable percentage of burnt stuff.

I, like you, have had a similar experience with cd's after I bought an Ipod about 3 months ago. I have over 500 discs and they all went straight on. When I'm home I plug the ipod into my stereo, when I'm out I listen to it with headphones. I've almost filled the 40 gigs. And I don't play CD's anymore, there's just doesn't seem any reason (that and my cd player is busted).

But I do feel bad about it, because there's a tendancy to even forget what the cover looks like, the whole package, etc, which is a big part of the excitement of buying and listening to music. I try to keep the cds around to look at and peruse track listings, etc. It just feels nicer. Johan Kugelberg wrote a wonderful editorial in the most recent issue of Ugly Things;

"The chase for jams used to be quite convoluted in the days before Electric Eels MP3's and KBD-websites with downloadable cover-scans. The archealogical dig for jams, fanzines, information, memorabilia was indeed a quest for the punk rock grail, and whence that elusive back issue of the Smegma Journal or that copy of the Dutch alternate version of "Wham Bam Thankyou Mam" showed up in your PO Box a level of ecstasy reached far unlike googling for you punk want list"

Actually, the void that not using cd's has left in me, I've been filling with vinyl.. soon after I got my ipod, I started collecting more vinyl... it's cheap, awesome sounding, and the size and general niceness of the cover and package is damn fine.

I'm totally happy to forever forget CD's if I have a healthy ipod collection balanced by an even healthier vinyl collection. Vinyl is always going to sound better in my opinion, therefore it isin't redundant.

The digital music age means so many things good and bad to me..

[johansen smith]

there will never be anything that replaces the natural high of opening a new CD and looking at the booklet and CD cover's art and liner notes.

[earl grey]

Originally posted by johansen smith
there will never be anything that replaces the natural high of opening a new CD and looking at the booklet and CD cover's art and liner notes.

agreed. i also think CD's sound better. this may stop being the case as HD's get larger and ppl can use high sampling rates more widely, but there's a richness and depth to the sound of CD that can be missing on some MP3's, especially with bass-heavy stuff.

i also like having something physical so i don't lose everything if my computer crashes, so i try to burn all my MP3's to CD's as WAV's so i can listen to them straight.

(on that "richness and depth" thing - i know, i know, vinyl is better.)

[vesper]

Originally posted by johansen smith
there will never be anything that replaces the natural high of opening a new CD and looking at the booklet and CD cover's art and liner notes.

if this is true, vinyl never should have fallen to cds.

[Patrick]

I can't really listen to music from a computer. iPods are OK. But the music still sounds compressed to me. In any case, I rarely listen to music while mobile (don't like to when I'm walking, and I don't drive, can't deal with the ambient noise on airplanes), so I'm unlikely to get into the iPod soon.

The big advantage of CDs, as with LPs, is that you consume music in the album format rather than the song format, which is more interesting to me. Of course, you can still consumer music as albums on iPods, but you're more forced to do it with the physical discs.

At home I listen exclusively to vinyl, pretty much, so it really isn't an issue.

Patrick

[9000]

Originally posted by Patrick

The big advantage of CDs, as with LPs, is that you consume music in the album format rather than the song format, which is more interesting to me. Of course, you can still consumer music as albums on iPods, but you're more forced to do it with the physical discs.


this is one area, where i completely disagree with steve jobs's notion that music wants to be free and people should have the choice to purchase songs individually. ultimately, the artist should decide how music is presented and consumed. the sum of an album is often greater than the sum of all the songs apart.

in regard to the original question, i listen to music on my computer and ipod, but what keeps me coming back to CDs:

DRM - i'm not going to buy music online only to be teathered down to a number of device restrictions, etc. i'll just buy the CD and rip it and consume on my own terms.

storage - how many people have been mighty pissed when they've gotten that system reboot message only to find all their shit deleted. although far from optimal, discs are a nice fallback storage medium, unless you have a plethora of digital back-up storage at your crib.

cover art - the tangible thing.

sound quality - mp3s don't cut it against CD quality, athough this will be addressed as storage becomes a non-issue.

with this said, the consumer electronic giants, and to a lesser extent, the music industry are going to work out these issues and more and more people will come to consume music digitally. it's just too cheap and efficient for the industry not to adopt once the illicit file-swapping is in check.

[TheSadDebaser]

I think my friend and I addressed this my industry discussion thread, but the situation, as I see it, is that a lot of people in the United States (I don't believe this to be quite as true elsewhere, but I haven't travelled much and am pretty oblivious) don't care about every song on an album or every band that exists or every song that every band ever released.

So they just want the one or two that everyone's talking about, and the other five or six songs that they've enjoyed on the radio in the past six months (since that's about all the unique that gets regular airplay on commercial radio now). Then they're satisfied.

Now, I think more people that are interested enough in music to fall in love with one band and decide to find out about the bands their favorite one likes, and all the other related bands/musicians involved, are always going to want full-length records because they want as much as they can get (including cover art, lyrics, liner notes, label, and maybe contact information). A lot of people don't. Those people are digital music's major market.

Not to say that anyone who likes digital downloads don't like music as much as other people. I can also see how it's easier, less time-absorbing (if you've got a cable or faster modem, unlike myself; I have a 56k), and it can be more affordable. But we'll just see how long you like your little electronic toys before you go running looking for a nice li'l mom 'n' pop with a thorough vinyl selection.

[WorkToBeDestroy]

"DRM - i'm not going to buy music online only to be teathered down ..."
Amen. Don't buy downloads. Except from Bleep
http://www.warprecords.com/bleep/

Other than that it's not against US to download on a p2p netowkr. All recent court rulings (grokster, mainly) have found it's not a crime to download. It's a crime to "distribute" or allow someone to download from you (and in Canada that's a-ok too).

"storage - ...only to find all their shit deleted. ...discs are a nice fallback"
uhh..
DVD burner = $80
100 pack of 4.7GB DVD-r = $50
www.pricewatch.com

"cover art - the tangible thing."
I don't understand this myself, but gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.

"sound quality - mp3s don't cut it against CD quality..."
Use ogg Vorbis. Unless you are a dog you will not be able to tell the difference between it and CDs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis

[Patrick]

W2BD:

Are you advocating downloading copyrighted material and not paying for it? That is indeed illegal in the US, and in Canada.

The courts have only found that the owners of P2P networks such as Sharman Networks (Kazaa) are not criminally liable for any such downloading if it can be shown that they cannot distinguish between copyrighted and non-copyrighted material on their networks. That latter issue is what is now being addressed in the Australian case against Sharman. But no matter what is decided in Australia, the individuals downloading (and uploading) copyrighted material are indeed in breach of the law in nearly every country.

Patrick

[WorkToBeDestroy]

Don't think I advocated anything.

The RIAA sues over distribution only, not for downloading.
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/howto-notgetsued.php

As I Googled for some evidence, I'm starting to wonder if I was wrong above (sorry for the caps...) I don't know if downloading is legal or not, but I do know that the riaa only sues people distributing, not downloading.

Doesn't really matter though, Grokster v. MGM is slated for mar 29 at the supreme court... so everything's gonna change in the blink of an eye.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/21/0532239&tid=123&tid=95&tid=186&tid=1

[WorkToBeDestroy]

nothing to see here.. just me learning how to use this message board...

[9000]

Originally posted by WorkToBeDestroy
"DRM - i'm not going to buy music online only to be teathered down ..."
Amen. Don't buy downloads. Except from Bleep
http://www.warprecords.com/bleep/

Other than that it's not against US to download on a p2p netowkr. All recent court rulings (grokster, mainly) have found IT'S NOT A CRIME TO DOWNLOAD. It's a crime to "distribute" or allow someone to download from you (and in Canada that's a-ok too).

"storage - ...only to find all their shit deleted. ...discs are a nice fallback"
uhh..
DVD burner = $80
100 pack of 4.7GB DVD-r = $50
www.pricewatch.com

"cover art - the tangible thing."
I don't understand this myself, but gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.

"sound quality - mp3s don't cut it against CD quality..."
Use ogg Vorbis. Unless you are a dog you will not be able to tell the difference between it and CDs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis


Hey, the bottom line on <peer to peer> is, it means no more paying for overpriced CD's and putting money into the pockets of the bloated, corrupt media conglomerates. All you need is a computer with a high-speed modem, extra memory, a CD-ROM attachment, an extra phone line, Internet access, a CD burner, blank CD's, a how-to manual, and NO FUCKING LIFE.

-appropriated from dennis miller

[WorkToBeDestroy]

ha!

and someone who's posted nearly 500 times to this board has a life?

My computer and I are doing just fine, aren't we honey?

[Maximo]

If he has 500 posts and has been registered since Jan 2003, thats less than 1 post a day. Actually, in my book if you dont have the time to sit down and spend 5 minutes reading these forums and maybe adding a response your life doesnt sound too exciting either.


edit: grammar/spelling :(

[9000]

Originally posted by WorkToBeDestroy
ha!

and someone who's posted nearly 500 times to this board has a life?



and that's not including my posts on the old matador bb, squirt.

i think some of the others here who have officially earned the "no life" moniker may take offense.

[tinobeat]

yeah, whatever. That 9000 punk is a fuckin AMATEUR! you hear me?! an AMATEUR!...

*ahem*

[Wallerton]

From High Fidelity by Nick Hornby:

"Even though we get a lot of people into the shop, only a small percentage of them buy anything. The best customers are the ones who just have to buy a record on Saturday, even if there's nothing they really want; unless they go home clutching a flat, square carrier bag, they feel uncomfortable. You can spot the vinyl addicts because after a while they get fed up with the rack they are flicking through, march over to a completely different section of the shop, pull a sleeve out from the middle somewhere, and come over to the counter; this is because they have been making a list of possible purchases in their head ('If I don't find anything in the next five minutes, that blues compilation I saw half an hour ago will have to do'), and suddenly sicken themselves with the amount of time they have wasted looking for something they don't really want. I know that feeling well (these are my people, and I understand them better than I understand anybody in the world): it is a prickly, clammy, panicky sensation, and you go out of the shop reeling."

If you're like me, you recognize yourself in the above passage. If you're like me, you get choked up at the scene in the movie Little Voice when fire threatens the protagonist's record collection--no, I don't like show tunes, but I understand her attachment to her records.

But I dare say that most people aren't like me. (Well, duh.) For most people, music is background, and they don't really care how it's delivered. They just want whatever's easy. They really don't care about sound quality. They don't necessarily have favorite albums or artists; they tend to have favorite songs.

People like us, record collectors, we're a minority, albeit a significant minority. As long as there are enough of us out there, there's hope that CD's/LP's/whatever will stick around for a while.

[TheSadDebaser]

that's such an awesome book.

[the Pawnbroker]

It's funny how downloading techno-zealots without a clue how the Copyright Act works, make grand proclamations about how music should be free, until they get pinched by the RIAA/MPAA etc., and then cry to mommy and daddy to scrape together the $3k to settle.

CRY like babys I tell you!

[Miss Tasty Princess]

Originally posted by Wallerton
From High Fidelity by Nick Hornby:

"Even though we get a lot of people into the shop, only a small percentage of them buy anything. The best customers are the ones who just have to buy a record on Saturday, even if there's nothing they really want; unless they go home clutching a flat, square carrier bag, they feel uncomfortable. I have a friend with a lovely dbl-LP Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits picture disk due to that phenomenon.