CD Format To Be Abandoned In 2012 By Major Labels (1 Viewer)

[Al.Anderson]

He told me that he truly believes that the major labels are purposely trying to kill off the CD format in favor of digital downloads.

I believe this 100%. I think the studios regret having allowed an uprotected media format become so entreched. You can rip a CD to your hearts content. Doing that with any other format puts you in DMCA violation. When the music studios tried to lock down CDs a few years ago (people remember that, right?), the public went nuts. What they are doing now is letting the public think this is a good thing, and then they'll lock the digital versions back up.
I access all my music digitally: iPods, NAS, etc; but I always purchase on CDs. That way I can recreate the rip any time I want. And hell, more often than not these days, the CD is the less expensive purchase. They're charging more for a product that has less manufacturing and distribution cost - that irks me too.
I'll confess that this is probably my most pananoid, grumpy old man topic. I can dispassionately discuss religion and politics, and give all sides their due; but I get wound up knowing they're out for my music. (Talking about those BD bastards that stole away my preferred HD-DVD format (cheaper to manufacture media, cheaper hardware) comes in second; but I think I have to let that one go ... no damnit, it WILL rise again!)

 

[Rhett_Y]

I download and I still purchase. I don't think they, meaning the music companies are going to get rid of the CD anytime soon. I still think it has a little more life left in it. Which I am glad because I like ripping my cd's at lossless rate. I try not to compress anything I get!

 

[Dave Moritz]

I am not surprised that they are looking to kill off the CD. I love technology but I honestly feel MP'3s are garbage! I have actually broke down and downloaded two albums and a few separate songs from I tunes. I think it has been clear for awhile that both the music and movie industry would like to move away from the ownership model! I feel they want to force everyone to ether download or stream content instead of owning it. Owning a physical disc is the best way as it last far longer than trusting your music collection for a hard drive. This is something that today's younger consumers just don't get! Bluray discs offer the best presentation for video and especially audio. The video quality on the on demand is not to bad but still has its flaws and you are stuck with the old Dolby Digital audio as well. The problem is that many people only care about having there music and accessing it anywhere and everywhere. While many will claim there care about quality you can see it is not really true when you see them playing back mp'3 files on there cell phones or apple I touch or cheap mp'3 players with those cheapy mini headphones that couldn't deliver a true 20Hz - 20KHz if they tried. It will be a truly sad day when titles can only be downloaded and streamed via pay services. Music companies want to make the distribution chain as cheap as possible and it doesn't get any cheaper than downloading! Todays business model is all about money and not about quality! I have ripped my CD's at max quality but I can never listen to it in that form very long, to me it sucks in mp'3 form. I hate the fact that the mp'3 format is lossy and removes overlapping frequencies to reduce data size and that is what I Tunes and others give you! If this is where music is going I will not download more than a song or two once in a great while and will just buy Bluray discs! While CD's where out dated years ago and SACD or DVD-A should have taken over and given us high resolution music. We are now seeing the death of the CD and it looks like we are stuck with the crappy MP'3 format! :f I just do not see the I pod being the greatest thing since sliced bread and seeing them offering good audio quality and especially not via cell phones like so many people use to listen to music.
In the past people had the right to back up there music collections and the music industry has not made it illegal to do so which is ridiculous! When you buy a title you should own it outright and you should be able to make copies of it for your own personal use! I do not condone making copies for friends and especially not sharing music online!!! But again the industry is taking the ownership model and flushing it down the toilet! If they do the same thing for movies I will not download movies or buy them on my cable system where I will not own the physical copy of the disc. What if the supplier like Verizon, I Tunes or cable system goes bankrupt? What will you have after spending $10 - $35 for having a online non physical library? I will tell you what you will have, absolutely nothing! If it comes to this I will not buy music or movies and doing movies on demand with the old crappy Dolby Digital is not acceptable to me!

 

[Don Giro]

I've heard rumors that Apple plans to discontinue iPods containing hard drives, citing that "most people are moving to 'The Cloud' for their music," thanks to the success of sites like Pandora and Spotify. This brings the notion that we will soon no longer be able to own the music we listen to one step closer to reality. "The Cloud" is only as good as how fast and reliable your internet or WiFi connection is, and will end up costing you money just to listen to your music if/when your net provider does away with the "all you can eat internet" model. "Hey, Don...you went over your limit this month, listening to your new Epica 'album' will cost you a buck a listen until September 1st..." I don't think it's a far-fetched idea. I also hear and read "Most people use their phones for their music." Yeah? I have a "SmartPhone" that eats battery power like it's going out of style. Four or five text messages and I can almost watch the battery icon descend to half-charged...
I get the same feeling of dread now with the entertainment business finally tipping the scale in their favor of not letting us own music as I did with the ill-fated launch of the Divx DVD format "way back when." I remember someone saying "What happens when Disney re-releases 'The Little Mermaid' in theaters...and decides to render your Divx disc useless until the theatrical run is over?"
What about us folks that like to listen to music on the subway? Last time I checked (this morning), my phone is always "searching for service" as soon as I descend the stairs. What good is "The Cloud" to me then?

 

[schan1269]

Maybe CD will die and LP will come back...

 

[Aaron Silverman]

That ain't gonna help Don on the Subway!

 

[Ockeghem]

http://www.side-line.com/news_comments.php?id=46980_0_2_0_C
Sorry to see it go, and with it, cover art, liner notes, lyrics -- all the things that went into making up an album, and made albums worth collecting.

Sam,
Unfortunately, this had already occurred in several cases with the transfer from LP to CD. And not just with cover art, liner notes, and lyrics -- often times tracks didn't make the cut, especially in various early music collections. Thankfully I retained (and continue to use) my collection of approximately 3,000 LPs since these contain the complete tracks as originally released, as well as the unedited liner notes.

 

[Gary Seven]

I periodically go to a vinyl record store to pick up titles and the owner has said that his business is quite good and LPs are indeed making a comeback. More interesting to me when I visited last time, there were two teenagers in the store (boy and girl) buying albums. Even more interesting was they were buying classic rock. The owner said that a lot of kids listen to their parent's music and are influenced by them. As such, he sells a lot of classic rock to kids and rap is not near as popular as it once was.

Things come full circle.

I envy Scott with his 3000 album collection. I wish I still had every album I bought since the 70s.

 

[Stan]

Never even touched an MP3 player, maybe it's time to learn how they work. Sad since I love CDs and other physical media. I don't want my movies or music on a hard drive or in "The Cloud". Streaming is okay if it's a movie or TV show you know you'll never watch again, but I like to purchase something that I can own and watch at any time, not go through the hassle of streaming a show or the inevitable hard drive failure after 5-6 years, even less in many cases.
Had a feeling something like this would eventually happen, but I figured at least another 4-5 years, not so soon.
I even read somewhere that laptops and other computers won't even be built with CD/DVD/BluRay drives in the future. Everything will be internet based.

 

[andrew markworthy]

EDIT: Deleted as I think it went too off-topic and wasn't very good, anyway.

 

[Don Giro]

How about all these Blu releases that come with "Ultraviolet" discs so you can "store your movies in the Cloud and watch them wherever, whenever." Sounds REALLY sinister to me. It's like they're saying "Isn't this a GREAT bonus?" when they REALLY mean "Get USED to it!" I'm not as concerned about films on disc as I used to be. I look at the piles I have and say "How many of these am I ever gonna watch again, when there SO much stuff I can get from Netflix?" Music is a different story; I'm sure we all listen to our favorites over and over, perhaps several times a week...

 

[Ockeghem]

I periodically go to a vinyl record store to pick up titles and the owner has said that his business is quite good and LPs are indeed making a comeback.  More interesting to me when I visited last time, there were two teenagers in the store (boy and girl) buying albums.  Even more interesting was they were buying classic rock.  The owner said that a lot of kids listen to their parent's music and are influenced by them.  As such, he sells a lot of classic rock to kids and rap is not near as popular as it once was.
Things come full circle.
I envy Scott with his 3000 album collection.  I wish I still had every album I bought since the 70s.

Gary,
I agree. I was (am) influenced quite a lot by what my parents listened to, and several of our children like much of the music we listen to today.
When my wife and I were in the process of planning to build our home, we put all of our books (hundreds of boxes) into two storage units. The LPs came to my office at work, but as they too were in boxes (although in a controlled environment as far as temperature is concerned), I still didn't have access to them for about seven or eight years. It was a wonderful time opening those boxes up once our home was built. Then I went over every LP (used a cloth on the discs and Lysol on the jackets) before we shelved them in our library.
Speaking of libraries, the library at the university I work at has about 9,500 LPs. They were actually thinking of discarding them a few years ago, but I fought that move very strongly and (thankfully) won that battle. Hopefully I will one day have my dream of getting a new music library / music listening room fulfilled at the university.

 

[SilverWook]

As long as external USB drives are made, it's a moot point. I can even buy a USB floppy drive if I need one.
I can't see the need for burning data to a disc ever going away completely. How reliable are memory sticks and SD cards for long term storage anyway?
And it's not like future Blu Ray players are going to suddenly drop CD playback.

 

[Stan]

As long as external USB drives are made, it's a moot point. I can even buy a USB floppy drive if I need one.
I can't see the need for burning data to a disc ever going away completely. How reliable are memory sticks and SD cards for long term storage anyway?
And it's not like future Blu Ray players are going to suddenly drop CD playback.

You make a good point with floppy drives. I don't think I've even used one in 9-10 years. Going back to the really old days I actually used floppy discs that held only 360kb of data (that right, kilobytes, not megabytes, plus they were the size of dinner plates).
As technology improved and discs held more, 720k floppy drives, which then doubled to 1.4Mb, CDs, then DVDs, BluRay, etc., there would always be equipment to use them, particularly with music and films. I hope that even as the formats change, physical media will always be around.
If I'm home sick with the flu I can watch what I want whenever I want from discs I own. Maybe fall asleep doing it and not have to purchase it a second time, lend it to a friend, etc. I could just bring my portable DVD player with me on a plane flight, not having to worry about missing something or not getting a signal at all while trying to stream something.
There are lots of reasons that physical media you own makes much more sense than streaming it or storing it in "The Cloud". Technology is obviously much more reliable and available today, but I like the freedom of actually owning something I'm paying for, not just borrowing it for a couple of hours.

 

[Don Giro]

One thought that occurred to me this morning is that there are still huge sections of the country where fast internet isn't available. What are these film and music lovers supposed to do with The Cloud? How about people with no internet at all?

 

[TravisR]

One thought that occurred to me this morning is that there are still huge sections of the country where fast internet isn't available. What are these film and music lovers supposed to do with The Cloud? How about people with no internet at all?

That's exactly why physical media won't die as fast as some predict.

 

[Carlo_M]

One thought that occurred to me this morning is that there are still huge sections of the country where fast internet isn't available. What are these film and music lovers supposed to do with The Cloud? How about people with no internet at all?

Indeed!
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/08/119-million-americans-lack-broadband-internet-fcc-reports/

The US is a long way from its goal of making broadband Internet available to all 314 million Americans. In its third annual broadband progress report, the Federal Communications Commission says 19 million Americans have no option to buy fixed broadband Internet service, and an additional 100 million Americans that do live in areas where broadband is available are not subscribers.

 

[schan1269]

Physical media will never die off...
I keep reading that 1% of the internet users create 99% of the problem. We have a "lucky household" in our internet usage...
We'll never run out...and we don't care which provider is "being slow" either. Just at our house...
Sprint thumb drive connected to a Cradlepoint 15 device "travel" router. Granted the wifi is only good for about 75 feet...who cares. I'm grandfathered into an unlimited data plan with no throttling. I fear every single thumb drive "firmware update" as the next one might be a brick...forcing me to upgrade...which means I'd lose my unlimited(this account frequently sees 9-12 gig a month)
Verizon Wireless hot spot. My cousin bought that one cause she travels to western MO and Bloomingon, IN quite a bit...and in both places VZW is all that works. 5 gig limit before the "holy crap that is expensive" starts.
Wild Blue. Their "high dollar plan". We frequently run up against the "rolling limit" and get the "please use your internet less" emails. When we are bricked...switch to VZW or Sprint.
Two Sprint Droid phones that both have "hot spot" capability.
Tmobile Blackberry that can tether. Unlimited data plan. This is the "slowest" internet we have, but still works for Vimeo/Youtube when it is "fast"...
Couple of months ago we culled together our data usage for all of our various ways to get it. 4 main people at the house. Up to 7 additional people using our "various wifi"(we farm and the people that work on the farm we allow to use the internet when available, cause sometimes out of a 6 hour day...there is only 2 hours of stuff to do...but it happens in 10-15 minute spurts).
All told, when we checked our March usage(lots of online ordering and Skyping)...we used a combined 27 gig of internet....
We know that is a lot of internet and we don't really care...or have a choice.
ADT is set-up with constant monitoring of the farm with video/audio. That by itself tends to run 6 gig. We spent the money on the "motion sensor" cameras. If we didn't have those, our monthly ADT would be closer to 15gig.
Yesterday we had a networked radio sitting on Slacker for 7 hours(we live in an area where the FM selection sucks)
My cousin has an "online shopping" addiction...

 

[Dave Moritz]

I hope that physical media doesn't go away because mp'3 sound like garbage!

 

[Sumnernor]

According to one store in Munich (Beck) does not feel that CDs will disappear. The store sells classical and Pop CDs (and DVDs). I don't know about England - what do people there know?