A couple of days ago, while discussing EMI music exec Alain Levy’s announcement that the CD as we knew it was dead, Kirk wrote this: “music lovers shrugged and loaded more songs onto their iPods.”
Perhaps. But that’s not necessarily the right reaction. Last time I checked, I’m a music lover, and I did neither (of course, part of the reason is that my Nano’s battery keeps acting up, but that’s another story). I actually think that the death of the CD is a potentially bad thing for music lovers. We’re the ones who could easily get the shaft from the wholesale transition to digital music.
Here are five reasons why music lovers — even ones who have abandoned the format years ago — should worry about the death of the CD:
- Sound quality. Lest we forget, mp3z don’t sound as good as CDs. Especially commercial downloads, which are usually compressed down to 128 kbps. The analog here is cassette tapes. Yes, cassette tapes were more portable and eventually outsold vinyl, and they sounded worse and were essentially disposable. Also, eventually, bandwidth and storage will be cheap enough that we will be able to keep and stream uncompressed digital music in our homes. Unless, of course, you’ve gone totally compressed.
- Cover art, liner notes, artist information. Sure, the days of staring at album covers or even unfolding CD covers are long gone: nowadays, you can dial up an artist’s website or MySpace page while you are listening to their album. But who listens to albums as albums anymore? By the time you might muster up the energy to learn more about that cool song, it might already be gone. Or you may be in your car. And a lot of artists’ websites are long on the sell and short on the information that we used to get from the liner notes.
- DRM. While the record companies have put some copy protection on their CDs, by and large it has ended up a failed experiment. It’s far far easier, however, to lock people into their DRM schemes with digital music. As Kirk has also pointed out, DRM is viral. This scares me. Yes, you can stand on principal and only purchase non-DRM’d digital music, or music from iTunes, where you can get around the code. So the upshot is that you end up being able to enjoy a fraction of the music out there. I realize that, realistically, I can only ever listen to a small portion of the music out there, but I’d rather have that as much choice as possible as to what that fraction is. Otherwise, the Long Tail gets shortened by DRM.
For example, if you are a long-time Beck fan, your principles might keep you from hearing his new album, because the only digital versions are DRM’d. Or wait for your friend who purchased the CD give you a backup for safekeeping. But when the CD is gone and the next Beck album is only available via DRM’d sites, what are you going to do?
- Backups. Let’s not forget even for those of us who instantly rip everything, a CD is an instant high-quality backup of our mp3z. Since the prices are just about And as far as the “trouble” it takes to rip a CD, last time I checked — Beck’s Information — it took approximately 2-3 minutes to rip a CD. No trouble at all.
Ironically, I spend wayyyyyyyy more time organizing my digital music collection than I ever did with my vinyl or CDs. You have to make sure that everything is tagged correctly, put into the right directories, and wait as everything is moving back and forth across the network. And hoo boy, if you accidentally drag something to the wrong directory, good luck finding it.
- Choice. I touched upon this earlier when I was talking about DRM. I think that anything that limits my choices as a consumer is bad. Even back in the bad old cassette days, I purchased some, just because I knew that there were certain situations in my life where buying a cassette of Live at Leeds or London Calling for my car was the right answer. Nowadays, I download some things and I buy the CD of other things. I like having that choice, and I think that my power as a consumer will be greatly diminished when that choice finally goes away, and I am stuck with the very very flawed digital distribution model.
What’s the answer? I don’t know. Lower prices and no DRM for a start, as if that’s going to happen. And it’s not like the CD in and of itself isn’t flawed, what with the artificially high prices and the potentially dodgy lifespan. I do know this, however: when I switched from vinyl to CD, it was an actual switch — after I bought my first CDs after purchasing hundreds of albums, I only ever purchased one ever again. And that was because it wasn’t available on CD at the time. (Ironically, that album — The Ex-Cat Heads’ Our Frisco — finally came out on CD last year.)
Still, despite all of their flaws, CDs were so obviously a better distribution system than vinyl or cassette, I made the transition and never looked back. This time, I’m not so sure that trading one flawed model for another flawed is the best thing for music lovers.
Great idea, terrible list! In every one of your items your first statement is essential shows why the Death of CD is of NO concern whatsoever. The format is dead and its a great thing for consumers no matter how you slice it.
1) Sound quality is a non issue for most folks. Bitrates are going up not down (from 128 to 192 and higher)
2) Cover art, liner notes, artist information again this seems like a non-issues there is NO Dearth of information or art on the Internet.
I say let the CD’s die.
3) DRM you’ve got a point on this one but in reality only if you assume that people will get their music from the digital stores rather then other methods which is where most folks get their music these days.
4) Backups all you really need on this is $49 bucks and MP3tunes
5) Choices on this one your absolutely wrong. Users issue with choice is not gonna be limited choice is gonna be to much choice an abyss of choice.
Of course, I was pretty much discussing things that are legal.
Interestingly enough, I might want to point out that a pretty significant amount of the non-DRM’d music that people get from “other methods” is ripped from a CD.
What happens when the majority of new music isn’t available on CD anymore and totally protected by DRM?
I would argue that the ease of ripping a CD is what fueled file sharing in the first place. What happens when that is no longer an option? From where will you get
Yes, of course, encryption can be broken. But I’d wager that the the act of decrypting DRM’d music will remain far more specialized than the act of ripping a CD. And feel a lot more like theft, as well, which will keep other people from doing it.
The problem with file sharing has always been that you have to depend on the willingness of friends and the kindness of strangers. I wonder how that will hold up when the majority of music is out there is lossy DRM’d digital music.
1. CDs are notorious for their poor quality. Sound is compressed as to allow greater volume rather than greater range of sounds.
2. You get cover art when you purchase music from pretty much anywhere … ??
3. Don’t worry, there are ways to get around DRM. You may not be able to figure them out, but do you really think people are just going for this bullshit? Lots of consumers spend a lot of energy railing against DRM. This is like pulling the terrorist card in political discourse–scare tactic.
4. You may not know this, but every major OS of the past decade has included a SEARCH FEATURE.
5. You can still choose to make cds, right? You know the most important niches are specialty niches, right? You know you can still buy new vinyl, repressed vinyl, even today, that’s right, the present, right?
This is an incredibly asinine article dawg. You should maybe ask the nice apple people to fix your ipod, methinks.
“CDs are notorious for their poor quality. Sound is compressed as to allow greater volume rather than greater range of sounds.”
True (in some cases) but that’s a completely separate issue from the DATA compression of mp3 files. The dynamic range compression occurs at the mastering studio. And digital downloads suffer from that type of compression as well — assuming the same stereo master was used to create the mp3/AAC file. If you don’t like the sound of CDs, digital downloads are never an improvement…
I’m one of those people who favors the convenience of digital audio over physical media. I know the sound of CD’s is superior, but for me the difference usually isn’t big enough to be noticeable – especially if the digital files were encoded at a high bitrate with a decent encoder like LAME.
Having said that, I think the death of the CD will be a bad deal for consumers. If for no other reason because the music industry is so clearly using this transition as an opportunity to improve their profit margins and screw musicians and consumers alike.
Kate: What the hell are you talking about? Most consumers don’t have a clue about DRM. Seriously, ask around. Maybe your friends do, but the public at large is in the dark on this issue. Also, I assume you’ve heard of the DMCA, right? You know, the law that outlaws the circumvention of DRM. If not, go read up on it and come back when you’re better informed.
Oh, and since when is the availability of vinyl an indication that we have a choice of formats?!?! How many titles are released on vinyl every year? How many retail outlets carry vinyl? How many online stores sell vinyl? What planet do you live on?
I predict they will still be selling CD’s in the year 2050, perhaps by then the first 2 Catheads albums will be released on CD. I’M one of those clueless ones unfamiliar with DRM. I can tell the vast difference in sound quaility between a vinyl record and a I-tunes download.
Hey John,
A quick story about the first Catheads album. I moved out of Fresno in 1994. I was living in Oakland, and working for a weird little advertising agency in Lafayette (which is between Oakland and Walnut Creek on the 24 freeway.) There was a tiny CD store that was just down the street, but I never went, because now I was living only 15 minutes away from Amoeba in Berkeley!!
Anyways, a few months after I started working there, this CD store went out of business, so I figured I should check it out. It was pretty much empty, though. However, sitting among the desolate racks: a used copy of of the Catheads debut Hubba! You can only imagine my surprise, since I had been looking for those CDs for a few years by that point. I didn’t even know it existed. But there it was. And even now, it sits only a few feet away from me.
Never did find Submarine, however.
I would like to point out that Jim’s last point is the reason why I would miss CDs most. The physical pursuit for the physical object is/was one of life’s simple pleasures. That little house in Pasadena (Poobah’s?) that served as a used CD store was a treasure. And I still love going to Amoeba and communing with and being surrounded by the physical objects. And, you get to see and sometimes even talk to like minded souls. Sure, you can do message boards and such on the internets, but is that really the same?
What are you talking about? Who needs to do that when you can click on the “New This Week” section of eMusic and check out as many as 15 downloads on every page!
If you were kewl, that’s that you would do. Or maybe find some rad torrentz!!