Does the CD as a medium for music need to be put out of its misery?
This HypeBot article talks about the need for labels, companies and distributors to put away the idea of CDs as their main revenue generator by December 2009.
The source article from Gartner, says “…reliance on revenue from the sale
of CD’s is hindering the music industry from fully embracing online distribution opportunities.”
We aren’t arguing with this point, because we are a business firmly built on looking to the future of how Music will be consumed/listened to in the days to come. We do have questions, though - we know bands will have something to say about it (the overwhelming majority I know still believe that the first thing that they want to do for their band is record for the purpose of making a CD) and more to the point, so will physical CD distributors/manufacturers and probably labels, who are making the majority of their money from the sales/making of these. If the events of this article were to come true, then these guys should probably come up with a quick solution. It’s late in the game and if they haven’t got their digital strategy in place, there’s no time like the present.
We are asking you this - should the transition be a little more gradual than this, or has the CD really run its course? Being digital-savvy here in the office, we are all confident that we could take the plunge, but are the public ready as a wider, general rule? We have all heard about the huge sales in iPods and other MP3 Players, and MP3 docks, MP3 adaptor kits for Car stereos etc., but what about actually purchasing the tracks? Does everyone have a computer capable of doing this? Is everyone tech-competent enough to download the track and then burn it to a CD or put it on a USB stick to play in their stereo or stream it from their computer to their stereo using a wireless device such as Apple’s Airport express, using their iPhone as a remote to control their iTunes playlist? If this becomes the standard practice, does this mean tracks will be DRM (Digital Rights Management) free? Will they be High Quality MP3s or lossless FLAC files or similar? Do the general public know about the technical difference between a 128kbps MP3 to a 320kbps file?
We believe that this day will come, but is it right now? It’s definitely in the mail, but should we not give them a few years to work themselves out of circulation and the less tech-inclined to catch up? The real test would be if your parents (who, probably, have just mastered playing their CDs on their stereo) could do it. These people are still in their comfort zone with their nice, easy CD in their hands that they can see, feel, touch. What are they going to do when realistically, they have to think about their music in terms of it being a computer file, made up of 1’s and 0’s.
I still have many people say to me that while they accept the rise in the MP3/digital revolution in music, they don’t believe the CD will ever truly die, because they still like holding the product in their hands and having the artwork and the liner notes/lyrics. Do you believe that a digital pack, that technically, can provide more, i.e. interactive content such as weblinks, will ever replace the CD?
Never before has there been this predicament when a medium was about to be outdated. We have never gone from a physical medium to an abstract medium, one that couldn’t be held in one’s hands - Vinyl to Cassette Tape, though there was a massive loss in sound quality and they were easily destroyed (ever try to roll the heads and get the tape back in to the Cassette after your stereo chewed it?), was a more convenient physical product, smaller in size and the making of the mix tape was almost a rite of passage. Cassette to CD was an easy transition, as I am guessing the sound quality (though still not as ‘warm’ as Vinyl) trumped the Cassette tape and was still a manageable physical size.
What of the millions of Music stores the world over? Will they become a series of booths that you plug your MP3 player/Laptop into, feed your cash/credit card in and fill up on tunes? Will you miss trawling through the piles of CDs/Vinyl to find that treasured relic? Or will you rejoice that the trawling is finally over and the search function on the iTunes store will do that for you? Are you excited that websites like last.fm and functions such as iTunes genius are finding new and varied music for you from the world over?
A few things that the articles suggest is that CDs become press-on-demand items or giveaway promo items. Press-on-Demand is a good idea, but as promo items? CD pressing in mass quantities at the moment is a fairly expensive exercise for not that many products (depending on where you are and what deals you can cut) so will labels/bands bother with this??
This is all up for debate. We are ready for the digital revolution. Are you? Are your parents?
December 29th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
My parents have made the big leap from CDs to iPod and docking station with radio function. They love it, but they are an exception. I don’t see CDs being dead by next Christmas. I don’t think sales of them will ever recover, but they certainly won’t be dead.
December 29th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
I think digital music in a way is a physical format. When you use an mp3 player you can see the album art and view lyrics (on some players). You are holding the player in your hand and can see it. Sure it’s not like seeing the grooves in a record or the smell of an old album sleeve, but in a dumbed down way it is physical. The experience is not as “immersive” as putting on a CD, though some might say that a CD is not immersive as putting on a record and looking at the giant album art. Given enough time mp3 players (such as the touch screen ones) will become more interactive to the point where the difference between what is physical and what is not will be irrelevant. The digital-ness of music will simply be the method of transporting music, not the actual consumption of it.
January 28th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
I don’t think the cd will put out of it’s misery,but fewer people will use it.Just like vinyl has limited appeal to
some,like cassettes has limited appeal to some and CDs is the next in line.
But CDs might not even be overshadowed by Mp3 players,it could be dvds.With portable dvd players available and
logically their price should drop.Bands might put out dvds and forget about CDs all together.It would include videos
for the songs,interviews,maybe an insight to the recording process etc…and then they’ll move on to blu ray.
And this will appeal to people who like holding a cd in their hand and reading liner notes and looking at album
art.
I see mp3 players as related,but in some ways a different animal because the amount of data they can hold will
become SO huge.You know where CDs and DvDs stand in terms of what they can hold.But Ipods are in the gigabytes.Maybe
someday,terabytes.That will be for someone from a future generation.Because that much space,I don’t know if too
many people would know what to do with it right now.
But you’ll have a generation growing up used to gigabytes and terabytes and they’ll figure out how to use it.Maybe
have every episode of of Seinfeld or C.S.I. or maybe they’re a sports fan and they can have every game of their
favorite sports team of that particular season.Or maybe a movie director who takes a rough cut of his
unfinished film,copies it to his Ipod,watches it and takes notes of what changes could be made.
But all in all,if vinyl is still around,so will CDs.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
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October 25th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
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