Labels Ditch CDs?
Saturday, November 5, 2011 at 12:02AM CD collectors, begin your long goodbye. Apparently major labels are banding together to ditch the CD format by the end of 2012.
Yep. It’s the end of an era. Nearly an end to music, too.
I’m one of the few people I know who still prefers a physical CD over an album download. I do buy lots of music on Amazon and iTunes, but I still get the physical CD if at all possible. I feel like having something tangible 1) proves what I spent my money on and 2) that the band is worthy of existence. Any musician can record a song and throw it online these days. It takes just a little bit more effort (but not much) to release a physical CD.
I know people say I’m old fashioned or even antiquated, but I loved going to music stores when I was kid. That was how I found new bands to like! I would wander the Kmart music section constantly, just looking for that next big “thing” in my life. I picked up bands because of cool album covers. I also grabbed CDs because they were playing on the record store’s sound system at the time. And sometimes I watched what other people were buying and then I would copy them (usually these people were wearing band T-shirts, etc.)
Since music stores – and music sections – basically don’t even exist anymore, I guess music is less important to our lives, right? Well, not less important to our lives, but to the general public. Anymore, music is nothing more than a throwaway commodity to be used in car commercials and to usher models down runways. Audiophiles are few and far between because everyone listens to compressed tunes through inner earphones. It’s sort of sad.
Remember back in the 80s when people would walk around with those giant boom boxes, blasting tunes? You heard new music that way too! And hey, I won’t bash all technology. I’m very grateful I can Google the lyrics to literally any song and find out the title/artist/album in about two seconds. But still, I’m sad. I spent all my money on CDs as a teenager and now kids just steal music. It really is true: when you work and spend your hard earned money on something, it’s a little more important to you.
I’m resentful that major labels are forcing this change on all of us – because, hello – not everyone uses an MP3 player (at least, not yet). I’ve got music strewn about everywhere. CDs, records, tapes and tons of MP3s on about 15 different electronic devices. I doubt I am unique in this situation. I suppose the phase-out of CD players will come at us fast. I guess this means I need to move all my CDs to my iTunes library. What a bloody hassle.
Reader Comments (26)
Christian and Byron have touched another important aspect of the wholesale downgrade of music with this latest development.
The almost subconscious acceptance of the masses of the incremental loss of quality of sound with the introduction of every new format is one of the biggest crimes of the century to transpire in recent memory.
Collective Generational loss of memory is the unnecessary byproduct we get all in the name of progress.
Remembering back to 1990, when this totally killarious nut (in a good way) I used to work with in NYC had me over to his apartment to give me a bunch of clothes before he moved to Chicago.
After I scored a totally 80's red with purple trim CB ski jacket, he ushered me into the living room to conduct a little sonic experiment.
He sat me down to participate in a little sonic experiment comparing the sound quality of The Beatles song, "A Day In The Life" from their 1967 classic, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" on CD vs. LP. I must say, I found the vinyl version to have a warmer, less "metallically" cold sound with more aural depth than the CD. He then repeated the exercise with the song "Money" from Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon". Again, the vinyl popped with a warmer, deeper aural range than the CD which sounded tinier by comparison.
It was an interesting experiment but not nearly as interesting as when he asked me if I wanted some Chinese takeout and proceeded to open his fridge to reveal a perfectly stacked pyramid of tin containers complete with thin pieces of carefully cut out cardboard dividing each tin exactly the way the order was packed at the restaurant as though I was looking at an X-Ray machine view through the now long gone brown paper bag that once contained the food.
I told you he was nuts! Of course, upon reflection, I wish I had known he was going to conduct such an experiment, as I would have come to his apartment armed with my own little experiment to have him compare the CD and vinyl versions of Saxon's "Where The Lightning Strikes" from their overlooked magnum opus, 1988's "Destiny" album and then repeated the test with "Midnight Mover" by Accept from their 1985 masterpiece, "Metal Heart".
But we are not done. Though I applaud the invention of iTunes (RIP Steve Jobs) and have nearly 10,000 songs on it, nearly all Glam Metal, barring the occasional stray Miles Davis, Metallica or Barry Manilow song (hahaha!!!), the comparison of the MP3 to CD is another sad step down in aural quality, the midrange of a recording on MP3 not nearly as expansive as that of the CD.
Whoever thought we'd be lamenting the downgrade of the sonic quality between something called an MP3 vs. CD when I look back on the sad moment when we bid vinyl a fond farewell in my friend's apartment way back when.
Viva Vinyl! Maybe I should open a record store called that. I bought a turntable just 6 weeks ago and I've been crankin' it ever since, as well as transferring to iTunes some vinyl rarities that never came out on CD (Kick Axe's cover of Humble Pie's "30 Days In The Hole" anyone? It was only available on the soundtrack to 80's B-Picture, "Up The Creek", which, of course, only came out on vinyl!)
p.s. OTSK!
Believe it or not, there was so much of the genre released on CD that never got major label release, let alone all the major label signings who's only day in the sun happened like twice at 3 a.m. on Headbanger's Ball. All of the stuff is excellent but never got anything more than local airplay, if at all.
So, I have been on a quest since 2007 to acquire as much as I can get my hands on in the form of CD or, in more than a few cases, Demo cassettes. I've been transferring over stuff from vinyl and cassette to CD and then download the CD's onto my iTunes. After that, I go through the albums once their downloaded and cherry pick my would-be-hits and compile them onto iTunes playlists.
As I just explained, there's so much stuff, I've been able to create playlists 2 days long with no repeats of original line-ups of bands. The only time a singer shows up twice or more is predicated by the number of bands in which he's been the singer or any solo material he's put out.
You also might here the other musicians more than once but only if they show up in another band with a different lead singer. Kapish?
Needless to say, these long playlists are fun to crank up on my iPod when I'm riding my bike or cool to pass out to every night when I go to sleep, hahaha!!! Of course, I'm still waiting for the reason to stay up 2.2 days straight to listen to the thing all the way through. I also have several other 24-hour playlists, some just power ballads (the stuff I go to sleep to).
So, progress is pretty cool in this way, as this was not easily possible before iTunes, since CD mixes could only last 77 minutes max unless you loaded one with compressed MP3's that are playable on those kinds of CD players, etc. One limitation that sucks about iTunes is when you burn an Audio DVD or CD (the choice relating to the length of a playlist) for someone. iTunes will not download a playlist in the same track order you have created if you set it for maximum number of songs you can fit onto one DVD or CD.
What I mean is, if you want to give someone an Audio DVD of a huge playlist with the amount of songs on it numbering over a thousand, iTunes won't let you do it in the order you've set it up. It just defaults it to alphabetical order. Which means all dire requests to people to whom you give it to put it back in the track order you originally intended it to be played will most likely go unheeded as no one wants to put it back in the order it is intended to be played in.
Geez, what a sentence (or grammatical nightmare). I need sleep. But seriously, Apple can't figure out iTunes to keep playlists in the same track order in which you burned them? Or, do they choose not to, to discourage file sharing?
Thoughts, anyone?
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/record-labels/business-matters-don-t-bury-the-cd-just-1005490122.story
But I have heard of one avid reader of SF/Fantasy/Horror who takes his Kindle to the conventions and has his favorite authors sign it. :)