CDs Dead In 2012?

[dkane360]

Streaming/download IS the future. Today is not the future.

True, but my comment still stands that as long as access to the internet is capped and throttled, the viability of streaming as an alternative to physical media will remain a dim prospect.

 

[gmichael]

As long as people keep buying CD's, they won't be going anywhere.

 

[j_garcia]

Physical media will go away. Probably not in a few years, but for sure within 5-10 max.

 

[Alex2507]

I thought the world was ending in 2012. Unless CD's are made from some indestructible space rocks they too will be toast. Tucking an MP3 player under your foil beanie may provide you with tunes till the very last moment of your existence according to somebody I haven't made up yet.

 

[j_garcia]

I thought the world was ending in 2012. Unless CD's are made from some indestructible space rocks they too will be toast. Tucking an MP3 player under your foil beanie may provide you with tunes till the very last moment of your existence according to somebody I haven't made up yet.

Technically, it was supposed to end last year, according to some old guy

I plan to buy an iPad, some Bose speakers and Monster cables....at the end of 2012

 

[gmichael]

Physical media will go away. Probably not in a few years, but for sure within 5-10 max.

If sales drop off, then they will go bye-bye. If sales are high enough, someone will sell them.

 

[avnetguy]

Streaming/download IS the future. Today is not the future.

Yep, no doubt it's going to shift to internet transfers. One thing they do need to get away from is the streaming model when possible, total waste of bandwidth. As newer services become available hopefully a download model (time restricted when required) will take over.

Steve

 

[barclay02]

Can't remember the last time that I bought CDs...

 

[psbfan9]

Variety

I would hear a song and think "I may buy that CD". I would hear another song from the same artist, same CD, then buy the CD and be disappointed because the other 6-8 songs on the CD where terrible.

I do legally download music for the reason that I can choose the songs I want/like. Also, the sound quality and quality of the materials CD's are made of has gone way downhill.

I like a variety, and typically stream internet radio or Pandora. I don't think I've listened to whole CD in a long time.

 

[Alex2507]

Technically, it was supposed to end last year, according to some old guy

I plan to buy an iPad, some Bose speakers and Monster cables....at the end of 2012

I think the Mayans call for the end to be next year ... probably brought on by somebody hooking up a Bose with Monster Cable while talking on their iPhone. Christians have been calling for the end since the beginning ... starting with Christ himself, "The end is near."

 

[psbfan9]

I think the Mayans call for the end to be next year ... probably brought on by somebody hooking up a Bose with Monster Cable while talking on their iPhone. Christians have been calling for the end since the beginning ... starting with Christ himself, "The end is near."

I have the Mayan Christ interconnects. Good stuff, but expensive.

 

[Nomo]

I could adjust to the download format. Maybe. Old timer here. Set in his ways. Kids these days.....

My whole concern is the quality of what will be available. And the price for caring that the music actually sound good.
I can barely bring myself to listen to an MP3 file.
Even a 320 MP3, to me anyway, sounds like garbage compared to a CD.

Thinking about it;
If CDs are going to be dead, and I'm forced to listen to Justin Bieber on anything less than FLAC; the world can't end soon enough.

 

[sholling]

I think the death of the CD will signal the upcoming death of the big record labels or will at least reduce their power and influence to almost nil. Their power lay in controlling access to CD distribution and promotion. Their industry connections and money controlled who received airplay but that's now being undermined by band owned websites and online retailers' providing free samples of tracks and sometimes whole songs for free.

What has to happen is that a proprietary lossless standard needs to be adopted by the entire industry so that playback is assured on every home media player, car system, computer, receiver, Blu-Ray player and portable device. For now we have AAC vs MP3 on the lossy side and FLAC is getting there on the lossless side buy it's not quite universal. A replacement for CD, a format that who's 16/44.1 format was intended as a convenient to use WAF friendly mid-fi compromise between storage & processing limitations and cost, is long overdue. It's why I'm buying better than CD 24bit high sample-rate audio whenever possible and yes I'd love to see Amazon bring down the price of 24bit FLACs.

MP3 and lossy AAC are just a compromise of a compromise suitable only for portable players and cars where background noise and speaker/headphone compromises effect the sound as much as moderate compression. Ideally download sales would include both a 24bit FLAC and a 256bit MP3 for home and portable use and the ability to redownload in the event of disaster.

 

[TLS Guy]

I think the death of the CD will signal the upcoming death of the big record labels or will at least reduce their power and influence to almost nil. Their power lay in controlling access to CD distribution and promotion. Their industry connections and money controlled who received airplay but that's now being undermined by band owned websites and online retailers' providing free samples of tracks and sometimes whole songs for free.

What has to happen is that a proprietary lossless standard needs to be adopted by the entire industry so that playback is assures on every home media player, computer, receiver, Blu-Ray player and portable device. For now we have AAC vs MP3 on the lossy side and FLAC is getting there on the lossless side buy it's not quite universal. A replacement for CD, a format that who's 16/44.1 format was intended as a convenient to use WAF friendly mid-fi compromise between storage & processing limitations and cost, is long overdue. It's why I'm buying better than CD 24bit high sample-rate audio whenever possible and yes I'd love to see Amazon bring down the price of 24bit FLACs.

As I have stated before, downloads for classical music have in the main a long way to go before they are ready for general application.

We need a Red Book standard for downloads , like the CD, or insist on a perfect CD image for download.

Lossy formats do not cut it in the classical realm.

The big issue is that the CD must play without clicks and pops between movements etc.

Also within movements you need track markers that play in a seamlessly without any break or artifact. In other words it must have all the attributes of a CD. You must easily be able to navigate the program.

There are some sites that you can download a perfect CD image from, with the cue file functioning perfectly.

There is no cue file for data type downloads. Since there is no Red Book for high def. downloads this remains a big problem as high def, recordings have to be downloaded as data discs, which is very unsatisfactory.

I don't download much music, as it is a real pain. Far more often than not I have to totally remaster the contents. This is a lot of work. It is not infrequent that there are problems that can not be corrected in remastering, because of missing data.

So I don't see CDs going away in the classical arena until these severe shortcomings are fully and completely addressed.

 

[sholling]

Lossy formats do not cut it in the classical realm.

I agree, and in my opinion they don't cut it for jazz either.

The big issue is that the CD must play without clicks and pops between movements etc.

The only reason I can think of that a digital format might have pops or clicks is if they are part of the master or the playback gear is defective and I can't imagine any defects in your setup. Was that a big black 33-1/3 disc?

Also within movements you need track markers that play in a seamlessly without any break or artifact. In other words it must have all the attributes of a CD. You must easily be able to navigate the program.

I can see where this could be a problem and about the closest that you can come is gapless playback which is an option with many devices.

There are some sites that you can download a perfect CD image from, with the cue file functioning perfectly.

There is no cue file for data type downloads. Since there is no Red Book for high def. downloads this remains a big problem as high def, recordings have to be downloaded as data discs, which is very unsatisfactory.

What they could do is go with a single track. What would be really nice though is if instead of having a fixed gap the tags within the track being played told the player how much gap if any to leave before the next track.

I'm not sure what if anything might be missing from a 24bit 96khz track that would be found on a 16bit 44.1khz CD. The master has to be down converted to fit the redbook standard. Not so the high def track.

 

[TLS Guy]

I agree, and in my opinion they don't cut it for jazz either.


The only reason a digital format would have pops or clicks is if they are part of the master or the playback gear is defective and I can't imagine any defects in your setup.


I can see where this could be a problem and about the closest that you can come is gapless playback which is an option with many devices.


What they could do is go with a single track. I have a couple of CDs that I ripped that way because at the time I didn't have a media player that supported gapless playback. What would be nice is if instead of having a fixed gap the tags within the track being played told the player how much gap if any to leave before the next track.

I can assure you there are artifacts between movements frequently. Also movements are often split into tracks, unless there is a synched cue file that is a total disaster.

I sent the worlds first perfect CD image over the Net from my studio in Benedict five years ago.

In order for this to work for classical downloads, there has to be a system for a synched cue file. The only way I know of, to make this reliable is to send a complete CD image over the Net. Once you have a system that allows downloads of individual tracks, you have a disaster.

Classical music needs to be sold as the complete CD download with cue file, or forget it.

 

[its phillip]

I don't really care if major labels abandon cds, since I don't really buy any from them/care for many artists on them.

I can't see myself paying for steaming options though. I have purchased a few albums in lossless that were unavailable in cd format, but I would much rather have a physical copy. I would probably buy much less music if all the labels I liked shifted to downloads.

 

[BMXTRIX]

The only CDs I've listened to for years have been ones which I've made myself from my digital collection. About half my digital collection comes from CDs I personally own and converted to digital. But, I don't listen to those CDs anymore - haven't for years! My kids likely will never play back a store bought CD, and will stick with their MP3s and FLAC and whatever other digital flavor comes along.

Similarly, my entire Blu-ray collection is stored in digital form as is my entire DVD collection.

This leads me to why I don't believe that Blu-ray is going away soon... For my movie collection I'm currently using over 15TB of storage space in a RAID format for some hope of redundancy. My CD collection easily backs up to a networked 2TB drive for backups, but videos at full 1080p with lossless audio typically run closer to 20-25GB per movie, and there is nothing in place right now which allows for the same level of quality that you currently get on a Blu-ray. That's still years away and BD is the only physical medium that I know of which is growing revenue on average right now.

Anyway, CDs dead? Yeah, I can see that being the case. Completely erased? As much as vinyl is. FLAC, or similar, certainly is more likely to take off more and more as the physical disc goes away. I think if Amazon were to push hard for a full FLAC library it would have a significant effect on physical CDs as well. Imagine if you could get 100% CD quality via a digital download on every song/album you wanted at a reasonable price? The last 15 years have been pretty incredible to see how our world has changed, the next 10 are likely to be even moreso.

 

[davidtwotrees]

Maybe they meant DVD-Audio? I will grant you that DVD-A will finally die in 2012. But if you want to buy my DVD-A collection?! We could keep it alive.
As for CDs? Meh. I'll believe it when I see it. For now it's just some young internet journalist that has never bought a CD thinking his friends and him will dictate the music market's direction.

 

[lsiberian]

I can assure you there are artifacts between movements frequently. Also movements are often split into tracks, unless there is a synched cue file that is a total disaster.

I sent the worlds first perfect CD image over the Net from my studio in Benedict five years ago.

In order for this to work for classical downloads, there has to be a system for a synched cue file. The only way I know of, to make this reliable is to send a complete CD image over the Net. Once you have a system that allows downloads of individual tracks, you have a disaster.

Classical music needs to be sold as the complete CD download with cue file, or forget it.

I've never had artifacts between tracks. Where you using a loss-less encoder?