Slashdot Mirror
The Future of the CD
Murdock037 writes "Nice read at the New York Times (free reg. req.) on the CD, and how it's getting crowded out of the marketplace by gaming and DVDs-- the basic conclusion is that music executives aren't rewarded for rocking the boat, and they wouldn't know how to do it if they were. (And included is a flabbergasting claim from RIAA head Hillary Rosen that only 3 percent of consumers polled are buying less music because prices are too high-- of course, you can come up with a statistic for anything, as 72.5% of all people know.)"
Why would the RIAA want to cite such a statistic even if it's true? It demonstates that price-driven piracy is not the thing killing thier profits.
Go here to create your own Slashdot dis
Numers are like people. Torture them enough and they will tell you everything.
There are lies, damm lies, and statistics.
I guess that the RIAA has aquired all three.
Brought to you by the Artificial Idea Factory.
As long as people have a portable CD player, a CD player at home, and one in the car, CDs will keep selling.
The extra quality benefit of DVD-A and SACD will not (unfortunately) be enough to lure people to immediately rush out and buy new equipment. Personally, I would love to have better sound audio, but I'm not prepared to pay the (currently) huge premium to have it.
If you think sound quality is important for most people, look at all the portable MP3 players that have recently come out and how well they are selling. Can anyone say iPod?
The restrictive SACD format will not be a lure to the majority of people. DVD-A on the other hand may get a foothold because of its association with DVD-Video.
People want convenience. And until the companies spearheading these formats realise that, their proposed new super-mega-hyper-ultra-quality formats will be dead before day one.
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
There's no wonder why people dony feel any compassion towards the RIAA, look how they attack everything they feel which threatens them! I dont have a single ounce of regret for the "loses" the RIAA thinks they have sustained, most of these "loses" are purely projections of what they feel they should have earned. I dont blame CD writers for the decline of music sales, I blame horrible artists and poor music for the reasons I dont buy music (along with the ridiculus price tag... $25 for a cd? Get real...)
As for Sony "losing" $132 Million last year, they didnt lose anything, they just didnt make what they promised the board of directors. They probably only pulled in $1.5 Billion and "lost" their 9% of that to people feeling like they finally have a way to get back at the bastards who runied rock-and-roll with boy-bands and Mariah Carrey (no offense to whomever loves Mariah, but you understand my point).
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
People just don't like change! The DVD was obsolete by the time it became main-stream - it doesn't use the best compression methods nor does it have the highest capacity out of all the Compact Discs, but it is mainstream now and it'll take a while for it to budge.
:P
Do you know how much it costs to replace something? Getting rid of something to replace it with something else just isn't within human nature, no matter how much it would help in the long run! What would happen anyway if they did get rid of CDs? They would just put the same amount of songs on a DVD and sell them at a higher price
We're probably better off with them - or is that my human nature talking?
Most analysts and industry executives agree that selling music online is the future.
When did this happen? Industry executives actually acknowledging the obvious? Now where'd those pigs go...
The only domain left where cds are of value is recording information for consumers. Backups, archives and kind-of-floppy disks for people who can't yet afford writeable dvds. Sales are on the down, fast, and for good reason.
For software distribution, dvd just makes more sense. More and more software requires more than one cd. A dvd is similar in price to a cd, but can hold more information. Why not switch? It's happening all the time.
For music the case is less clear. The cd is still the "best" way to distribute it. The problem is that the heaviest music consumers, the teens and college students, know all about mp3s. Among the artsy college crowd that I hang out with, there are two camps. One says that mp3s are just as good as cds, and easier to get, so they use them. The other camp says that mp3s have low quality sound (either all mp3s, or to some people just the low bitrate ones they can usually find on the internet) so they buy cds instead. Interesting this cross cuts the whole other spectrums: into music or not, rich or poor, death metal or country&western, big names or indy artists, etc..
In fact, more people among the intellectual elite download mp3s then burn them to cd to listen to than buy cds. That's a bit surprising since most mp3s stay on hard disks and flash memory. As I said, cds are dead.
The only place I see cd use increasing is for personal data storage. They are the new floppy disk, and they are back with a vengeance. Comparatively this works also. Back in 1987 my xt had a twenty meg hard disk and floppies one sixtieth that size. Now many people have a forty gig hard disk and use cds one sixtieth that size. For casual storage and backup and archives for people who are too poor to get industrial quality solutions, the cd will stick around in a while in its writeable form.
I respectfully disagree on this.
Listen to a recording of a regular symphonic orchestra on a normal Compact Disc and then listen to a recording of a symphonic orchestra with SACD or DVD Audio disc; the CD recording sounds quite harsh because at treble frequencies as CD's doesn't sample the higher frequencies smoothly. Because SACD and DVD Audio can sample treble frequencies far more cleanly, the result is that the harshness of the violin, woodwind instruments and cymbals are missing, resulting in a more natural sound; that's why some people have noted that SACD and DVD Audio discs have a warmer sound due to the lack of treble frequency harshness.
The extra quality benefit of the CD will not (unfortunately) be enough to lure people to immediately rush out and buy new equipment. Personally, I would love to have better sound audio, but I'm not prepared to pay the (currently) huge premium to have it.
Actually, back in the 1980's there were a LOT of people looking forward to getting Compact Discs. You have to remember compared to LP turntables, CD's offered the following advantages:
1. It didn't require lots of finicky setup to get it working correctly.
2. Cared for properly, CD's way, way, outlasted LP discs.
3. CD's didn't suffer from wow and flutter, background hiss and low frequency turntable rumble.
4. The storage requirements for CD's was much smaller than LP's.
Sure, the early CD's did sound a bit harsh in the treble frequencies but careful mastering by recording engineers more or less overcame that issue.
It is that convenient size factor that has allowed DVD's to take off in popularity; the MCA/Philips Laserdisc and RCA Selectavision disc formats didn't become widely popular due to fairly stiff storage requirements, while in contrast DVD's same size factor as CD's made them very popular even though most DVD packaging is about 25% larger than CD's.
Apple's R&D often notes that the optical drive is the number one bottleneck in data storage speed, reliability, and size reduction. (Not just for laptops, but desktops too) DVD burners, as Apple now includes in most every model of its computers, produce a lot of heat and add about $250 to the consumer cost of the computer.
I wish manufacturers could just agree on another new standard, such as some sort of Flash based storage. With the quality of Mp4 video and audio you could have relatively small capacity "compact flash cards" - the slot should be a combo drive as already seen in the majority of industry with DVD/CDRW combo drives. Be a flash memory reader and a videoFlash reader.
Now as for cost, if manufacturers would do this, Flash RAM (or SRAM) would start to plummet. These manufacturers would make money based on volume. I could see 128MB cards $1 + 512MB $5 1 GB $9 - these may be unrealistic at first, but WOULD come. It would reduce memory of all types for all the different uses there are.
It would also reduce R&D and reduce heat and weight concerns many Video Player/Laptop/music player manufacturers have at this moment. The XD picture card is promising 3 gigs by the end of this year. If they can put that amount of memory in the size of a postage stamp; imagine what they could do with a compact flash card size?
Of course, reasons are clear why music CDs are expensive right now - RIAA litigation costs MONEY - lots of it. Litigation expenses were nearly 33 million dollars last year. The music industry was caught for overcharging. Third, they don't understand that the cost of online distribution at a reasonable price would dramitically reduce print/ink/plastic/distribution (truck/air) costs.
My question is, are blank CD media pressing companies really making a lot of money?
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
only 3% have stopped buying CDs because prices are too high...
So, what? The other 97% also think prices are too high, but continue to buy CDs?
The other 97% buy fewer CDs due to high prices. When CDs were the new thing and cost $15-20 each I was buying 10-20 a year. Now that the prices have fallen as the technology matures...no...wait...the price never fell! Oh, that's right, my CD buying has fallen, not the prices. I now buy less than 5 CDs a year. I owe this to a maturing taste in music. I used to think Johnny Gill, Bell Bill Devo(divo?), and Mc Hammer were great artists...really I was just buying what my friends were buying, stupid teenager. Now I buy CDs AFTER I have heard the contets of the CD (Thankyou Listening Bars and Alt.Binaries.MP3.) Yeah, you heard me right, I download MP3s, and I buy CDs still. Sure I buy fewer CDs, but somewhere I had heard that music becomes less important to us as we age...maybe it's true, or more likely we learn to tell the diffrence between noise music. The CDs I no longer buy are the ones filled with noise. I would personaly answer "NO" if asked if I stoped buying CDs due to price. I would say "YES" if asked if price has caused me to buy fewer CDs (hell, if they were free I might "buy" more, just because I can sample/taste new music without having to be tethered to the computer like I am with downloading MP3s.) Based on my personal experience with music, I wounder how many just buy FEWER due to price, and how many never bought CDs before anyway, and how many buy fewer due to maturing taste. I'm SURE the RIAA never bothered to ask anyone about those options.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I totally disagree.
Downloading an entire CD worth of music takes time. While it's quite easy finding the hits, it's a little harder to get the less known songs.
You also have to find quality versions of each song. I'm generally forced to download about three versions of each song in order to find one really good copy. You have to mess with them to make sure they're the same volume and don't have too much space at the end. And if you're lucky enough to get the complete CD in one MP3 file, you have to spend time converting it and slicing it up.
Plus you have to create and print a label for them. Once again, that takes time.
I'd MUCH MUCH MUCH rather spend ten dollars (US) to get a CD. A local Harmony House went out of business in my town about 6 months ago. They were selling CDs for less than 10 bucks on average. I bought about 300 dollars worth!!! In the 7 years before that day, I probably bought a total of 9 CDs.
I could get water from my sink for free (as we have a well). But I still only drink bottle water because it's of better quality. I could drink RC or Fago soda because it's much cheaper. But I pay more for Coke because it taste better.
Cost is NOT the only criteria. My time is VERY valuable and I'd rather pay than waste it. Furthermore, quality is important to me too, and is worth paying for at the right price.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Case in point is the outcry over the survey that indicated that only 3% of consumers thinks the price is too high. First, if a survey is reported and technical details of the survey is not, then the survey is mostly a marketing ploy and must be taken with a grain of salt. We all know this. The interesting thing is that the number, in some sense, is probably not unreasonable. As the article mentions the value of music recorded on a CD is some small number approaching zero. Additionally the article states that some people will buy a CD, make copies, and sell the copies to their friends. I totally believe this. When I was in school, people would do this with computer software. There are clearly many people who still buy CDs, but we can assume that most of these are older people who traditionally have bought music, or younger people who will recoup the investment through piracy. From this we can postulate three groups of people: those that currently buy CDs, those that buy copy music, and those that do without because they cannot afford it. The last group is very small as the vast majority of people will copy or buy music they want. The second group is irreverent because to them the value of music on CD is near zero, and the labels would have to give music away. So, we are only left with people in the first group. Furthermore, we probably are only left with people in the first group that buy at full retail rather than value shop. This is conceivable quite a small percentage.
The article brings up several other good points. Consumers want to procure music online. It is not known if consumers will pay for music online, but the labels have done very little to effectively deal with this demand. The article states that the labels have dropped the ball on this, retailers are trying to figure out how to meet demand, but without label support it is difficult. In general, one would expect manufacturers that ignore entire areas of demand to fail.
There are other good points. Consumers are also disenchanted with hidden copy protection schemes that cause CDs to fail on standard consumer equipment. Labels are doing nothing to enhance the product to make it more appealing and increase the value to consumers. When they do increase the value of the product to consumers, they jack up the price far beyond what an average consumer can pay, and then complain that no one is buying the new technology.
Probably the only big issue the article missed was that most download services, even if they had the music, are too complicated, the download formats too confusing. Furthermore, they tend to target people who currently get music for free rather than cosumers who pay for music.
Again, the article clearly lays the decline of CD sales on the labels front door, The article is balanced in the sense that it acknowledges that music executives have limited ability to make sweeping changes to business plan and product models. For instance, it would make a lot of sense to ship music on DVDs with additional content, but how can one justify the capital expenditure in a declining market?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
To make people pay for something you must first have a product that is as available, as good quality and as useful as the free alternative, right?
CD's used to qualify to two of these, their allot better quality than mp3's, it's as useful as mp3's in the meaning that you could play it in any CD player, on your computer, or on portable mp3 player.
Now what does the music industry do to make people pay for music. They release copy protected CD's that wont play in all CD players, wont play on a computer, can't be ripped to a portable mp3 player. What a great idea.
I believe people are willing to pay for music, but not a useless piece of plastic that they can't do what they want with.
What follows is a short history of my economic experience of music and a simple business model for the labels to recapture my wallet:
.40 a song. Bill me based on bandwidth - that's 5-10 cents per MB (assuming an average of 4min songs). The only real limit to my spending at this price is the availability of good music - better go find some talented new artists fast!
Back in the old days, when I had my first CD player, I went out and replicated my sizable record collection at $12-$13 a pop (note that I lived in Berkeley, which is blessed with two awesome non-chain retailers - Rasputins and Ameoba) - this took all of my struggling-student-with-no-loans spare cash. Over the course of a year, I bought 80+ CDs. It sucked hard, but I hated records and tapes (no nastalgia for me). Back then, the rumor was that the price of CDs was inflated to cover the cost of retooling manufacturing and would come down below record prices because they were cheaper to make.
Five years later, the prices didn't go down and my 200+ CD collection was stolen from my ghetto appartment. I was literally in tears. That was more than $2500 and I was still pretty poor due to the early 90s resession. The upside was that stolen CDs were valuable because there was a budding used CD market in the Bay Area. Once Rasputins & Ameoba started selling used CDs in quantity, I stopped buying new CDs altogether. This is early 90's and I already dropped out of the label's direct market. Here I was, a 20-something kid that was so in love with music that I would spend the better part of my expendable cash on CDs and I dropped right off their books because I could buy "Nevermind" for $9 if I waited a month after it came out.
Funny thing is that I started making serious money. I still wouldn't buy new CDs. I was used to paying $6-9 and there was no way I could go back. I probably missed out on a lot of music, because I was limited to what college kids would buy and return.
Then came burners - I spent many hours burning all of my friends CD collections. Shortly thereafter came MP3s. I was already pirating software on the FTP scene (another economic lesson to be learned for the SW companies, but I'm not gonna stray there), so suddenly, I'm not even buying used CDs anymore.
So where does this leave us? Well, I'm in my mid 30s, make 6figs, and I like a huge variety of musical genres. I could spend $250 a month on music and not bat an eye, but I don't. The labels have alienated me. I virulently despise them, but I am a music addicted consumer. If they offered me something that had value to me, I would embrace the bastards with loving arms.
So, what can they do for me that would convince me to give them my money again? Simple:
1. Save me time - downloading stuff on Kazaa is work: sifting through the crappy files, figuring out which songs I am missing from a given CD, and organizing the 40+gigs of it all - this stuff takes time and my time is worth money to me. Figure out ways to save me time and I will pay a price for it.
2. Selection - I am limited to what the masses are trading. I like obscure shit and am willing to experiment, but not at $15-17 (notice how this trended higher?) a pop - no fricking way!
3. Ease my concious - I admit it, I feel bad for screwing the artists by downloading mp3s. The problem is, they are already getting so screwed by the labels. It's kinda like buying Nikes - hard to say whether it helping the poor little Indonesian kid or not. Besides, the less that people give the labels, they less they have to offer the artists who should really all jump ship anyway. I buy Timberland clothes 'cause they make a big deal about how their sweatshops are less satanic than others. Treat the artists well so I don't feel bad about promoting your exploitation of them. Tax the superstars a bit to feed the starving artists - music should be a middle class profession.
So, how can the labels meet these needs? Again, simple:
Give me FTP access to a full catalog (all labels in one place)of high quality, verified, DRM-free and properly tagged MP3s. How much would I be willing to pay for this? Figure 2-4 bucks for 10 songs. That's $.20 -
This would keep me off Kazaa - I promise. I might give some of this to my friends for free, but that is usually stuff that they wouldn't have bought anyway.
For physical media, I would pay 5-7 bucks for a CD if it came with a bandwidth rebate, and an access code to a spiffy band website with news, lyrics, tablature, special monthly download songs and a $10/year subscription to have access to every live show.
And labels, before you complain that your promotion budgets wouldn't be covered at these rates, you should know that I don't listen to ClearChannel, I don't watch MTV, I don't hang out in record stores and that wallpapering of downtown areas with posters just pisses me off.
So, in conclusion, my case is a clear illustration that the RIAA statistic is correct - I don't spend less on CDs - I couldn't buy less than none. Win me back - it's not that hard and it's not too late. I am the consumer and you are supposed to be serving me - make me a happy, full, fed and fat sheep and I'll open up my wallet for you, but treat me like your enemy, and I will be a wolf poaching your chickens with impunity - the choice is yours.