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The Death of the Music CD

Posted by Zonk on from the ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead dept.

Rick Zeman writes "According to the Washington Post, the next new music format will be...no format. From the article: 'What the consumer would buy is a data file, and you could create whatever you need. If you want to make an MP3, you make an MP3. If you want a DVD-Audio surround disc, you make that.'"

6 of 483 comments (clear)

  1. Sound's Great... by yotto · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...Until they DRM it every way but sideways.

    --
    Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
    1. Re:Sound's Great... by kenthorvath · · Score: 5, Interesting
      The "product" is a licence, that is, a contract.

      Sorry, but a physical disc is not a license. Does anyone here know what types of things can actually be licensed? Can Mars Incorporated license me a Snicker's bar under the conditions that I won't share it with my friend?

      Certain types of things do seem to be licensable. As far as I can tell, it seems that intellectual property and other things that a person has exclusive rights to can be licensed. That is, they can extend those rights to someone under the terms of a license. However, there are also first sale rights that come with the purchase of a product, such as a CD. I have the right to burn it, destroy it, or do whatever else I want with it as the owner. That includes shining a laser onto it and reading off the reflected beam.

      I don't think anyone would argue that I have the right to read what's on the disc, license or not. It doesn't seem like the type of thing that is licensable.

      In fact, if it were, then there would not be a need for the DMCA, because breaking DRM would have already been illegal. But, it appears that it was not. It required legislation to forbid such behavior.

  2. A New Type of Store... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    That'd be pretty cool...

    To prevent the industry (CD Retailers) from going entirely bankrupt though, perhaps the CD stores (current ones) could instead become "customizing stations", in which customers could request certain songs and have a professional (label, case, everything)CD made for them. Sure you could do it at home, but couldn't you always order a CD from Amazon? And since all the shop would really need is a burner, access to a database of songs, and a computer, it could be as small as a stall!

    From the way I see it, the CD Retailers will:

    A) Go out of business...

    B) Take their shop online!

    C) Merge with an existing online retailer (most likely)

    D) Do the CD creation for customers by downsizing their shop to a music stall (in the mall).

  3. Re:I doubt it by toddestan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It takes a high end 486 to a Pentium to decode MP3 files in the x86 world, yet there are MP3 players that last a long time on a single AA battery. All that someone would have to do is create a dedicated FLAC decoding chip.

  4. Re:I doubt it by BossMC · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But they only compress to about 50% so a CD full of them could only hold two albums instead of one

    I used FLAC for a while, and I found that it compressed rock to about .75 of original size, and G'd up thuggin' west coast gangsta rap to .60 of original size. I assume that rap compresses better because it has much more redundancy, that is, "wut wut wut" and some bassline will compress better than your everyday rock song.

    In terms of cpu draw, I found that ripping a CD was not CPU bound when using FLAC, but limited to the speed of the cdrom drive. Even still, PC cdrom drives can process the audio off of a CD on their own (See grey cable) which is a testament to how little processing raw PCM data must take.

  5. Magnatune already does this by JawaSpot · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The online music store Magnatune already does this.
    From the FAQ:
    When you buy music on Magnatune, you can download the music
    in a variety of formats -- and you can download all the different
    versions you want.

    There are 5 major formats availabe to buyers:

    44k/16bit WAV: zip file of perfect quality WAV files.
    FLAC: zip file of perfect quality FLAC files.
    OGG: zip file of high quality OGG files.
    128kb MP3: zip file of 128kb MP3 files.
    MP3 VBR: zip of high quality MP3 VBR files.

    In addition, you can download individual songs as either 128k
    MP3s or WAV files.
    Other nice things about Magnatune are:
    • You can listen to every song all the way through (in streaming 128kbps mp3) as much as you want before buying
    • You decide how much you want to pay for an album, and exactly half of your money goes straight to the artist