The Death of the Music CD

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Posted by Zonk on Sunday February 13, 2005 @06:38AM 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.'"

17 of 483 comments (clear)

Sound's Great... by yotto · 2005-02-13 06:40 · Score: 5, Interesting

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

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1. Re:Sound's Great... by LourensV · 2005-02-13 07:07 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Actually, that may not be so bad. The reason that policy issues like extending copyright or introducing DMCA/EUCD-like laws are so hard to decide in 'our' favour is that nobody cares. And the reason for that is that these laws aren't enforced all that much.
  
  If Microsoft really cracked down on Windows piracy, many more people would consider an alternative. GNU/Linux can compete with Windows on price and freedom to help your neighbour, but only if people actually are forced to pay for Windows, and kept from sharing proprietary software.
  
  Indie music that is sold on reasonable terms (unencumbered CDs or DVDs, non-DRMmed Ogg Vorbis or MP3) or distributed under a Creative Commons licence that allows redistribution can compete with RIAA music on ease of use (i.e. pay once, listen anywhere), but only if the RIAA's restrictions are enforced.
  
  I say let them DRM the hell out of everything. Hundreds of millions of people and the whole open counterculture that's come into being in the last decade versus the powerful media conglomerates. I think we'll win.
2. Re:Sound's Great... by kenthorvath · 2005-02-13 07:31 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I say let them DRM the hell out of everything.
  Sure, just don't legislate DRM making it illegal for me to use the product the way I want. Make it a challenge, but don't put me in jail for coming out on top.
3. Re:Sound's Great... by kenthorvath · 2005-02-13 08:25 · 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.
No..format? by NorthWoodsman · 2005-02-13 06:42 · Score: 5, Funny

So in other words, the format is WAV.

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1p}{ 1 sp34k |33+ +|-|e|\| p30p13 \/\/il| 8e i/\/\pr3553|)
Shoot... by Avyakata · 2005-02-13 06:43 · Score: 5, Funny

Now indecisive people like me will be completely immobilized...
I read this, and it occurs to me... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-02-13 06:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

The music industry would *LOVE* to get rid of the music CD, so I see this as a trial balloon.

CD's are great because they have really good quality music in non-DRM format.

Keeping the CD's lets you rip to whatever new format or device that comes along.

Think it through...CD's are the consumer's best *and only* friend in the music business right now.
RIAA by MagicDude · 2005-02-13 06:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

The death of the CD will come from RIAA tactics. Leave aside their random lawsuits of 80 year old grandmas, the reason people will stop buying CD's is because they are made to pay $20 for 15 tracks from an artist when only 1-2 of them are good. Back in the day when LPs were popular, you could buy a disc with just the one song you wanted. Now you're force fed tripe from the industry pushing their flavor of the month, big breasted, tiny brained, diva wannabes. Why would I want to pay $20 for a Jessica Simpson CD when there's maybe one track on there that I might like. Much better to be able to pay a buck and get the one song I want and put it on my Rio. That's actually another point, media size. When's the last time you've seen anyone walk around with a discman?
1. Re:RIAA by kasek · 2005-02-13 06:54 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  if you pay $20 a cd, you are buying them at the wrong places. If there are only 1-2 tracks you consider 'good', you must not care for the artist too much, so why buy the CD in the first place? I can't think of any CD i have bought recently where I didn't enjoy the entire CD.
  
  if you are buying the flavor of the month pop garbage, it's your own fault for contributing to the studios coffers, so they can have someone new on the lineup next month.
Proof of ownership by MiKM · 2005-02-13 06:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

The nice thing about owning the CD is it gives you proof of ownership (unless you physically stole it).
Re:I doubt it by tuffy · 2005-02-13 06:49 · Score: 5, Informative

I mean, at first glance, I thought: "hey, this is a great use for FLAC". Then I realized that because FLAC takes so much CPU time to decompress, CD players that could play it don't exist (if they did, they'd be more expensive).

FLAC actually takes very little CPU power to decompress; less than MP3, certainly. But they only compress to about 50% so a CD full of them could only hold two albums instead of one, which isn't gaining a whole lot. So I tend to leave my FLACs at home and convert them to something lossy to take with me.

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A New Type of Store... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-02-13 06:51 · 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).
Re:I doubt it by toddestan · 2005-02-13 06:56 · 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.
Re:No format by Ingolfke · 2005-02-13 07:03 · Score: 5, Informative

MP3s lose information due to their compressions scheme. So if you converted from and MP3 to OGG to WMA you'd end up with file missing all of the information from each round of compression. Using a lossless encoding format, like FLAC or WMA Lossles, would allow you to copy to whichever media format you prefer.
Re:".no" format? by Zycom · 2005-02-13 07:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

That's what they really want to give us. .no copying, .no sharing, .no moving, .no ripping, .no burning...
Re:I doubt it by BossMC · 2005-02-13 07:23 · 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.
Magnatune already does this by JawaSpot · 2005-02-13 08:27 · 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