Slashdot Mirror
Sony Closing 18M CD/Month Plant
coondoggie writes "Sony this week said it was shuttering one of its largest CD manufacturing plants — citing the impact of digital downloads and other economic issues. The plant, which has been in operation for some 50 years, first producing vinyl records, will close on March 31 and about 300 people will lose their jobs. The 500,000-square-foot warehouse began producing vinyl LPs in 1960 and moved to CD manufacturing in 1988. At its capacity, the plant was making 18 million CDs per month, according to its website."
That's a stunning amount of plastic waste and manufacturing process waste no longer being generated.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of rootkits suddenly cried out in terror."
Living With a Nerd
I was in Walmart a month ago looking for two CD's that I wanted to purchase. Neither was particularly obscure, and both were recent (released within the last year). They had neither, and actually I couldn't believe how small their selection was compared to what it used to be. I understand the convenience of downloading via Walmart or Amazon, but what I can't understand is why people wouldn't actually want to have a bit-perfect digital copy on physical medium as a back up.
Don't be fooled. The summary says nothing of the sort.
It says it's "Shuttering" the plant - a clever mind game to make you think they mean "Shutting Down" but they are actually just installing new blinds for the windows. It says that on March 31 it will "Close" - they probably just mean locking up for the night. On April 1 they might "ReOpen". 300 people will lose their jobs? They didn't say who, when, or where, it was only implied at the plant, but its not really specific enough to be sure. They could mean just 300 people in general will lose their job. A very low-ball estimate, if you ask me.
"Sony Closing Plant 18M/CD/Month Plant"
Aside from two Plants...
18 Million Per Cd Per Month?
... because nobody trusts Sony CDs?
Have gnu, will travel.
300 people are responsible for making 18 million CDs/month. I saw another story about a sleeping bag factory cranking out 20 million bags a year with 500 empoloyees for the whole company. I read somewhere that American manufacturing capacity is the highest it's ever been. What are we going to do with all these people. I keep hearing 'Well, the world needs ditch diggers too'. No, no it doesn not... I guess we can let them starve to death in the streets.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I had the aversion to non-physical media for quite a while..but like most I have found digital to be acceptable in quality (for me music is mostly for background noise and even with headphones a higher bit-rate sounds "good enough" for me). With a little redundancy in the home network the "collection" is assured to last. The biggest hurdle for me was will an MP3 be playable 20 years from now...but after thinking about it, the likelihood of being able to play a digital based format is probably much higher than being able to play a physical one, how many 8-track, turntable or cassette players do you see these days? I'm more willing to bet on the longevity of the digital copies. As for album artwork and liner notes...there really hasn't been much effort put in to those in years so the labels have managed to reduce the desire for those on their own. I still buy the occasional CD but the first thing I do is rip them and then put the original on a shelf to collect dust.
That's the RIAA estimate....
a CD manufacturing plant in a country with an actual working EPA is far, far better for the environment than the toxic waste dump that we are creating in China right now,where environmental activists get thrown in prison as 'enemies of the state'. . Thats what we do to make all of these iphones, ipads, iwhatever, which seem to get thrown out every 2 years for the 'new generation'. Close your eyes, stick your head in the sand, pretend that magic fairys give you printed circuit boards. also, where do you think the energy comes from to power the servers for downloads? it ain't some wind farm. i don't see any "renewable offset purchasing" logo on the apple istore. that 'clean tech' is powered by dirty, dirty coal dug out from the innards of a mountain and burned in a giant plant that pours smoke into the air
It's a staggering amount for a single factory - enough to supply AOL for about three days!
No sig today...
The plant which is closing is in Pitman, NJ. The article never bothered to mention which plant. Whatever happened to the basics of reporting - who/what/where/why/when?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Hey Slashdot, why do you let these schills come here to make money from you?
Submitted by... Coondoggie. The blog this links to is run by Michael Cooney. Hmmmm.
Well Mr. Cooney, just as the comments on your ad-revenue blog say, you have failed to mention the location of the plant. Then instead of providing us with the link to your "source", you link us to your site to generate hits.
You sir, are a hack.
Here's the actual news story:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/homepage/20110112_Sony_will_close_South_Jersey_CD_plant.html
I'm not sure this is the most effective use of condescending quote marks. Usually when you use those, it is to imply that the thing in quotes is false, not that the thing in quotes is true elsewhere also.
www.wavefront-av.com
Is it possible to buy music online without lossy compression? On the basis of my admittedly limited search, on-line music all seems to be compressed using lossy algorithms. CDs (jazz, classical, fine recordings, etc.) provide such uncompressed/lossless source.
I'd like to have archival quality for the source music. Also, when playing discretely instrumented classical music on a good hi-fi, compression artifacts are sometimes noticeable.
I'm only 22 and I prefer CDs at this point because they are Lossless and DRM-free. Though if digital distribution can provide me with lossless and DRM-free tracks I would not have a problem using that method.
Though I usually buy used CDs off places like Amazon for about $5 a disk so I also believe digital distribution needs to be cheaper as well as better quality if I am to start using it.
The plastic really is a waste seeing as I generally rip that CD to my server once and then never use the physical disk again.
CDs were said to lose quality as well. Especially from the classics recorded in analog, and digital mastering to make the sound clear. If you want the real bang, you could stick to Vinyl.
Then you dont buy CD's as well. All CD's are compressed hard (audio compression, not data compression) so all the life is sucked out of it. When CD's first came out most were incredible as the engineers tried to make them fantastic. Companies like Mobile Fidelity sound Lab released albums that stunned people. I have several Ultradiscs of old analog recordings that blew away the best turntable setup I could find. I have a all digital mastering of Information Society's first album that was released as an MFSL Ultradisc that used the full dynamic range that CD had in it and it is incredible even on a cheap $99.00 CD player.
Today, ALL CD's are mastered to sound good on a $2.99 piece of crap car stereo. The Audio compression is cranked up to make it "louder" and all the soul is sucked out and discarded. I cant find a CD today that is sold by a major label that does not suck in sound quality.
Honestly, if you ever heard a very well done CD, you'd be pissed at the utter crap they are releasing on CD now.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
So is this the infamous Sony DADC plant that was a prime source of laserdiscs with Laser Rot problems?
If so, then good riddance.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I'm surprised no on has connected the dots yet, but ever since the downfall of AOL this plants ultimate demise has been as predictable as the tides.
That's actually awesome. 300 workers have been displaced to go send their resumés around and find a better job, making more money or taking a senior position in manufacturing or management with their decade of experience.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Yah, that is so cool! I'm sure every one of them has credentials for senior positions. And with the current economy and competing with their fired coworkers I bet there are 300 great jobs just waiting for them.
"Hi, I operated a cd making machine for 10 years."
"Ummm, no one is making cds anymore. Next."
If they could make more many just switching by jobs don't you think they would have before this? When I got laid off it took a year to find a job after intense effort and then it was only with a substantial pay cut.
I'm not saying they should keep the plant open just to keep paying them but don't make it sound so pollyannaish, like it's a good thing.
Yes, instead we've replaced it with the 6 month cycle of ever increasing CPU transistor count, more memory, "smart" phones, LCD TV, hard drives, etc that are required to play these "digital" downloads. (CDs are digital too).
So let me get this right, you replaced your 6 month old computer...hell, let's say you replaced your 5 YEAR old computer, solely because it wouldn't play the "new music"? I'm pretty sure that any Pentium 4 CPU is already many times the power needed to play music. (I played music on a 486 w/4mb ram, and had power to spare). Even allowing for decoding MP3s, any Pentium 4 would still be overkill for the purpose.
Maybe, just maybe, people are upgrading their computers for reasons other than solely to play music.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Oh stop. That's true if you're listening to Madonna or Lady Gompa or whatever. There are large numbers of modern (typically Classical) CDs that are mastered quite well.
However, if you're tastes run to Country / Western then not so much. But at that point, you're your own worst enemy.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
... at that plant (I used to live nearby) was in Quality Control. They would hire people to listen to the Golden Master CDs for defects before mass producing the CDs from the master. People would line up around the block when they had those openings. The pay wasn't great, but where else could you listen to unreleased music all day and get paid for it?