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Are Music CDs Dying? Best Buy Stops Selling CDs (complex.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Complex magazine:
The future of physical music isn't looking good. According to Billboard, consumer electronics company Best Buy will no longer carry physical CDs and Target may be following suit in the near future. Best Buy notified music suppliers that they will cease selling CDs at stores beginning July 1. The move is sure to hurt the already declining sales of CDs as consumers are switching to streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal in large numbers. CD sales have already dropped by a sizable 18.5 percent in the past year, Billboard reports.
Billboard also reports Target has given an "ultimatum" to music and video suppliers. "Currently, Target takes the inventory risk by agreeing to pay for any goods it is shipped within 60 days, and must pay to ship back unsold CDs for credit... Target has demanded to music suppliers that it wants CDs to be sold on what amounts to a consignment basis..."
"If the majors don't play ball and give in to the new sale terms, it could considerably hasten the phase down of the CD format."
Billboard also reports Target has given an "ultimatum" to music and video suppliers. "Currently, Target takes the inventory risk by agreeing to pay for any goods it is shipped within 60 days, and must pay to ship back unsold CDs for credit... Target has demanded to music suppliers that it wants CDs to be sold on what amounts to a consignment basis..."
"If the majors don't play ball and give in to the new sale terms, it could considerably hasten the phase down of the CD format."
Last DRM free media: there are music executives opening bottles of champagne...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
CDs have one big problem - no iPod support.
...come with a CD drive anymore, this is to be expected.
Let's face it, you don't see anyone with a CD (Discman) anymore, unless it's the obscure retro-freak that just likes to show off old toys (like me), but seriously - most people have their music on their cellphone today, just look at all the hi-fi equipment in the store, those that are regularly sold - has a "iPhone" or some other cellphone docking feature to them. At the very least - their own streaming services and possibilities.
It's just an impractical format today. It had 30 good years, now it's all memory - literally. CD is dead - long live the CD
Even Blu-ray kinda died because of that, no one wants that clunky old format when you can store it all on an harddisk or simply stream it from the cloud. I gotta say - I do miss collecting DVD's for the sake of always having a hardcopy of my favorite movies, and yes - I still do have them, and a few players just in case they're unavailable in the future.
There's both a good and bad side to this. I like services like Netflix where you can basically just browse trough a huge library of movies, no need to physically find them there and then, and just select it for viewing here and wherever I want to play them. It's very convenient, especially when it's AD free. It's not even expensive for that kind of access.
What is sad tho, is that they can remove our favorite movies at will, some months these movies just aren't available, in cases like that - a good private collection can't be beat.
As for music CD's, since we have perfectly good streaming services available, with pretty much every tune on the planet available on those services, the CD as a musical medium is pretty much gone.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
... that digital downloads, legal or otherwise, have also put a dent in CD sales. Storage is cheap while data is not so cheap, and many bands have made all their music already.
Vinyl for the favourites, streaming for the rest
That really depends on where in the world you're talking about. It still thrives in Japan because people still want the psychical medial . We still have Tower Records here and CD rentals as well.
Personally, I go to lots of live stuff instead of buying crap CDs that die quick.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Is this news for nerds?
Haven't we all gone digital yet?
Uh, iTunes? Spotify?
I think I bought a total of 1 CD in the past 22 years, because the artist was so obscure I couldn't find it online.
Unfortunately, there are some of us who despise renting access to music via (yet another) never-ending subscription, and don't wish to have our entire listening activities measured, tracked, profiled, and sold to any bidder, which is exactly what happens with every other form of digital music. This is just another cut out of 1,000, leading to the Death of Privacy.
I do find it odd that we managed to bring back to life a medium that people now pay 3x what it should cost, and often with no ability to play it (vinyl), and yet we're talking about killing CDs.
No, not another shiny disk. Perhaps retail store purchases of music albums, books, films, computer games and other digital content could come on a cheap-to-manufacture read-only memory (ROM) card that holds the relevant data and is about the size of an SD card, or larger, if that is cheaper to manufacture (data-density et cetera). You would get the feeling of "buying and owning something physical" that you can take home with you, loan to others, sell second-hand and so forth. But it would be a little ROM card, not a larger CD, DVD or Bluray disk that takes up a lot of shelf space and packaging. Of course you could just as easily put digital kiosks into a store that you insert a USB thumbdrive into to get your content data when you have paid for it. But a small ROM card would allow you to pick up the product, pay and leave like in the old days. It would also be kind of cool to collect such ROMs, like we used to collect floppies, especially if they are built to last - say - 50 years without losing the data. A major bonus would be PC and console game distribution in developing countries. Internet connections are seriously slow in developing countries, and many people have internet with a 25 - 50 GB a month data download cap. Downloading 30 - 50 GB games in such countries takes many hours - sometimes more than a day - and often results in blowing your monthly download cap, causing the ISP to throttle your internet speed until the beginning of the next month, leaving you with slow internet. So if somebody COULD make cheap ROMs that hold 20 - 30 GB of data a piece, game buyers in a lot of countries would definitely go for that. Another bonus could be games that don't require installing at all - just pop the ROM card into your laptop's card slot and play the game immediately. Steam downloads are horrendously painful if you have 2 - 8 MBPS internet only. ROMs would be a much quicker way to play the game you have bought. What would you rather do? Wait 22 hours for DOOM to download on a slow connection, or pop over to the local game store to get it on Mini-ROM, taking perhaps an hour and a half of your time? ROMs also solve the problem of buying an ever-growing quantity of digital content data for your home. After a few years of digital games, digital films, digital photos and smartphone video, you wind up having to keep Terabytes of data somewhere - on multiple USB harddrives for example. It might be neat to instead have a little plastic box with all your game, music, film, TV show and other ROMs in it, just as we used to have for Amiga disks or PC floppy disks for example. What you want on your PC, you copy from ROM. What you only access occasionally, you just keep in ROM form, and pop the ROM card in when needed.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
CDs are cheaper and higher quality than downloads. Streaming is basically a rip-off of the listener and the artist. So naturally, CD sales are declining.
Music CDs is like the Floppy disc, who buys that crap other than a few hardcore dedicated fans.
Privacy is like ownership, who buys into that crap other than a few hardcore dedicated fans.
The owner overlords in the world are celebrating yet another win. They're going to make trillions with this infectious attitude towards renting everything, along with selling your every click.
imho, first and foremost, brick and mortar stores are dying. iâm pretty sure, amazon still sells a lot of CDs.
I still buy them occasionally for their physicallity. so i have an offline-backup with (usually) better sound quality. why would i want to buy a download for the same price that offers less quality and has no booklet? granted, I then rip the cd and upload it to itunes match so I can stream it. but when i really want to listen to an album, i still prefer putting a physical token into a stereo.
also, i donât want to buy an ipod for my three-year old, heâll go virtual soon enough. and i donât want to spend 10â/month on streaming music - i already got more music than iâll ever listen in the cloud plus there are countlesd radio streams and podcasts.
so, to sum it up - itâs the industry, music and retail, thatâs changing, the medium is just a matter of choice (and quality)
I for one *do* purchase CDs (especially for artists who have died) Granted, they may have passed on, but hey, in my time of need their voice was there. Whether it be Cobain, Chris Cornell, Pennington, or Layne Staley or Bowie, my purchase must mean something to the rest of their respective bands, or their families or estates.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
This has been an ongoing trend for a generation, slowly weening folks away from ownership. Why buy DVD's when Netflix is so much more cost efficient? (Although your favorite show can disappear any time.) Why buy MP3s or CD's when you can just subscribe to a streaming service? (A studio dispute has taken your favorite song away.) Of course, media is just the beginning. I suspect very soon one will not be able to purchase a copy of MS Office, only subscribe. This is already a norm in professional software such as Photoshop. Computers are getting more and more locked down limiting the options you have with them. With Windows toying with the idea of becoming an advertising platform, one has to wonder who owns the device on your desk. The trend here is worrying. Make no mistake that the purpose of ride sharing companies is to obsolete car ownership (self driving cars will displace human drivers later.) Heck, we're even beginning to see active discouragement of home ownership. (What about all that yard work and maintenance? You don't have time for that! What if you have lousy neighbors? You'd be stuck with them!) Meanwhile, why purchase a home when you could lose your job at any time and have to move? And speaking of money, you can't afford anything. But that's okay, you can find people who will loan you some money. Thus preventing you from the heavy burden of owning money. Manage to stay out of debt? Don't worry, the bank will hold onto your money for you. And they "tots swear" they won't do anything stupid with it or make a mistake in their accounting. Physical money ownership is stigmatized and actively discouraged. The biggest bill is $100 which is like the biggest bill you could get in 1850 being $5 (back then bills went up to $1,000). And if you have a lot of cash, there's a stigma of being a poor person with no bank account or a drug dealer doing shady stuff. Nevermind that walking around with absurd sums can subject you to civil forfeiture where your money is accused of a crime and is unable to defend itself for some reason. But naturally, civil forfeiture can be used on anything you own, which is why you shouldn't own anything.
Ownership is economic power. And the state of ownership is terrible in the United States. This tears at the very fabric of civilization and we are sliding towards serfom all over again.
Bateman: Did you know that Whitney Houston's debut LP, called simply Whitney Houston, had four number one singles on it? Did you know that, Christie?
Elizabeth: [laughing] You actually listen to Whitney Houston? You own a Whitney Houston CD? More than one?
Bateman: [ignoring her] It's hard to choose a favorite among so many great tracks, but "The Greatest Love of All" is one of the best, most powerful songs ever written about self-preservation, dignity. Its universal message crosses all boundaries and instills one with the hope that it's not too late to better ourselves. Since, Elizabeth, it's impossible in this world we live in to empathize with others, we can always empathize with ourselves. It's an important message, crucial really. And it's beautifully stated on the album.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I suspect in the longer term, physical media for CDs will be available only on demand for those who do not want the sound of lossy music. The main reason for the popularity of non-physical media is convenience. The question is: will those who like streamed music acquire a sense for higher-quality music sources, and will there be enough of those people to support distribution of that higher quality music source? There's a reason for the resurgence of vinyl records.
nutz
Best Buy never had much CD selection even in the hayday of CD sales. If it was in the top 40 it didnt exist. Can see this as a loss.
There is one good reason to always buy physical media - it can be transferred.
I can rip my own MP3s, move them from device to device, and leave the original media to my children. When people subscribe to music services, they lose all of these rights that come with ownership.
Unlike cassettes and vinyl which are getting revivals, there is no nostalgia for cds therefore it is caught in the middle and forgotten about.
They died years ago.
Considering the fact that our governments eavesdrops on us and can easily steal our property, I would say that yes, privacy and ownership are an illusion. Might as well get something in return, even if it is just a music rental service.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Time Life Music collections!
Not a music CD -- the new DontTrackMe Browser or NoSpyingYou Lying CDs, loaded with the software for the paranoiac. This is the future of the intertubes! Get them soon, on CDs bought with cash from a brick-and-mortarget. Go ahead, you don't have to chase me =]
What was your vision of the future? Mine had starships and flying cars; and faxes sent to a distant space station. And a different kind of CD, at the mall.
Best Buy is worst buy.
The owner overlords in the world are celebrating yet another win. They're going to make trillions with this infectious attitude towards renting everything, along with selling your every click.
I've never met anyone this passionate about their floppy disc collection. You are a dying breed.
In 20 years, the 2030's equivalent of hipsters will show their independence and rebellion by going to vintage stores to buy CDs and make dubious claims of "superior quality" from listening to something coming from a physical medium.
There is nothing quite like a good well-structured album. That's one of many things that is missing from the top 40 today. Artists make collections of songs. They don't make albums.
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iTunes/Apple had the stupidly named FairPlay DRM well after Amazon was doing 256 kbps +/- mp3 releases. Godawful quality (loudness war) were these, but no DRM. It took Apple another year+, before it came out with iTunes+, which was a 256 kbps m4a (aac) with no DRM. Each did have your email address in the metadata.
Me. The transients aren't as raspy and the midrange has a warmer soundstage.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yeah, "Batman Returns" was a great monie.
1/50th the capacity of a 32GB microsd in an object 100 times larger, such that the microsd fits down the hole in the middle. And with typical broadband you can download 680MB in less time than it takes to walk to the local shop.
The last of a very impressive collection, remastered, and the guitar sounds exactly the way the master Jimmy Page himself wanted YOU to hear it
Someone may have said the same thing about vinyl 10 years ago.
Buy CDs now! You'll be one of the first Music CD Renaissance hipsters in 2045!
WalMart is likely the targets CD retailer in the US (I saw likely as I cannot find hard data but they have been in the past IIRC) what they decide is likely to have a major impact on CDs in the US. At any rate, CD sales are declining along with overall album sales in any media. Digital represented about 505 of sales in 2016 vs. 34% for physical media. Of digital, 59% was streaming, the first time it was greater than 50% and drove the 18% increase in digital sales. It seems buyers are more interested in buying songs rather than albums in most cases; with album purchase dominated by older titles; which makes sense if you look t US retailers shelves you see a lot of older albums and a few new ones, mostly from big names.
What's old is new again, as buyers have streamed to single songs, harkening back to the old days of 45's.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Maybe it's different in the US, but here in Canada, Best Buy has evolved into a chrome plated appliance store with phones, video gaming, cameras, computers, audio (in that order) with any technology at least a year old and marked down.
They do know *their* market, but I don't see any indication that they're working to a trend, instead they're looking at floor space and where they can make the most money.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Streamtuner and Streamripper is the answer for music on USB memory sticks and SD cards. For the extremely lazy with 24/7 online capability, there is https://www.internet-radio.com/
The only way to keep privacy and the right kinds of retro-tech alive is creating a privacy-centric free nation akin to what America was supposed to idealize.
America as that country has failed, and is rapidly colluding with members of the other major Nation States to take those ideals, rights, and liberties away, all in the name of corporate or sufficiently wealthy personal gain.
At the macro level this can't be stopped, short of a massive purge of the lower rings of the populace, or sufficient incitement to turn that populace into a frenzied mass (which is only a temporary fix, since those cattle are breeding themselves away from free thinking, rather than towards.)
However gathering together people who still believe in privacy and technology which helps support said privacy is possible, although based on my last 5 years of attempts at it, is infeasible, for the simple reason that not enough people are willing to give up their current lives or citizenship to make it happen, unlike the various groups who have rebelled over the years to take their colony, nation, or region back for themselves.
Think about what you truly want out of your life and then decide what you are willing to do to get to it. Because the opportunities are rapidly dwindling, as is one's ability to independently make money inside of the current frameworks.
Good luck.
If CDs go away, now I'll have to download a file and burn it separately to a CD? WTF? And how about cover art and information about the release? No way I will stop buying CDs. I love the flexibility of being able to pick a CD from the shelf and bring it in the car to listen. Having to download music to a phone or other device just seems silly to me.
MP3s tend to have inferior sound quality to a CD. It is noticeable. The heavy compression throws out a lot of data. You have lossless formats such as FLAC or Wavpac which never caught on. Wavpack is nice because you can split the file into a lossy file you can copy to a device and an additional smaller file that contains additional data for lossless play. As others have mentioned the decline of CD has other problems relating to DRM. Will audiophiles keep CDs alive. Lets hope so.
There was a resurgence in record sales due to perceived characteristics of that platform, hopefully audiophiles will also keep the CD alive in a similar manner.
The other factor in all of this is that there is not much, I would say, no music that comes out of Hollywood these days that even warrants a poorly encoded MP3, not to mention CD, since such music is not worth listening to at all. Nearly all mass market music produced out of hollywood belongs in the trash, or the recycle bin directory to make room for more valuable data. Of course, there is still older music such as classical music, jazz, beatles etc where the use of CDs is still very important for people being able to get a quality recording of such masterpieces.
Some have said vinyl doesnt have the same nostalgia of CD. But the fact is CD has long been an audiophile choice because of the high fidelity and the resistance to mechanical abrasion and wear. A stamped CD will last for decades of continuous use whereas a record will suffer from wear and tear. Remember that audiophiles have invested big bucks, we are talking a thousand dollars, in high end CD players such as Pioneer Elite and Marantz for high end CD play. Even on an el cheapo $30 player, the difference in CD quality from vinyl and MP3 is real and noticeable. You dont get the same dynamic range and the same lossless, artifact free play back from an MP3 to drive your tweeters and subwoofers.
to get DRM free MP3s. eMusic comes to mind. Hell, didn't Apple remove DRM? They might have added it back. And besides, CDs aren't going away, but you won't be able to buy them at Best Buy, Target and Walmart. Good. That'll drive people to independent record stores and to concerts. Folks still want physical media. If only for the collectability. Hell, it probably won't even raise prices given the amount of profit built into a CD.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
There's also new kinds of artists, such as Wintergatan, who's like a modern Da Vinci.
#DeleteFacebook
No, they're not "dead". I buy them regularly. I've never bought a CD at "Best Buy", so I really couldn't care less what they sell or don't sell. Best Buy is clearly a poorly run business run by people who make poor decisions.
I don't respond to AC's.
An entire category of clueless gifts for the kids ... Removed ...
But seriously, mother-fscking vinyl moved 14 million units last year and CDs cleared 104 million. yeah, it's way down, but now so low it can't support a healthy industry, especially with a product with margins like CDs.
Expect to see more independent record stores and better sales at concerts as the money gets too small for the big fish to care, which can't help but be a good thing.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
See here. Then there's eMusic. The music industry gave up on DRM because it wasn't worth the tech headaches. If you want lossless though you'll pay a premium, but there's no shortage of options out there for audiophiles.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I hear you that cds are a technology past its due date.
But public libraries can buy, store and lend physical media easily and not have to deal with DRM or licensing restrictions.
Patrons can check out CDs and then decide to rip from them in the privacy of their own homes. Totally legal too.
Ironically, the ripping habit (which I admit I have) leads me to buy a lot of digital music that I never would have learned about otherwise.
Even if CDs stopped being sold tomorrow, there are still lots of indie/fringe CDs out there which aren't being sold digitally anywhere. Don't believe me? Go to a garage sale or used CD/DVD store and count the number of CDs still unknown to most of the musical world.....
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
napster ist the problem npot thes E millential kids using modern downloadin and streamin services. napster is the probmelm. RESIST FELLOW EXECS RESISTS
I see Target's Point. Disks are a dying market. They're taking all the risk currently. The cost of duplication (unit production cost) for the disk and packaging is trivial. Sending it back is highly inefficient and costs about as much as the unit production cost if you include not just the shipping but the labor for Target and receiving. So it makes sense that Target ask for this. Think about paperback books. If they don't sell the bookstore does not send back the book, they rip off the cover and send just that back. Same economics.
By the way, I'm not an Anonymous Coward. Recently SlashDot signin has not been working. It lets me sign in but then when I click on a story from the newsfeed it signs me right back out again. This happens intermittently. Sometimes the login is working. Nothing has changed on my end. This appears to be a SlashDot bug. Ideas?
It couldn't happen to a sleazier bunch of shitbags.
Yes, it's not a panacea to consumers.
But there's just SO! MUCH! SCHADEFREUDE! at how these greed, grasping fucksticks have basically painted themselves into a corner in the last 40 years.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I still buy CDs as MP3 sound quality is not good enough and both my cars have Surround Stereos. The difference between playback of MP3 vs a CD is night and day. However even within the team of IT professionals I work on I am the only one that is concerned about sound quality - MP3 suffices for the rest. AptX ? They've never heard of it. I rip my CDs to FLAC using the highest sampling rate available in EAC and use a dedicated Sony High Resolution Audio player with AptX paired with Sony Bluetooth headphones with AptX for playback while hiking/walking or on long flights. I believe the lack of concern for music quality mirrors the quality of the politicians we elect in the USA which also mirrors the lack of outrage over internet speeds - we are Mediocre, be proud!
Without getting into the argument regarding streaming quality, there's another reason I prefer CD's. I listen to a lot of music from my youth, or older even. Much of which has been remastered, remixed and re-released several times over the years. Often times the streaming/downloadable versions are not the versions I want to listen to. The loudness wars are real and often times remastered versions don't have the dynamic range of the older versions.
There are also a lot of weird things that happened in older recordings. There was a recording studio in the late 1960's that did not have the speed of their recording equipment calibrated correctly for a fairly long time, and it was running slightly too slow. Since that time several albums from that studio have been remastered. Fortunately some of the remasters took this into account. However many did not. The ones that did not have shorter run-times and are pitch shifted accordingly. The problem is that the play times for the tracks do not match what is actually on those disks, so you can't tell by looking at the track times. It's been my experience that many of the remasters that did take this mis-calibration into account are also now out of print. Any streaming service or digital download would likely be from the newest remaster and not sound very good in my opinion.
Some albums were actually changed in later releases. One of the lyrics of the Eagles song "Life in the Fast lane" was actually changed after the initial release of the Hotel California album.
I can't say I'm a big Ice-T fan, but his song Cop Killer was unavailable for a couple of decades at one point. There have been other albums that are no long available due to other legal reasons as well. In those cases, you will not be able to hear them on your streaming service either.
I also listen to a lot of classical music. There are numerous versions recorded by different orchestras. There are many version of Wagner's opera Der Ring des Nibelungen. Since it's a very long opera and is broken up into 4 parts/cycles, it can take several years between the opening of the first and last cycle. So there is a considerable amount of variation between versions of the full recording. I'm going to guess that I'd be lucky to find one version of of it on a streaming service, let alone two or more.
AOL is dead and now this. Where am I supposed to get my coasters from now?
Like, I know!
I was SO upset when they stopped selling wax cylinders for my Gramaphone, now it's CDs!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The rock/pop music market was dominated into the late 1970's / early 1980's by kids buying "hit singles" on 45-rpm format, for approximately $1. Then the corporations got effing greedy and told you that you could only get the one popular track by paying $20 or $25 for a CD that had that track... plus a dozen other pieces of crap you didn't care about. "Music sales" cratered. Well... like... dohhhh. Let's blame piracy.
It wasn't until Apple came out with 99-cent single tracks that music-buying picked up again, beacuse kids with limited allowances could buy a song, rather than having to purchase "the bundle".
This is very similar to cable TV today. Try getting just your favourite channels, without paying for a bunch of crap that you don't want. That's the CD equivalant. Specialized streaming services are the equivalant of single tracks on Itunes or Google Play.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
There are still music stores around, they sell CDs, why would you go to Best Buy for that anyway?
However I have been and will continue to be of the opinion that all of you who pay for 'streaming' services are fools. You're encouraging a world where you OWN NOTHING. It's not just media, if you haven't noticed: Barriers to owning a home, and not just financial; things like HOAs making it difficult to impossible for the average person. Car 'leasing' instead of purchasing (and you're still paying for maintenance). Shit companies like Microsoft, pushing 'subscriptions' instead of letting you own a copy of software. And so on. Don't deny it's happening like so many of you deny so many other things that you said would never happen, only to find a few years later they did.
But, I miss the lossless DRM free no bullshit format etched on them. I've never bought any music online, most of it is low quality lossy and some even DRM.
But there must be some demand for this? I came across "Tidal" for streaming which looks promising, but is there anywhere you can actually buy lossless stuff or am I relegated to piracy in an age where everything where the whole pipeline is designed for shitty earbuds and iPhones?
But reality is different. There have been times that I wanted to listen to some music that I own on CD or vinyl, and I was at work, so I just downloaded it. Sigh
Apple wins this round.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Unless something has changed recently, MP3 doesn't support DRM. In fact most of the audio sound formats I've encountered don't support DRM. It's not like the case with movies, where the "video file" format is actually a container containing a video file, audio file, subtitle files, chapter index, etc, and you can insert all sorts of funny ways and conditions to play it. Pretty much all the music audio file formats I've encountered are just straight audio files - compressed, but not encrypted.
The bigger loss is that CDs, being a physical format, carried with them a perpetual license. You could bequeath your CD collection to your children upon your death. The license agreement terms for most online music/movie purchase services grant you a non-transferable license. That is, your "ownership" of the content you've "purchased" expires upon your death. The only way to allow your heirs to inherit your music or movie or ebook or game collection is to break the EULA and share your login and password with them before you expire.
I expect this will be hashed out in court over the next 40 years, as the "loss" of a loved one's or relative's online media collection upon their death becomes more commonplace. People will challenge it, and the courts will have to decide if that's really how we want online "purchases" of copyrighted media to work. In the meantime, you can completely bypass the content industry's attempts to erode our ownership rights of things we've paid money for by purchasing CDs. (Or by pirating stuff - though "pirating" is probably not the right word when it's done to take back rights we should have had from the beginning.)
Recorded music is at best a close approximation of a live event. It may or may not be massaged/mangled by post production. My opinion is real music is experienced live. There are probably exceptions...Electric Ladyland comes to mind.
I've been watching/listening to Postmodern Jukebox on youtube and the audio is only one component, the presentation is smile inducing. Babymetal's Gimme Chocolate video makes me smile.
The evolution of recorded sound marches on. Good enough is always going to be good enough. Best will always be superseded by the next best.
Serenity now, insanity later.
Vinyl will outlive CDs
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Seriously, I go there every now and then to buy the latest Pixar (or Disney, if it is worth it) Blu-Ray. Last one was Cars 3 a couple of months ago.
The shelves (all the shelves, not just media) are bare. Product is arranged in a manner reminiscent of a bad comb-over. You can tell at a glance it's a sick store. Has the same desperate air of death as the local R/C store before it died.
I get it, CD and Blu-Ray are not the primary method of content aqcuisition for Most People.
I wager those who read here are not Most People.
What does CD and Blu-Ray offer ME that the more hip / convenient formats don't?
Permanence. Presence. Some of us still like shelves well-stocked with books, CDs, dvd/blu-ray, records.
I'm fairly certain one day, not too far, the pendulum will swing back to physical.. especially when people start realizing what they like to watch / listen can be dropped by the $STREAMER at their whim.
Example: I LOOOOOOVE Animaniacs. I have the entire thing on DVD, right here in my shelves. I watched them on Netflix, or played 'em while I did other stuff. Then Netflix dropped them. I said "No biggie, they're all here right here. I can watch whenever" Then Hulu picked 'em up in January, and I watch 'em again. Convenience wins, but so does having a physical backup. The point I'm stressing is... the streamer can drop your favorites like a bad habit, and then what? Get on Facetwat and whine like a bitch, or just reach into your shelf and pop one into the player? Spend hours looking for the stuff to pir8, or just pop one into the player? To each their own, but I know what method I prefer.
And that is what will swing the pendulum back. It's *GOOD* to have that shelf full of cool stuff. Sucks when one has to move house, but looks awesome when lit by spotlights and frankly, has a comforting quality to it -- much like a library. Remember those? A building where one could go and read to one's heart's content? Lined wall to wall and floor to ceiling with books?
As for music, I buy CD, then rip to MP3 for the phone and the ipod in the car. Do I liste to the CD again? Sure! IF i have the time, I'll listen to a whole album, accompanied by some distilled spirit or by some other mood enhancer - by spinning the CD in a player.
What guarantee do I have that if I buy all 7 seasons of $SHOW or a complete collection of all $MOVIES by $DIRECTOR on a streaming service or itunes or similar.. what guarantee do I have that they'll be there 10 years from now?
Yes, to me, *that's* important. Permanence. Everything in my life has been too goddamn fleeting to have things which help my sanity become fleeting as well.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
CDs are being replaced by a new old format : Vinyls. ;-)
Best Buy may have stopped selling CDs, but the problem doesn't exist only with Best Buy.
Shopping for CDs at any major retailer in 2018 is a pointless exercise, unless you're looking for the very latest thing, or greatest hits collections.
When Streetlight and Rasputin's (two indie retailers here in the San Jose area) go out of business, only then will I worry.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
There's a difference. Floppy disks became obsolete because of lack of storage capacity. CDs are becoming obsolete because music listeners these days value convenience over quality and actually owning their music.
Business is a boomin.
No one ever sold CDs. What was sold was a means for people to experience and enjoy music. The experience part is vital and is why there are still people buying vinyl and even tape. With vinyl there is moment between placing the needle at the start or finding the location to drop it. There is the scratchiness that gives way to the music. CDs, press a button and go, so easily replicated, that many early computer music players had interfaces that resembled physical players. Fast forward (pun intended) and the physical CD is gone yet the playing experience is largely unchanged.
music listeners these days value convenience over quality and actually owning their music.
^^ That. People couldn't be bothered with proper turntable setup, so their mass-market "record changers" ruined the sound (and the records.) So Cassette took over. Then CD took over Cassette. And now "nothing" took over. I call it "nothing" because I can't hold it in my hand, I can't file in my shelves, it's here now gone tomorrow if you didn't make backups - or if the $STREAMER decides to pull it.
Convenience wins. Every time. No matter of the other way is the better way. People just can't be bothered.
There's that slim faction that *can* be bothered, and we're the ones lamenting the passing of the physical.
You can have my sheet music when you pry it off my cold dead fingers!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
We know precisely how this adds up.
Dear Totalitarian Leader is invariably an expert mechanic of the 80–20 law: remove the 20% of the population most likely to cause problems, and voila!
I've spent quality time with all three of these coloured wires, even though I think Ayn Rand is a springy shit sandwich, and Michael Moore is a thrice-insulated turd meatloaf (not, however, composed of actual fecal matter, though it steams up the outhouse all the same). Snowden is beyond the ken of simple DC analysis. Assange—the deceptively naked ground return—is a mad, upside down, digital Diogenes (who also delighted in yanking the collective chain).
But still, from a decent remove, a sometimes interesting cat.
The malign minions of Dear Totalitarian Leader would not concern themselves over the fly in the ointment of expressed (anti)-preference: anyone capable of routinely seeking out that which they dislike for the betterment of critical thinking is sure to receive a seat assignment for the Director's Edition first cut.
But if you need more accuracy than "potentially capable of independent thought" your list of things you 're read or consumed is not an accurate sentiment proxy—except for sheep. Sheep are political assets. Everyone else, not so much.
If that's all you meant by "find out a lot", then QED—may your rough-and-ready regime endure for a thousand years.
...the tracks are true lossless from an actual 16 bit CD, and not simply upsampled from a shitty 64 bitrate mp3?
I bought a new truck last weekend, and it had a CD slot in the dash. Totally joking, I asked the ~20 year old sales girl what it was for, and she said "oh that's where you put your cell phone holder. We have them inside and you get one free with the truck."
And sure enough, when I got done signing the papers, there was a CD-slot mounted cell phone holder in it.
CDs died eons ago. Best Buy, as usual, is catching on to shifts in technology ten years after the fact.
I have a dvd player in the computer that I can use to play cds. I don't because most music is now online, and I can store 10,000 songs on something else, and it all sounds just fine. I like to listen to stuff in the car and have a little thing that plugs into the cigarette lighter and accepts an sd card. The SD card can hold about 30,000 songs, and if I want more, its easy to have more than one SD card. The music isn't as 'pure', but most musicians process the hell out of music anyway, so purism is an ill-defined concept. CD's also tend to scratch/bend/warp/melt, and don't store nearly as much as a DVD. I don't even use DVD's much anymore. It can store a lot, but comparing a DVD to a hard disk is like comparing a toothpick to a forest. And I don't even store much music on hard disk; solid state devices are so much more practical. Much larger than you will ever need for all the music you listen to, virtually indestructable, can fit in a pocket easily, cheap. If you are tired of the music, you can always erase it and put on something else.
I've been hearing about the death of CDs for a few years now, but I'm still buying new CDs and others I know are too. Local record shops still seem to have a consistently sized selection and do a decent business (always lots of people in my local HMV, young and old), although I tend to buy most CDs online because of the better choice and usually the price.
Why CDs? DRM-free and I can rip them in whatever format I want, lossy or lossless, and use them wherever I want. I like the tangible product, the album art/booklets, and just the whole idea of an album as a conceptual entity. I don't have to put up with the record companies cancelling access to music I've bought, or finding that I have to use different services to find different artists, or having to put up with the inconvenience of streaming. Plus the costs are still about the same as downloads - which is particularly amusing given the negligible costs for reproduction compared to physical media, they're just creaming off yet more money that doesn't go to the actual artists.
If you're complaining that albums are shit because you're paying to buy one or two decent songs, I'd humbly recommend you go find some decent music rather than be spoonfed generic, mass-marketed rubbish. It's very rare that I've bought something where most of the album has been filler. In fact, I can't even remember the last time that was the case. There are so many great albums out there, new and old - 2017 seemed to be an exceptionally good year.
If I have one complaint, it's that some independent labels are moving from CD, except for very limited editions. They seem to be opting for download and vinyl of all things, despite vinyl making up a much smaller market than CD. Don't get me started on some labels adding analogue cassette over CD - I mean who even has a tape player these days?
How else will I get my music in a DRM free, lossless format?
No digital audio format is lossless. CD for instance loses all frequencies above Nyquist.
Want to listen? For the major codecs (MP3, AAC-LC, Vorbis, and Opus), what is the highest bitrate that you can successfully distinguish from the original CD in an ABX test?
Want to transcode? For the common use of "lossless" to refer to 16-bit 44.1 kHz linear PCM as a source for transcoding free of artifacts, you'll still be able to mail-order CDs, just not walk into a Best Buy.
Without a cd and CD player, you can't walk in a store, buy music, and walk out of the store with music to listen to. If they had some sort of kiosks where you could login or create an account and download music to a device that would be fine but they don't. We take for granted that everyone is suppose to have a smartphone with high speed cellular data service in their pocket and credit card linked to it so music can be bought and downloaded on the device, but not everyone has those things.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Don't you believe that people don't like privacy. Almost one year ago, Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden spoke on privacy (use youtube-dl or avideo to download the video so you don't run YouTube's nonfree software by visiting their site) and the whole talk is worth hearing.
One part stands out—when Greenwald talks of common privacy myths around 28m23s (such as "I don't have anything to hide") by pointing out the results of his ongoing privacy test—he has an email account he invites anyone to send mail to listing all of the credentials and connection points for every account they control (including work accounts, bank accounts, social media accounts, and all sites for anything else). Why? He explains quite straightforwardly, "I just want to be able to troll through what you're doing online and post under your name because obviously if you're not a bad person you should have nothing to hide.".
The result is obvious and predictable: "To this day, not a single person has taken me up on this offer.".
"The people who say that they don't value their privacy don't actually mean it at all." Greenwald reminds us, and he's right. There has never been a time where people didn't value their privacy and any corporate sycophant who wants to claim otherwise here (or on any other corporate news repeater site) is either ignorant or lying.
Digital Citizen
Most artists make dick off of any purchase of their music, execpt when they are selling at their shows. You can really sell a stream at show or indeed much in the way of a digital copy. So as long as artist do shows there will be physical media sold.
Keep in mind most of these sales do not count toward their "album" sales either so there may be more sold than people realize as most people I know have realized this and generally only buy music at shows, and stream otherwise.
CD are not dying, they're dead.
Amazon was negotiating new contracts whereas Apple had existing ones - no wonder why it didn't happen overnight.
You typed: There's a big difference between, "I don't care if a particular company knows what music I listen to," and "I don't care if my emails are public."
NO, there's not.
Perhaps you lack the maturity and wisdom to realize this yet. Someday you will.
Let me get you started: People knowing what music you listen to and where you get it and when you get it, etc are like people who know the books you read, the movies you watch, your friends, the schools you attended, etc ..... aside from all the other badness that can result, these things allow businesses, politicians, and others to build profiles of you and then use those profiles to manipulate you, and to further enhance the profiles of your friends and relatives, the better to manipulate them too. Politicians will eventually have no need to rig an election - they'll just manipulate the public by pushing the right micro-targeted buttons. Corporations will not need to engage in illegal market manipulations, monopoly tactics etc - they'll just manipulate the buying public.
It's bad enough as a problem facing the individual free person, but when you consider the long-term societal consequences, things can get rather chilling.
Not quite. Apple had DRM-free music from EMI, but not from the other big four record labels. Then the rest granted Amazon a license for DRM-free music to try to reduce Apple's bargaining power, because Apple wouldn't license FairPlay and this was the only way for someone else to be able to sell music that would work on iPods.
The lesson from all of this was that DRM let Apple tie their store to the player and so gave them more leverage than the music studios had.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The real hipsters have already moved on to Freddy Mercury moustaches. But well trimmed beards will always stay in style if only as a niche because some women prefer them. The giant beard we will look back on and laugh.
The Amiga will never die!
I understand Target's complaint - they have to either sell the CDs in 60 days, buy them, or pay to ship them back. Unless you're a dedicated music store which can anticipate demand, that's a difficult bet to make.
However, I'm sure there's still an opportunity for music makers to sell CDs - just not on the shelves of big bricks & mortar retailers. The trick is to connect to those consumers (e.g. via artist websites & social media), make the CDs available for purchase (e.g. via Amazon) and manufacture those CDs in such a way to minimize the amount of stock which needs to be warehoused (on demand manufacturing).
CD's are still my primary method of obtaining legit music.
I'm hoping that for my family and friends that 2018 will be the year of going back to owning physical things. I've gotten a few of them started. and they're already cutting their monthly costs on services that they don't get any real enjoyment out of other than being caught up on worldly trends. The best part about all of this is that we can freely share our physical media with each other. There's been a very "reviving dry bones" effect.
Because it is the only place that actually has a CD player anymore. Even then, it also supports USB, Bluetooth, and has an Aux out port, so you're by no means forced to use CD's anymore either. I expect my next car/stereo probably won't even have a CD player in it...
What a stupid concept. Now, for those of you who aren't, y'know, like TERRIFIED OF PEOPLE, and say, go out to live music, that's how you buy their music at the concerts.
AND that is how most of them *make* money - by selling CD's.
But go ahead, don't buy CDs, tell the folks whose music you like that they should go back to work at a real job, and just make live music for the fun of it, unless some RecordCompanyScumbag decides that they fit his market profile....
Someday the audio CD will be rediscovered and appreciated as the freakin brilliant format that it is. When they are produced and mastered right, the audio quality is stunning, and it's quite close to what the human ear is capable of perceiving. They're long-lasting and resistant to damage (if you don't outright abuse them), and totally DRM-free and region-free too, and you don't have to wade through menus and promos and crap like with DVDs.
The major problem with the audio CD is that all the record companies have forgotten how to master music so it'll sound good, or maybe they just don't care. They compress the hell out of everything in the whole rock-and-pop space. New LP records usually sound better than the CD counterpart just because they are mastered better. Pick out CDs from the 80s and 90s and they sound fantastic. (And avoid anything with "remastered" on the label. That's the mark of death.)
How long do you think that will stay that way when the CD is gone?
For all practical purposes, the CD is already gone.
I can go to Amazon and buy any song I want, DRM free, for $1. I don't see any reason for that to change.
How is Amazon's service related in any way whatsoever to availability of CDs?
...what you've written here is like a small child walking into negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians and saying "but why can't you guys just get along?" You have demonstrated you have no idea what we're talking about. Please go back to the kids' table. "oh, I can buy any song from Amazon for a dollar..." Jesus H.M.F. Christ... One day, when CDs are extinct, and Amazon tells you that you don't need to be able to buy songs, when you can get them for "free" with "Prime membership..." you can come back and read this again, and maybe will understand better why I'm likening you to an ignorant child. It's not to hurt your feelings nor to feel superior, it's because you seem to be somehow assuming that the way things are now will never change, ignoring the forces at work here.
Basically, in terms of being able to buy music, and OWN it, and play it wherever you like, whenever you like, however you like, without big corporations taking their cuts, (in the case of Amazon (which you brought up,) and Apple (which you didn't, but they're in the same basic boat,) when it comes to manipulating things so that you have to pay, and pay through the nose,) it seems as if you're happily enjoying the lovely wedding ceremony, and somehow have no idea why the mood in the room just suddenly turned dark and foreboding as the musicians wraped up the tune they were playing before, and began playing "The Rains of Castamere," or why Amazon.com's Lord Jeff Bezton is wearing chain-mail under his shirt to an occasion such as this. "My shareholders send their regards," he'll say...
You and people like you, ShanghaiBill will wake one day and wonder where the hell your ability to buy music and not pay over and over again for it went... and we (people like me) fucking warned you about this. "Oh, ho ho ho... I can buy any song I want on Amazon for a dollar..." yeah. When you look back on this, I hope you'll recall one day that today I asked you (in advance,) "how's that working out for you now?"
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Does that mean that AI is undergoing a phase up? If nothing changes is it phase flat?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Just fuck off and shove your 'fecal matter' up your ass.