New decade, end of the CD?

JLocke wrote: USB sticks and SD cards are nowhere near as safe and reliable as the disc format when you take into account how easy it is to misplace something so tiny. I have heard more than one story about somebody leaving their USB card in their jeans, then forgetting about it and putting it in the wash. True, it may stil survive that, but what if it doesn't? How many Gbs of music could be lost in an instant just by one careless mistake?

Of course you wouldn't put your music on just one SD card and walk around with it or put it in your jeans. Typically people keep their music on the hard drive of their computer, and indeed that is a problem because it's relatively likely that there could be a problem with that drive. Which is when the concept of backups comes into place, which essentially involves that you make a copy of the files and place that copy in a secure place. If your working copy is lost, you still have the backup - if your backup is lost, you still have the working copy.

JLocke wrote: And yes, you are right about needing something tangible as well. I believe the album experience is more than just the music. Cearly the music itself is the most important part, but think about all those Yes fans who equate their listening experience with the Roger Dean posters that came with the packaging. Think about all that respect Pink Floyd and The Beatles got for the cover art of DSotM and Sgt. Pepper respectively. You honestly don't believe that contributed to the memorability of it at all?

Cover art used to primarily be a marketing tool though. I agree that for many album the cover art is an integral part - but then again when you buy an album as MP3 you do get the cover art as well.

JLocke wrote: Last point: If every person were like you, and simply wanted to just listen to music and not actually own a physical album, what's stopping everybody from just downloading everything for free? For some people, the very selling point of music IS the deluxe packaging. May sound crazy to you, but not to those of us who don't see the point in paying for thin air.

What a slap in the face of the artists to call the actual music "thin air" and instead focus on the packaging. Call me crazy if you want, but I do believe that the actual music is what I am - and should be - paying for when I purchase an album. If the content was just "thin air", why would you even want to download it?

"What's stopping people from just downloading everything for free" ... I guess it's respect for the artists. There's hard work and financial investments involved in recording music, and we should feel morally compelled to give them something in return for the pleasure that we have listening to the music. I certainly can't enjoy listening to music knowing that I didn't compensate the artist. And if you're now going to say that most of the money we pay for downloads or CDs doesn't actually go to the artist but to the record companies: So what? The artists made deals with those companies, and regardless of how they are compensated we should respect these agreements. For example, maybe an artist doesn't get any royalties from MP3 revenue, but if enough people pay for the downloads the company will finance the next album of the artist.

I hope none here decided to save their digital songs on a 3.5" floppy.

Yep, that external HDD works now.  What happens when drivers for it are no longer available?

jammun wrote: I hope none here decided to save their digital songs on a 3.5" floppy. Yep, that external HDD works now.  What happens when drivers for it are no longer available?

You get a new drive, or whatever affordable storage device is available. Then you copy the data, and it's safe again. The beauty of digital data is that it doesn't matter which medium you use to store it.

jammun wrote:   Same question, stated differently:  what happens when it's difficult to find a decent CD player, like it currently is?  And by difficult I mean, ya can't just head on down to the store and buy one.

Yet another advantage of using files is that you no longer need any physical player ... any computer will do. All you need is a decent audio interface, and for some years even low cost computers come with decent audio chips, simply because it's no longer expensive to build them.

My current strategy is to get most music as MP3 ... and to make some exceptions for albums with particularly nice artwork or special features/editions. For example, last year I got the special edition of Porcupine Tree - The Incident, the King Crimson re-releases with the 5.1 mixes on DVD, and some nice new (gatefold) vinyl releases like Decemberists - The Hazards of Love. 

Petrovsk Mizinski wrote: I strongly back most of what Mike (Mr Progfreak) said. I do like hard copies and get them whenever possible. There are some things, like the deluxe/limited edition things you get from some artists that come with those extra booklets etc that you'd never be able to get in the digital realm and there is really is something about being able to hold it in your hand, but otherwise I am totally cool with just having digital 'non physical' music on my computer to listen to.

After 2 external hard drive failures and one laptop failure (hard drive included), I will never ever ever buy mp3s alone if I don't plan to copy them to CDs/DVDs. Not like I'd buy plain mp3s anyway.

Maybe when solid state hard drives are affordable and cheap, but for now, if I'm buying music, it's on CD or DVD.


Edited by stonebeard - March 01 2010 at 12:10

^ It's highly unlikely though that any future music player or storage device will not support mp3. If you now think about format problems of the past, like with video tapes or vinyl vs. CD - these problems simply don't apply to digital formats.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: My current strategy is to get most music as MP3 ... and to make some exceptions for albums with particularly nice artwork or special features/editions. For example, last year I got the special edition of Porcupine Tree - The Incident, the King Crimson re-releases with the 5.1 mixes on DVD, and some nice new (gatefold) vinyl releases like Decemberists - The Hazards of Love.

^ you can't tell mp3 and CD apart though - tests have shown that. So why should I spend more money on CDs for the same listening experience? Merely knowing that the files contain more information is not important to me.

So even if mp3 becomes a thing of the past and everyone starts using lossless formats, it's highly unlikely that the players will not support mp3 anymore - and since - if properly encoded - the old mp3 files sound just as good as the new ones, I don't see a problem.

I wonder how many people bothered reading the whole thread before posting.
I bring up reasons why the death of the CD would be a good thing because in its place could be a much better sounding format, but half you guys still want CDs for f**k sake
Why would you still want CDs when you could have better options that would sound significantly better?
16 bit is something that should have been phased out in physical mediums years ago.

A 320Kbps Mp3 of a recording done at 24 bits will wipe the floor with a 16 bit depth CD (which all Red Book standard CDs are anyway).

We can record at 24 bits now in the digital medium, so what is the point of just squashing it back down to 16 bits to fit the Red Book medium when we shouldn't have to?
Why is there such fear to moving towards a better sounding physical format? You guys don't want better sound?
The sooner CD dies and we can have a 24 bit, 44.1KHz sample rate physical medium standard (which surely could just be in the same size as a CD as to not alienate current CD owners), the better.
24 bits has become the current standard. Practically NO ONE uses 16 bits anymore in the digital realm for recording anymore.