CD is about dead

So what's going to take their place?

Paul Rowlands

If you are thinking of the so called format war then you only need to look at the good old 33 to see what will happen.
Cd's will be around for ages yet because there are too many people who have the hardware who;
don't want to change/can't afford to/won't do because the people that make all the differant formats can't agree.
You only have to listen to a player from the 80's compared to one now to show that the technology is still moving forwards re Cd replay etc

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So what's going to take their place?

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Digital files, MP3 and otherwise, will take their place.

For this reason there won't be a format war because physical formats as we know them will cease to exist (except in fringe markets).

Nor is there any guarantee that CDs will remain a viable format just because there are alot of them already. Witness the cassette tape.

Kids today are increasingly less likely to buy CDs, or to have music collections on physical media. This is especially true in major emerging markets like big cities in east Asia, where CD players are considered an old (and seriously unhip) format compared with miniature MP3 players, iPods, etc. The reason kids don't buy them is not primarily because they are too expensive (as Universal hopes), but because they are too much hassle compared to downloadable files. This is not a market that's ever likely to be won over to CDs, and where this market goes, there goes the future of music formats.

The reason I ask the question about whether CDs will go the way of cassette tapes is that, unlike vinyl, there's a real question as to whether CD can offer a real improvement over all other major digital file types. So CDs may soon be in a situation in which there is no mass market (complicated, expensive, unhip), and no specialty market (can't get anything from them that you won't get from a good hardrive, DA converter, and the right compression format).

Look at it this way: Universal is only dumping their product because they are in a terrible fix. They are desperately hoping that volume will increase dramatically. When it doesn't (as I'm assuming it won't really), their revenue loss will increase at an even faster rate. The downward pressure on CD prices will quickly impact the other major labels. This is why I think we're seeing the beginning of the end for the medium.

Eric

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Sure digital files are the future but noone would suggest that the current file
formats provide a suitable replacement for cd for the majority of music buyers.

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I'm not sure about this at all. You and I might think MP3 is a nasty step backwards, but the market for these things shows us to be on the margins. I really don't think most people notice or care about the -- for them -- slight sonic degredation.

Incidentally, I've seen several people even on this forum say that the 196kb/ps sample rate on their iPods was adequate, and this is a pretty finicky listening audience.

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Even the end of the major labels doesn't necessarily spell the end for cd, as the format is capable of providing good quality relatively cheaply

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It's not going to be relatively cheap when the choice becomes having a CD pressed, packaged, handled, and shipped to you or downloading the album as a file. CDs are very cheap to press relative to other physical formats, and I agree that this will keep small producers viable for some time. But once the majors are gone, or at least not marketing CDs, the market will quickly decline. Major electronics manufacturers will no longer have any incentive to mass produce CDPs. Distributors and music retailers will be largely doomed (I think they are anyway, unfortunately).

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Notwithstanding the fall in sales in some major markets the latent demand for music is still huge and without another obvious successor cd will continue to be the format of choice for
whoever distributes music for the foreseeable future, until a viable format for the masses is finally here.

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But the obvious and mass-market viable format is already here. It's just not a phsical format, and it may never be so again.


I'm thinking Universal execs. may have been fooled by the filesharers' rationalization that they are exchanging files only because CDs are so expensive. Suppose CDs were $1. Does anyone really think this would make a major dent in filesharing

Regardless of what the record companies say actual CD sales have increased every year. The rate of increase is less than they hoped for so they say it is a decrease when it’s actually a decrease from projected sales.

Installed Base! There are too many CD players in cars and peoples homes and portables already out there so someone is going to support that end user. The CD will be around for many more years regardless of what the Chicken Littles say.


Mitch

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Regardless of what the record companies say actual CD sales have increased every year. The rate of increase is less than they hoped for so they say it is a decrease when it’s actually a decrease from projected sales.

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Mitch,

I don't know where you're getting your numbers. Worldwide CD sales fell by 7% in value and 8% in units in 2002. In absolute terms this was a reduction of 62.5 million units. This was down from 2001, when they also fell (5% in sales and 6.7% in units). I got the 2002 figures here.

The net amount of music CDs has indeed increased, but that's because pirated CDs now account for about one in three.

Here's a quote from the NY Times article I linked to:
"Hal Vogel, author of "Entertainment Industry Economics"(Cambridge University Press, 1998). Mr. Vogel said that some estimates indicate that the record industry's revenues worldwide had declined to $30 billion from $40 billion a year in the late 1990's."

These look like real losses to me; not forecast reductions like you say. Or are Vogel's numbers wrong?

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Installed Base! There are too many CD players in cars and peoples homes and portables already out there so someone is going to support that end user. The CD will be around for many more years regardless of what the Chicken Littles say.

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Again, this was exactly the argument used to buttress cassette player sales in the late '80s. It's not persuasive.

Of course in some sense CDs will be "around" for a long time to come. Shellac 78's are still "around". The question is whether there will be a market to support widespread music distribution on CDs, and I say probably not for that much longer.

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once the record co's stop that then kids will buy their music in the traditional manner as there is no way for them to transfer funds electonicly (do you trust your teenager with your credit card?).

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Joolz,

Kids don't need a credit card, they only need a checking account with a debit card to do all the online transactions they can afford. Many kids have one already. Their allowance or job money is automatically transferred into it by their parents or employer.

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also non physical formats have a big disadvantage. what happens when your hard drive dies or you loose your i-pod? you've got to shell out for your entire collection again?

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The market will find a way. Mass hard storage has gotten incredibly cheap. Maybe you'll be able to burn one copy of your compressed music files onto a cd rom or its equivalent, or some other solution. The potential market's way too big to let this in the way.

Here are the results of a new Forrester research study estimating, among other things, a 19% reduction in CD sales within 5 years (a 30% reduction from 1999), and an estimate of 33% of all music purchased online. There are also at least 10 new online music sources slated to appear in coming months.

Of course you have to pay $900 for the full Forrester report.

Cheers,
Eric

Hmmmm, the posters here are a comparitively well heeled bunch. I wonder if the decline in music sales keeps track with the overall economy, and all that it would imply?

ejl,
I think you are right. It is quite possible that CD's will disappear faster than anyone have thought possible and take everyone by surprise. The fact that many people have players doesn't matter a fig. The world had record players but LP's almost all but diappeared - likewise casstte players.

The "masses" don't give a toss about the quality of mP3 or any other medium.

It's ironic that the major record companies already had great copy protection system that was free, couldn't be broken and didn't degrade the sound ..... it was called the LP record.

I hope CD's do die, and a new medium comes out,
Then I go out buy a CDS3 and order two extra transports, and run down to the used CD store and do what I did when CD first came out ....buy a whole lot of cheap music, can't wait

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Originally posted by Mitch:
Installed Base! There are too many CD players in cars and peoples homes and portables already out there so someone is going to support that end user. The CD will be around for many more years regardless of what the Chicken Littles say.

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Bury your head in the sand if you want - this is the same argument most of the US used in the late 70s with 8track cartridges; they died out in 2 years...

I personally loathe the idea of downloaded music unless I can't get something any other way - and this is the crux of the matter. What are you going to do - forgo new music, or put up and shut up? I'll be doing the latter since classical isn't my bag, baby.

MP3 though? One of my mates (who I'm STILL trying to convince to buy a turntable) is a full on trance addict and music lover - even she thinks MP3s are ok, as does one of her mates who's a recording engineer and has worked with acts like Afro Celt Sound System.

Us high quality audio music fans are in the minority - most people I know think a DVD player playing CDs through a telly is good enough. I despair, I really do!

When the music's over turn out the lights

Bandwidth, Bandwidth, Bandwidth

I don't know if any of you have doe this, but when you play MP3's on a quality player like Music Match, it will tell you the kbs of the track. The highest MP3 recording is typicaly in the 190's. Using the same player, play a CD and the kbs is an astonishing 1411 kbs. So tell me, untill broadband becomes a reality in the Meagbits/Second sense, downloading uncompressed, uncompromised music is going to be a serious issue. Have any of you tried to listen MP3 on a decent system??????? Painful??????? Even Sony's ATRAC compression is fairly unpleasant to listen to, simply lacking in life and drive.

Full bandwidth recordings, uncompressed from a hard dics are genrealy fine, again until you put it through decent electronics and the interference from the hard disc is audible.

The concept of digital storeage might well be here, but the effective implementation of the play back ist still a long way off. Terrabyte hard drinves for the masses any one?????????

Help Bunnys everywhere!!!!!

No Seriously, everywhere!!!!!!!

Hi,

CD will be history only when will be ended their variation on a theme, like DVD and SACD.
We only need to wait for Blue Ray to pass away.
Only thing which is not important for Sony and Philips is how good will be that new format.
I was shure that we or our sons will listen to music from a digital source which is far better than any reference turntable. For that experience we should wait for three dimensional gelatine molecula based surface (compact disc is two dimensional) in which can be stored terabytes and terabytes of data.
Ofcourse, one more thing will follow that and that is supraconducting on room temperature, (scientist work on this these years, but for now it is imposssible only at - 2XX Celsius degrees) which means that there will be no resistance in our cables, which will be heaven for audiophiles.
Even Blue Ray standard (if it is anyway) is just a beginning of digital media era.
Today digital can be described like D--I--G--T--A--L and the future digital will be DIGITAL, while today analogue is not perfect and look like AnALoG.
Also, it is not important how many terabytes will be possible to write on a disc, the problem is also that these disc will/are still need to spin to operate and this is a big shotcumming for highest (for example) sound quality.
We need to wait the results of negotiations between Silicon Valley and Sony I suoppose. A new format is ready, that's for sure, but we don't know nothing about that, also we can be sure that all today known digital formats you can buy are forgotten technologies in scientific research society.

Ozren

There are flaws in the assumption that downloadable digital files are the future.
a) Not everybody in the world has broadband internet access.
b) Where do you store the files if you don't want them in your player? (CD and other physical formats have unlimited storage - you just plonk them on your bookshelf, in a shoe-box, whatever).
c) Glossy booklets/cover sleeves. (Or do you need a video display with your player too?)
d) Sharing - what's to stop one person downloading and then passing on to friends?
e) Price: currently MP3 is effectively free. What happens if is starts costing real money?
f) How do you use the files on different players?

Paul Rowlands

I think many people rather miss the point in this debate by focusing on the downloadable aspect of media file based music solutions. As anyone who has spent much time listening on a laptop will know much more important are the "software" benefits at playback -- playlists, random shuffle over large collectins, searchable via artist/album/genre etc etc. Personally I cannot wait to have a non-CD based digital music system to replace my CDS2 and I'd buy one in a shot (except sadly the Naim Media Server is likely to cost more than a second home).

In general people (not least the record companies) seem far too obseesd with format and delivery mechanisms and forget that what's actually being bought, sold and listened to is the music. Hence we have this obsession with distribution (a one off activity with zero value) at the expense of delivery (ie listening) which we do over and over again and is the bit that adds the value. For consumers this is becuase of the format-centric history of recorded music (CD Vs LP, demise of cassette, VHS vs Betamax, etc) and for the record companies its beucase distribution of physical media is the traditional means by which they protect and control their content.

I also see a role for CD (and similar) in a meda file future as a ludicrously cheap, comapct, widely supported, accepted and understood, *disposable* delivery mechanism. Maybe a broadband wire based mechanism will take over in the future but in the short to medium terms its not going to be practical for everyone and CD is an excellent interim solution for delivery. Why try to get everyone to buy ludicrously wide (and expensive) broadband connections when you *today* can get 30 or so lossless albums onto a single DVD-RAM (Lossless WMA 9 encoding gives an average of 300MB per CD and double-sided DVD-RAM gives you 9.4GB of storage on a single CD sized disk)

Here's one version of the future:

-- I walk into a HMV which now looks more like a coffee shop than a record store. As I am with a few mates we ignore the express solo listening stations and head for a private lounge.

-- We browse music on touch sensitive flat screens and while reading details and reviews we listen either via the rooms speakers or on our personal Bluetooth enabled earbuds that auto-synced with HMV's narrowcast media players. Greg's not buying much as his taste is so bad he prefers to download in the privacy of his own home (wher he pretends to surrf prOn as a cover for his Liberty X and Busted obsession).

-- We order some food and a few beers (Except for Mike who remembers buying 27 hours of experimental German techno last time he got drunk in a HMV).

-- An hour or so later we leave and pick up our music custom burnt burnt in our chosen formats and bitrates and accompanied by standard form factor artwork and liners notes.

-- Jane is having a party and has gone for a 20 Euro "bargain bucket" of 500 hours of Ibiza Handbag and Goa Trance randomly chosen by her AI MusicBot straight off HMV's servers and burned at 192Kbps. (I make a note to invent an excuse not to attend Jane's party).

-- John is one of those audiophile weirdos who having shelled out for Linn's new uber expensive hardware based 512 bit/1 Khz codec with the Pavolski Transforms plug-in and twin discrete Konvertors (talk about overkill) then buys impossibly high bandwidth burns of Robert Johnson recordings orginally made on wax cylinders. I point out that on his newly purchased 16GB version of the Furtwangler/BPO WWII recordings about 12GB is actually hiss. If the hi-ends means paying 10 Euros (or in John's case 64 US Dollars) for mainly hiss frankly its destined to be a niche thing.

-- I only bought 10 albums today so HMV have filled my DVD-RAM with time limited low bandwidth versions of recommended purchases from their catalogue based on my choices. THeir AI bots seem to nail more picks each month and it promises to be as expensive as usual -- I'm seriously thinking about switching my default prefs to 256Kbps DivX7 so I can afford more music (GPL codecs might not be in the Linn/Naim class but at least they are GPL and so don;t require an annual fee for "Servicing and unlimited upgrades").

-- Once home I stick the covers in my music album and use my Wi-Fi control pen to cue up a playlist by scanning a few barcodes while the DVD uploads to my personal server. My server is running at 90% full again so its auto-archiving some old stuff I've not played for a while. It might be time to bite the bullet and have a GigaBit line installed and pay the micorcharges to stream my music out of a library server (according to "What Media Server ad MP3 News" paying for delivery from non-local storage is cheaper once your music collection hits about 1TB).

-- I remember my nephew and his mates are having a retro early 80s phase at the moment and that I'd promised to lend him some tunes. I grab an old DVD-RAM (nearly 10,000 rewrites and still going strong!) from the recycling bin and tell the server to burn a collection of landmark post-punk albums in a time limited format so I don't have to rememebr to take my personal ID dongle to cancel the DRM. I watch for the 20 secs it takes to burn a Gang of Four's "Entertainment!" and an Au Pairs album and note with some pride what excellent taste I have.

-- On the news I notice former Svengali and music impressario Simon Cowell has been arrested for vagrancy again a fact which brightens my day no end.

Matthew

[This message was edited by Matthew Robinson on FRIDAY 05 September 2003 at 11:38.]

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Originally posted by Matthew Robinson:
-- We order some food and a few beers (Except for Mike who remembers buying 27 hours of experimental German techno last time he got drunk in a HMV).

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He he he - I'd be up for hearing that experimental German techno - even better if it errs on the progressive psy-trance arena...

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Originally posted by Matthew Robinson:
-- Jane is having a party and has gone for a 20 Euro "bargain bucket" of 500 hours of Ibiza Handbag and Goa Trance randomly chosen by her AI MusicBot straight off HMV's servers and burned at 192Kbps.

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Provided you could playlist out the handbag stuff, that sounds like a great party! Sign me up for the entire BNE and Transient output - by the time this future happens it'll be 20 years old so really cheap...

I like the concept of this future though - having liner artwork's better than nothing - and provided your "software" is on media that will be safe in storage, I'd quite happily sit on my sofa and "walk" through my vinyl collection like I do now, but without having to get off my bum - unless it's some bangin' psy-trance of course

When the music's over turn out the lights

Matthew
Nice Utopian futuristic vision.
But...
Will everybody have servers at home, wireless earplugs (WiFi, Bluetooth, or sons thereof)?
Mass market has to cater for the others.

Paul Rowlands

Matthews post is an intersting near future view - however it is still dependant on the weakest link, the human ear and the transfer of the data to the brain.

I think that at some point there will be a brain /electronic interface to bypass the variable quality of the current process.
The current process being the transferring/converting the data from a recordable medium, thru an amplification system to drive the air vibrators. The vibrated air then excites the ear drums of the listener which then pass an approximation of the original signal into the brain where it generates emotional feelings.

The generated feelings are often very different from the original feelings experiemced by the performer or recording engineer.

In the brave new word the emotional experience will be recorded from the brain of the recording engineer or performer to a storage medium (be it portable as in CD) or centrally located (as in server in the sky) and thence into the brain of the recipient - not only the sounds would be experienced but three dimensional visual sensations as well.

No doubt there would be legacy media to emotion transmitter devices to cater for the back catalog but these would be niche products produced by the remnants of the great hifi industry of the early 21st century.

Must go - it is time for a quick soma

Derek

<<Have you checked your PTs today>>

But you'll still find David Slater single-handedly keeping the vinyl market alive.

Matthew - brill post - made me smile after getting up after a long night shift.
I do however not think that CD will crash and burn within two years, like the 8 track did.
I think it will take much longer than that.

I must confess when buying my latest CD player that I did heavily investigate the all-in-one option of a universal player that would do all formats. This was very quickly binned in favour of a player that would play CD's well, and a seperate box for DVD etc.

If you allow 10% of what the hi-fi media says, and 10% of what dealers advise you to sink in, then its very easy to see we are at a state where no-one can actually decide on a 'universal' way forwards. So no one will pull a plug on something when the replacement has not been tried and commenrcially tested.
DVD is differant, in that the video recorder has long been seen as a weak link re picture reproduction, which is why DVD, and its writeable version, will also continue to sell for the foreseeable future.
I like some of the options being considered, but only if the sound quality reproduction level and quality that the listener wishes to experience in their own home remains their choice, and not the chioce of the seller!
That's why some people are happy with their midi system, and most of us on this forum buy the kit we do...

Maybe my situation is unusual, but I've had to replace my hard drive twice in two years due to mechanical failures. All "important" files were backed up, of course; MP3 files were not, and they were all lost each time. No big deal, as they were all ripped from cds I already owned; but what if they had been the sole source files?

Does the prospect of losing one's entire music collection in one fell swoop (hard drive failure, dropping an iPod over the side of a boat, etc.) scare anyone besides me?

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Technology rules

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Maybe, but for me, dislexia lures

Regards

Mike

On the Yellow Brick Road and happy

Ed

I agree that you or I could implement it now (I've broadband, WiFi, portable MP3, laptop, PDA, etc.), but not everybody does.

Computers will have to improve a heck of a lot for them to be viable (eg. instant switch on, intuitive user interface, not always going wrong). There will also have to be significant convergence of the technologies.

The point isn't whether middle class techno-enthusiasts in developed countries can afford & work it, it's whether ordinary people all around the world will.

Regarding terabytes of storage, you've also got to back it up (or lose it all). At the moment, backup solutions are really expensive. I've lost whole disks on more than one occasion.

Also, I really hope that in 10 years time I won't be reminiscing about how nice a CD player was in comparison to the format of the day. IMHO CD is and always has been a flawed format based on what early digital age technology could offer, rather than what Hi-Fi required.

Paul Rowlands

Matthew,

Great post, but I'm not sure many people other than computer geeks and teenagers can be bothered with downloading music and storing it on a hard drive. There's also the issue of how to transport it between home PC/server and play it in the car or at the office on a work PC with headphones, or take it around to a mate's house to listen to it. At the end of the day, perhaps the most convenient way to achieve this portability is ironically with a disc.

My own supposition is that all music/film etc will eventually be stored on huge servers somewhere to be played on demand for a fee. The infrastructure to support this is years away though due cost. The end user device to access this will have to be very user friendly and although a computer, probably won't seem like one.

People seem very willing to spend money on DVD discs and I believe that probably has as much effect as Mp3 on declining music sales. People have only so much disposable income to collect media.

Finally I think we're underestimating the geek factor. Many people enjoy owning av/hi-fi gear and collecting discs, and I don't even mean just the fanatics like us. I was in a local branch of Curry's the other week trying to buy a simple to use midi system for my Gran. There seemed to be plenty of people buying these systems and delighting in the flashing lights and turbo boost subwoofers to impress their mates! The tragedy is that unlike in cars where the man in the street drools over an Aston, the 'proper' hi-fi industry has singularly failed to achieve a similar impression upon the average punter. It's interesting to speculate on why this is.

At the end of the day there are just too many people who are baffled by the complexities of computers for CD to be a dead duck for a while yet! I see little evidence of computers becoming much easier to use since Windows 95 either (having spent quite a lot of last weekend trying to get my parents webcam to work with their new Dell PC, XP and netmeeting - even they can work a CD player though!

Jonathan

Ditto the great post thing Matthew

You're right about CDs having a potentially long life as a medium for mass file storage of compressed music files; although this probably isn't the side of them that interests most of us CD player owners.

Eric

domjfbrown said " I'd be up for hearing that experimental German techno"

Anything by Mouse on Mars especially "Idiology". See http://pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/m/mouse-on-mars/idiology.shtml for more.

prowla said "But...Will everybody have servers at home, wireless earplugs (WiFi, Bluetooth, or sons thereof)? Mass market has to cater for the others"

I think there is actually very little doubt that eventually such devices will be ubiquitous. The question is when and in what form -- and it will probably be something that becomes popular more or less by accident rather than via a well planned industry initiative. They almost certainly won't seem like computers either and I seem no reason why they cannot be essentially foolproof mass market devices. Look at TiVO style devices for example.

ejt said "the idea that you would pick up printed liner notes for example, is laughable."

I disagree. I think there is value add and as a differentiator over downloads in physical media such as printed liner notes and artwork. People prefer the tactile nature of real objects -- witness the continued popualrity of LP sleeves over CD booklets, or the complete failure of e-books compared to paper, etc. Also computers are very bad at the flick through a collection of LPs looking for something to catch your fancy approach to which an "album" of covers is ideally suited.

Jonathan said "At the end of the day, perhaps the most convenient way to achieve this portability is ironically with a disc"

That's what I said!

"My own supposition is that all music/film etc will eventually be stored on huge servers somewhere to be played on demand for a fee"

So was that!

"Finally I think we're underestimating the geek factor"

I am underestimating the geek factor by imagining a future with AI Bots that auto connect to public music servers and download bespoke music collections to your personal house based media server? If you still have a a CD based Naim system in 20 years I imagine your geeky offspring will view you in much the same way as we viewed our fathers with their shellac 78s.

There is of course nothing mutually exclusive about all this and a flashing lights and Supa-Bass enabled Currys mini system.

"At the end of the day there are just too many people who are baffled by the complexities of computers for CD to be a dead duck for a while yet!"

People claim (rather stupidly I think) to be baffled by video recorders but everyone still has one. I think VCRs, TIVO and Sky+ are better examples of how future mass market music systems will work rather than Windows based PCs.

Matthew
The new Alvin Toffler

PS Embarrased thanks for the "great post" comments.

[This message was edited by Matthew Robinson on FRIDAY 05 September 2003 at 21:48.]