News - Music labels secretly planning to phase-out CDs?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

ffs. so now my cd stereo im my car will be useless soon. pants

[Unique]

I understand what you are getting at as production and mastering is just as important in many ways even when stocking with the same format. OTH,I have listened to SACD,decent quality turntables and even a decent quality reel to reel system. These sounded fantastic even when compared to their CD equivalent. However,at least offering downloads as the full CD file(around 700MB to 800MB) or a lossless format at a price 30% to 40% less than the equivalent CD would be a start.

http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/1..._breakdown.jpg

that's not going to happen, as the manufacturing costs of a cd are a relatively small percentage. i'm not sure how online hosting costs stack up, but just because they aren't offering a physical item doesn't mean it costs nothing to distribute

[watercooled]

You wouldn't catch me buying an album on MP3 format for much the same reason as other posters - yeah you may hear something similar but it lacks all the depth you get with a quality recording. I might buy the odd track in MP3, if I don't want the whole album - I'd much rather it was .flac though.

I recently tried listening to music on Grooveshark since We7 has gone pants and it reminded me of a 90's mono car stereo while driving on a motorway. Well OK maybe not that bad, but you can tell a lot of what's on there has been re-encoded a few times at low bitrates. Unfortunately though, a lot of people seem to think listening to their favourite band through the microscopic mono speaker system on their phone is acceptable, even a friend who claims to be a musician.

And as for iPod etc supporting .flac, it's a bit pointless really - you're not going to get great quality audio out of a £100 'mp3' player even if you fill it with studio masters, so you're just wasting storage space. But providing people with .flac and having it as a supported input for software like itunes would be a decent solution; then you could re-encode it for devices much like you do now with CDs.

[3dcandy]

Using HMV as a comparison is sooo flawed, they've always been pretty useless in my mind! CD's will go, of course they will, but I doubt they'll disappear quite that soon. People will buy larger amounts of the albums available on cd for example, against downloads. I feel the bigger picture here is the falling sales of music full stop, not just cd's. People are simply buying less and less music year on year

[aidanjt]

http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/1..._breakdown.jpg

that's not going to happen, as the manufacturing costs of a cd are a relatively small percentage. i'm not sure how online hosting costs stack up, but just because they aren't offering a physical item doesn't mean it costs nothing to distribute

Much much much much much less than the £0.51 printing + £2.29 shipping + £4.26 retailer markup.

[crossy]

And as for iPod etc supporting .flac, it's a bit pointless really - you're not going to get great quality audio out of a £100 'mp3' player even if you fill it with studio masters, so you're just wasting storage space. But providing people with .flac and having it as a supported input for software like itunes would be a decent solution; then you could re-encode it for devices much like you do now with CDs.

This is probably off-topic, but are there any decent audio players available for <£200 (never mind £100!) that would do justice to the uncompressed file formats? I had an old first generation iPod Touch - and to be frank the sound quality was abysmal - even with a decent pair of earphones.

Got an A-series Sony Walkman - the one with the OLED screen - and it's got quite a pleasing sound, a bit better than the 5th Gen iPod Video that I thought was previously the best, and light years ahead of that 'Touch.

Folks seem to rave online about Cowon players - having not owned one I'm not sure. Similarly, other folks are saying the new Galaxy Player's are really quite good.

At the risk of alienating some here, it's not going to be worth lobbying for "fancy" formats if there's no hardware that'll do 'em justice. Suspect that the best we could hope for is that the labels offer 320kbps MP3.

[Saracen]

I only buy CDs. If they stop making them, I will probably stop buying music.

In that event, the only music I'll be getting will be a) lossless and b) free.

Same here.

I didn't spend rather a lot on audio equipment to play MP3 files through it. I've no doubt I'm in a minority, and probably a fairly small one, but I'm not paying to download inferior quality files. Period. If I want it, I'll buy the CD. If I don't want it, well, it doesn't much matter either way, as I don't want it. And if I want it on a portable player, well, that's where audio encoders come in as far as I'm concerned.

So, like you Jim, if they stop making CD's, I will stop buying music, only there's no "probably" about it, with me.

Having said that, I doubt the music industry will care much, because I don't buy much anyway. I'm not that much of a fan of most modern music, and even for "modern" music, I'm more of a fan of the rock age. than contemporary stuff. But most of my taste goes in the direction of classical anyway. Add to that that I've got a pretty substantial CD collection as it is, and I find I've got virtually all of the stuff I really want already, so I don't buy much anyway.

So, it doesn't matter much to me if they do stop making CDs, because by and large, I've either already got it or probably wouldn't buy it anyway.

The problem with digital formats is that at some point the physical media becomes defunct. There isn't any real need for physical CDs as such, for starters they get scratched.

Yours may get scratched, buy I've had a CD collection since, well, pretty much since CDs came out, so what, 30 years, give or take a bit? In that time, I've not had a single disc fail me. Any scratches they may have acquired have not affected their usability, and as far as I can hear, not affected audio performance either. Maybe this is because I treat them carefully, store them properly, don't leave them laying around outside of their cases, only use them in a good quality domestic player, and with one or two very carefully selected exceptions (whose care is equal to mine), never lend them to anyone. Or maybe I've been lucky. I certainly never believed the cobblers about them being virtually indestructible, but if treated properly, my experience is that they're pretty close to it.

[shaithis]

At the risk of alienating some here, it's not going to be worth lobbying for "fancy" formats if there's no hardware that'll do 'em justice. Suspect that the best we could hope for is that the labels offer 320kbps MP3.

Just because you listen to a track on a £40 MP3 player, does not mean you don't listen to that same track on a £5000 home setup.

I can even enjoy FLAC on my iPod video.....thanks to Rockbox

I've had a CD collection since, well, pretty much since CDs came out, so what, 30 years, give or take a bit?

I thought to myself.....30 years? Get out of here...and checked wiki.....damn, it really has been.....makes me feel old but I still have my first CD (Borthers in Arms) and can confirm it is ~26 years old!

[watercooled]

.flac is nothing fancy, just a lossless codec that will offer you the same audio quality in less space. It really isn't fair to offer solely mp3, a not insignificant amount of people spend thousands of pounds on high-end audio gear on which you can easily tell the difference between mp3 and CD audio. I mean the best sound system I have ATM comprises of a decent PC sound card and some Sennheiser headphones (sound quality being way better than any mp3 player/ipod I've tried) and I find anything below about 256k mp3 noticeable and below 192k quite uncomfortable. It'd bad enough most audio now seems to be mastered to play best on small, low-quality speakers.

Edit: Missed a few posts there, and I agree. About CDs getting scratched, I'm yet to lose one through damage and some of them are pretty old - the first one I picked up is from 1995 and you'd think it was brand new if you didn't check.

[Saracen]

....

I thought to myself.....30 years? Get out of here...and checked wiki.....damn, it really has been.....makes me feel old but I still have my first CD (Borthers in Arms) and can confirm it is ~26 years old!

I could, given some time, put an exact date on my first CD purchase, 'cos it'll be in my accounts records. And yes, I have then going back that far. And yes, I know .... I need to get a life.

But I've got enough of a life to not be willing to trawl through those records looking for it ... unless it's in my post-computerisation days, which would be early to mid 80's, based on Systematics software running on an Apple II. And yes, I still have the Apple II and it still works. Sad, innit.

But without looking up the date, it'll be a little while after CDs were released in the UK, but not that long after. From memory, probably something between 12 and 24 months. If I had to guess, I'd say '83, but it could have been '84 or even the tail end of '82. So not quite 30 years, but rapidly getting there.

[abaxas]

The issue with phasing out the CD is that is also phases out the concept of albums.

Shame for the music world.

[krazy_olie]

The issue with phasing out the CD is that is also phases out the concept of albums.

Shame for the music world.

And maybe the end of the concept album

[krazy_olie]

Hi,

can't remember the last time I bought a CD, I tend to download legit material but in FLAC format so I get full quality rather than compressed mp3, but I suppose the death of CD was/is inevitable especially with the iPod generation taking over.

Mike.

From where?

This is probably off-topic, but are there any decent audio players available for <£200 (never mind £100!) that would do justice to the uncompressed file formats? I had an old first generation iPod Touch - and to be frank the sound quality was abysmal - even with a decent pair of earphones.

Got an A-series Sony Walkman - the one with the OLED screen - and it's got quite a pleasing sound, a bit better than the 5th Gen iPod Video that I thought was previously the best, and light years ahead of that 'Touch.

Folks seem to rave online about Cowon players - having not owned one I'm not sure. Similarly, other folks are saying the new Galaxy Player's are really quite good.

At the risk of alienating some here, it's not going to be worth lobbying for "fancy" formats if there's no hardware that'll do 'em justice. Suspect that the best we could hope for is that the labels offer 320kbps MP3.

I highly doubt you'd be able to tell the difference between a 320, and probably even 256 kb/s with a player like that. Not that there's anything wrong with that, you can get good sound but when we are talking lossless the extra quality you get is more in imaging and depth, things you can't really appreciate on the move anyway.

However in my opinion you should rip lossless and if you want to put it on an mp3 player then encode it to mp3 or whatever.

[Unique]

Much much much much much less than the £0.51 printing + £2.29 shipping + £4.26 retailer markup.

and those costs are what?

or is this another subject you know nothing about? didn't you notice some major flaws and omissions in the pie chart?

[aidanjt]

and those costs are what?

[...] didn't you notice some major flaws and omissions in the pie chart?

I'm citing the relevant portions of the CD pie in your charming little chart. Didn't you read it?

or is this another subject you know nothing about?

And you can check that crap at the door. I responded to you with politeness and I expect the same in kind.

[Unique]

I'm citing the relevant portions of the CD pie in your charming little chart. Didn't you read it?


And you can check that crap at the door. I responded to you with politeness and I expect the same in kind.

it's not my pie chart

are you going to answer the question i asked? or am i right in that you don't know about the subject? even if you didn't, one thing is fairly obviously missing