[*Scotty*]

It's fairly obvious that CD's will will cease to be available in the not too distant future. BestBuy and other major retailers are already reducing the floor space allocated to an item that is not selling as well as it used to.There also seems to be no hi-resolution media in the pipeline to replace them?
I wondered if anyone on AC had idea about what they are going to do when this eventuality comes to pass.
For myself,I guess I will buy as many CD's of music that I might like between now and then and hope 16/44 or 24/96 downloads become available.
Scotty

[toocool4]

They said the same about Vinyl all those years ago when CD revolution started. Over 25 years later Vinyl is still here.

Yes download market is impacting on CD sales but their will always those who prefer quality and will demand the better quality of CD’s over MP3’s.

Yes MP3 are convenient and you can store more on your MP3 player but when it comes to quality they just don’t cut it.

I for one still use tape personal stereo’s as the quality is far superior to any MP3 player out there.

I have a string of Sony Walkman pro’s, Walkman DC2’s and many more plus I have a stock pile of TDK MA-XG90’s.

I remember people were laughing at me about tapes. The guy’s I work with 5 of them have Ipod’s / Irivers just me with tapes.
When they laughed one day we did a comparison using the Ipod and Iriver, I chose a track they had on the Ipod / Iriver which I also had on tape. After they listened at the same volume with the same head phones their jaws hit the ground saying they never would have believed it if they did not hear it for themselves’ that a tape can be better.
They did also say they preferred the MP3 players because they can carry around all their music collection. I’m not interested in carrying all my music with me, I just carry what I need for that days journey.

I have to admit I don’t use pre recorded tape’s I do my own recording with a Nakamichi CR7 from my Acoustic Solid one to one turntable.

What I’m trying to say is there will always be people like you and me that want quality and will not settle for lower grade (crap) MP3.   

So your basic Red Book CD is here to stay but I think SACD’s / DVDAudio’s etc days are numbered.

Chris

[JLM]

Hopefully the CD based audiophile community will learn from the vinyl example and do a better job of maintaining a variety of high quality, new releases.

[BrianM]

It's fairly obvious that CD's will will cease to be available in the not too distant future.

Okay, even if every manufacturer in the world stopped making CDs, and every retailer in the world stopped selling them (neither of which will happen), there would still be millions upon millions upon millions of CDs floating around.  You know, kinda like there are still millions of vinyl LPs out there for those who care to find them.  Times about a hundred million or so.

And in case you haven't noticed, CDs have a pretty long shelf life.  Some of the original releases I bought back in the early 1980s are still on my shelf and play exactly the same as they did then.  And if I can still go to the store and buy a phonograph, I think it's safe to say that a few decades from now you'll still be able to pick up a CD player.

If their "days are numbered", where exactly are they going to go when time's up?  Spontaneous combustion?

Why are there so many people who feel they need to make big sweeping claims about The Future of Audio?  If CDs are ever entirely obsolete, A) they'll still all be lying around and very usable, and B) it'll be because a better -- not worse -- equally inexpensive, portable format comes down the pipe.  Not because everybody will have thrown their existing CDs into a giant bonfire because they're so pumped about their MP3 players.

[john1970]

I doubt if that will ever happen.  There will always be a market for CD's because a large percentage of people still like to own their media in a physical format rather than a high-res download.  I have CD's in my collection that are over twenty years old and they sound as good as the day when I first purchased them.  I highly doubt if any computer hardware/software or even file format is going to be around that long.  While I agree that high-res dowloads can sound as good as a CD (and may be even slightly better) and are more convenient, I doubt if downloaded music will have the same shelf life as a CD.

Good luck,

John

[ZLS]

    I believe that it is a generational divide.  I use a hard drive based system, I back up all my ripped music on an outboard hard drive just to be secure.  Given all that, I still keep the actual (physical) CD's of the music I like.  Why? Because!!  I am reminded of the fact that the first Model T cars had Buggy Whip Holders.  It is an emotional need, not a logical one.  Younger people who are coming to music for the first time will not have this emotional need.  I agree with Brian M.; the millions upon millions of existing CD's will not vanish in the short term; and will have a significant impact on the reproduced market.  The difficulty in making any accurate projections is in the fact that we are dealing in an area where the technology is changing rapidly.  Today it is High Res downloads, tomorrow who knows?  Ten years ago who would have realized how Hard Drive based computer systems would have affected the music industry?  Regardless of what happens, you just know that there will be the audiophile crazies who will swear that the original physical copy of the CD is the only way to go.  Will the vinyl enthusiasts and the CD purists one day be locked arm in arm?  Stranger things have happened! 

[Mag]

Back in the hay day of downloads, Napster, Galaxy. You could find just about any song on the internet and download it at 320 mp3. And nobody would terminate the download.
As the good sites were shut down the lesser sites still survived. But you could no longer find the obscure song online. And the majority of downloads dropped to 128 mp3. Then you had frequent download termination on the other end. Contaminated  downloads, etc.. This was another reason for me moving away from computer based source for a standalone source.
With large hard drives being cheap now, one can store your entire music collection in uncompressed format. No need to degrade the wav for storage.
If downloads are to replace the cd then you need to be able to download the entire song uncompressed.
With the the dac's that are available now at an affordable price. One can take a cd or 16 bit wav to the very highest levels of sound quality, comparable to dts and sacd. That's is why cd's are here to stay once everyone catches on to the sound quality that is already available having it.
What has to change though is the use of compression in recordings. As no dac can eliminate the digital artifacts that make it sound even more grating at higher resolutions.

 

[Charles Calkins]

I don't think the days of CD's are numbered. Artists have to get their music out to the public. CD's are the best way. The way we'll buy them has changed. Before the internet in my area(S.F. Bay area) there were lot's of stores that sold LP's and CD's. Most of them are gone now. I"m sure the very high cost of doing business in this area has a lot to do with it. But even a few years ago I'd get together a list of 3 or 4 CD's  that I wanted. Off I'd go looking. Probably hit at least 4 stores. Maybe that day I'd find 1. So along comes the internet and Amazon. I guess you can figure out where I'm going with this. Just my two cents worth.

                                      Cheers
                                    Charlie



                               

[AliG]

CD will survive, as long as a Vinyl still cost 3 times as much.

But CD stores are indeed in trouble...   since more and more people now realize that they can get the same thing cheaper online.

[ratso]

sure hope so. my dream scenario for a while has been for a band to:

1. put out their new music as download only (lossless format of course)
2. hire an ad agency to promote them rather then going to a label
3. either finance tours themselves or if a bigger band then be financed by a corporate sponsor (like the stones do)

so now we have no record labels pushing for crappy 'marketable' music (actually we would have no labels period), no riaa telling us what we can/can't do, and creative and marketing decisions put back into the hands of the musicians. and i think this (or most of it) will actuall come about, and hopefully soon.

[Charles Calkins]

Yo Ratso!!

     Great idea for people that have a computer. Lot's of people out there who don't own a computer and probably never will.

 Example:
 My friend Karen just loves the music of Chris Botti. Doesn't have a PC so when she hears of a new Chris Botti album and she can't find it in a store I'll get it for her. Now that she has it she zips on home and spins it in her boombox table radio.

 Believe me when I say lot's of people don't have a PC and a decent audio system. I'd say about 40% of my buds don't have a PC. 75% of them don't have a decent audio system. Surprising isn't it!!

                                          Cheers
                                         Charlie

[grsimmon]

I plan to stick with cd's for quite a while, maybe for good, even if I include a music server sometime in the future.  I agree that there is still literally millions of new and especially used cd's available,  and that' a pretty good base to chose from. 

As cd's continue to lose their market share vs. ipods / downloads / servers etc.,  I am hoping that the PRICE of cd's will drop.  Don't know if this is realistic or not,  just hoping.   I see it as kind of payback for all those years that they were overcharging for cd's. 

[doorman]

FWIW, there are those of us out there, who also value things like liner notes, artwork/illustrations, etc.
 When I listen to music, I want to know who's playing, when, where, how it's recorded, etc.
   ( shambling toward the dinosaur grave-yard) Don

[mjosef]

So CDs days are numbered huh...wonder what number that would be? 
This statement reminds me of the statement made by some astro-scientists that in 20-40 million years a massive gas cloud will collide with our galaxy sparking a fireworks of new stars...
FWIW I think all of our days are numbered, every last one of us...in the not too distant future. 
 


Mhnnn...I better order more CDs, before they 'disappear' forever in the dark dank future.

[t-head]

FWIW I think all of our days are numbered, every last one of us...in the not too distant future. 
 

 

t

[aerius]

Okay, even if every manufacturer in the world stopped making CDs, and every retailer in the world stopped selling them (neither of which will happen), there would still be millions upon millions upon millions of CDs floating around.  You know, kinda like there are still millions of vinyl LPs out there for those who care to find them.  Times about a hundred million or so.

And in case you haven't noticed, CDs have a pretty long shelf life.  Some of the original releases I bought back in the early 1980s are still on my shelf and play exactly the same as they did then.  And if I can still go to the store and buy a phonograph, I think it's safe to say that a few decades from now you'll still be able to pick up a CD player.

Not only that, but with the joys of computers and CD burners we can always make perfect new copies if the originals start getting scratched up or otherwise damaged.

[nathanm]

CDs are just a part of a larger change that humanity will be facing in the centuries to come as we move from a physical reality to a virtual one.

[*Scotty*]

My original post was somewhat vague for provocative reasons. I should have qualified it by saying that CD's day as a commercially viable medium are numbered. There is an excellent chance that almost no new music will be distributed via CD's sold through the major retailers such as Walmart and  BestBuy in the not too distant future. Probably inside of five years and maybe sooner. The effects of reduced floor space devoted to CDs are already evident in Borders,Barnes & Noble and BestBuy. There are fewer copies of a CD you might want to buy and fewer choices of titles.
Amazon is a fine place to purchase a CD from if you know what you want but in order to browse through a large number of titles and allow serendipity operate for you,you have to have the product physically in front of you. Obviously I am not looking forward to only being able to purchase music as a degraded download. Economies of scale will insure that remaining CDs and those released in small numbers will cost the same if not more than what we are now paying for them. The future short term does not good if your favorite artist decides to distribute their music via a download only as an mp3 file.
Scotty