Poll: Will CD's become obsolete? By when?

[cassembler]

The last Mix issue kinda got me thinking [about half as hard as the last TapeOp, of course, but anyways]...

Obviously, CD's will eventually go the way of 8 track, and as much as I hate to see them go, how long do you think it will take before a new format is as common as the CD or more so???

EDIT: I'm thinking along the lines of automobiles- in dash players, etc...

[eeldip]

will they go the way of the 8 track?
or the way of the LP?

8 tracks being largely absent. the LP still clinging...

i think the CD lacks any sort of unique features that a record has so i imagine it will go away faster, but it has a much larger user base than the 8 track ever had. plus all those CD burners out there...

i am going to have to say it will take 10 years or so. maybe more. someone will have to come up with a really cheap device that rips the CDs to better format.

and then it will be replaced by a "solid state" (i hate that term) rewritable memory device.

something along the lines of a flash card, that can be placed in a variety of devices that run some sort of OS that can read a wide variety of audio formats. perhaps even mp3s will still be around. maybe they will all be converted by then to something better.

[thearnicasync]

I don't know, it's starting to heat up again. I just posted a boring thread (in the Mp3 section) about the new Itues 4 music service, which sells every song in the world for $.99 compressed at Mp4. The new stuff sounded identical to their 16bit uncompressed counterparts (well, for the most part), whereas some older stuff sounded pretty darn bad. The creepy part is how easy it was. One click and you get a song. It's far more convenient and quicker than going record shopping. Truly, Itunes or Apple "music service" may be the new devil...especially since this seems like it could be the simplest and most well-executed large-scale, web music business plan yet.

Plus, I remember at christmas seeing a Hewlett Packard computer sold with remote control. We're a stones throw from like, Buck Rodgers food discs and clocking songs in centons!

Also, I just saw an advertisement for Juno ISP service that was marketing a new slightly faster (not quite DSL or Cable) dial-up service rated at 5X the normal dial up download spead for around $25. If the Mp4 cuts it in terms of sound quality, 5X internet speed at standard dial-up prices does a pretty good job closing the broadband gap. In fact, it seems that if you could keep broadband out of it (which requires utility capital investment for lines, labor, etc.), it could move way, way faster.

I don't know, I think the movement away from (commercially manufactured) CD's might be closer than I ever thought. Sucks. I'll still shop out, as I like to go to the record store. Heck, I've even been known to stand around and watch bands while I drink beer. Crazy!

[Professor]

It is hard to say when CDs will finally go away, though it could help to look at what else has come and gone in the last few decades.

In all of these cases there are the few hold outs here and there, but for all intents and purposes and most importantly, the availability of new product, I'd say the following:

Open Reel tape for consumers is gone.
8-track tape is gone.
LP hit a big low, bounced and is holding fairly steady at 'nearly gone'.
*45rpm discs are pretty gone.
Cassette experienced a slow drop off that seems to have been very controlled and linear. It's way down, but not out.
DAT tape is gone (for consumers & pre-recorded sales).
DCC is way gone.
MiniDisc died way back in like 91-92 and was resurrected when Sony became scared of CDR technology and unleashed the flood gates a few years ago. But, it hasn't had a pre-recorded disc available in a long time.
Laser-Disc is gone.
CD-interactive - anybody remember those?
Video CD has had an interesting rebirth after the DVD explosion.
DVD-video is by far the new king of the road, though I'm not sure if they outsell CD yet, I would guess they do not.
DVD-audio - we should be so lucky to have that catch on.
SACD - if it were backward compatible with DVD-video and CD and cost the same or less it might stand a chance.
MP3 - well this isn't a marketable format and heaven help us if the world goes that direction.

The problem really is what should come next?
1- Better quality, worse quality or the same? Well most folks have no complaints about CD quality. Improving quality doesn't seem to help sales and decreasing doesn't bother anyone under about 25 years old.
2- Durability? Sure CDs are easy to destroy, but no worse than other formats, and new formats don't seem to address this (DVD, SACD, etc.).
3- Price? Well we know that 'the masses' think that what we do is irrelevant and unworthy of support and that 'music is supposed to be free'.
4- Size, weight, convenience? Well if you go too small people get worried about losing the recording. CDs are really a perfect size - sure carrying 100 CDs versus 100hours of MP3 is unwieldy, but how hard is it to find that track you want to hear on a memory stick versus a CD album.

I don't want to say that CD will never be replaced, but I think it will live for at least another ten years or so and it might not have a replacement. I also don't want to sound too melodramatic, but it is possible that the end of CD will coincide with the end of hard-copy music delivery. We might find that everything will be delivered over the net and you are left to store to whatever arcane technology you might cling to. Depressing, but not illogical. I hope that things don't go that direction since I still want to be a superstar recording engineer, but I fear they will. I held out hope for DVD but even those are being pirated to video CD and millions of pirate movies are downloaded daily. I think we will see concert ticket prices going up and more and more musical acts moving to 'live performance only' while the record companies drop down to introducing a handful of new artists each year.

On a happier note, you'll be able to buy CDs for the foreseeable future and as long as you always have a working player, they should last you until your great grand kids gather on your lap and hear gramps talk about the old days of 'lasers' and 'optical discs'.

-Jeremy

[cassembler]

Well, I think that about sums it up... Bravo!

[cassembler]

*bump*

Just wanted some more poll responses...

[oxfist]

dvd is the future. burners will be less than $200 by next year, which means 24 bit sound for everyone. mmmmmmmmm, 24 bits.

[eflatminor]

To put this in perspective, consider that the Library of Congress who possesses the largest collection of recorded music in the world, still considers CDs to be an unproven storage format. You'll find vinyl on their shelves!

[Lostboy]

I don't see cd's becoming obsolete any time soon. Primarily because the jump from analog to digital has already been made (that deep-sixed LP's and cassettes, and later made the idea of minidiscs stupid because there was no improvement in audio quality). Also because people will always want something material about their music. I think most people won't want a computer to be their only access to music ... they'll want to feel artwork in their hands and be able to hold something in their hands that represents an artistic endeavor. I don't think CD-R's burned from MP3's will cut it. So until there's another jump in sound quality, I think cd's will stick around.

[concubine]

so, how does disc rot with cds come into play then? i don't know if all cds are suseptible to this, but i have had a few cds purchased in the late 80s/early 90s that started getting that slightly green/brown tint around the edges, and i know one of them became unplayable. i remember reading a few years back about "disc rot" and how many cds would probably have an average shelf life of about 10 - 15 years. has this issue been addresssed, or is it something that only occurs on cheap discs or whatever? my cds that had this problem were all independently released, so maybe they were pressing on cheaper quality discs. i don't know. just a thought from someone whose purchases are still predominantly vinyl.

-jeff

[trash180]

Yeah...DVD's may be the thing...Especially when the burners get to be as cheap as CD burners are now. How long will that take? They're just the other side of becoming standard on new computers. Still a little exotic and pricey for blank media, but everyone has a DVD player, computer w/ DVD or a playstation or something to play DVD's on. It helps that the Motion Picture Industry is making bank on DVD's right now.

We may see a sliding standard for Audio files. As we keep adding different formats, we'll see many players add the new formats as features.

Car Stereo's will become more like computers. It'll take whatever kind of file you wanna play. DVD's, MP3's, CD's....flash media...Satelite streaming.

Standardized and more fragmented.

They're really trying to warm us up to this dollar per song thing though, huh? Maybe so that when they're not paying for manufacture and distribution of product we're still willing to spend $10 per album.
Jason

[sethmilk]

A friend of mine pointed out something I'd never though of before...

Take your typical Hip-Hop album with customary Intro, Outro, and 3-5 "Skits" between tracks... Lotsa Rap albums easliy push the 20 track mark. $1.00 per track turns into $24.00 for an LP. Are you willing to pay an extra 5-10 dollars for between-song banter??

[markpar]

I sure hope SACD makes it because, to my ears, it sounds really, really good.

Hopefully Sony won't mis-manage it into the ground like they did with Beta.

-mark

[trash180]

Dude, you're telling me SACD is as good as Betamax?


Actually that's my guess for the next format...back to Beta.
I'm putting a Betamax deck in my car tomorrow.
J.

[wing]

what's a CD?