So, I went into a Barnes & Noble store the other day; now, I haven't been there in awhile, at least by 6 months; browsed their music collection, what was left of it: They nixed about 2/3 of their entire selection! What once took up an entire end of the store had been fitted into a small corner.

I asked one of the employees: "Where'd your music selection go?"

And her answer was: "The music industry's really scaling back on production, y'know, on account of the economy and everything? Sorry we can't help you out."

Now, I wanted to call bullshit. Sure, even if that's true, what about all the releases that have come out up until now? If you ask me, they just didn't want to keep inventory anymore, or it is SALES that are dwindling on account of the economy. And, sales are probably dwindling because B&N insists on charging almost $20 for albums that are otherwise domestic releases, even the mainstream shit that's available across the street at Best Buy; granted, EVERY LAST BEST BUY in my area has also scaled down on their selections.

But another thought occurred to me: Maybe a lot of people are buying more of their music digital as MP3s these days?

I look at Amazon.com, and they're not even really bothering to carry CDs anymore; punch in just about any artist name, and they're only offering MP3s for them now; you can only got hard copies of albums via third party sellers who sell on Amazon.com, much like how a person sells on eBay.

Circuity City's going out of business, so their site no longer offers music anymore.

But the fact is, one day, we're not going to have hard copy CDs anymore, and we're instead going to be stuck with the subpar audio of 128kbps MP3s, because people aren't familiar with the concept of bitrates, and the industry doesn't give a shit about giving people a quality product, much less in a quality format.

So let me ask you: Does that not just piss you off?!

Ironically enough, Best Buy.com actually offers hard copies of albums online through their store site, but they want about $15 per album...which I guess is standard...and while shipping can be expensive, the stuff's usually in your hands within a week or less...

...

If you ask me, the absolute STUPIDEST thing is that, since so many places are adamant about pushing MP3s over physical albums, why not offering MP3s for albums that're out-of-print, since they currently don't? It's kind of like, why WOULDN'T you want to offer MP3s for stuff that's out-of-print? You could really make money on that! And we all know they only care about making money...

I only buy CDs because they exist, so if they ceased to exist then I would stop buying them. For example, if I had lived in Europe in the 1580s, then I would not have purchased any CDs because they did not exist. I would not experience any emotional suffering if CDs became extinct; that money would be routed elsewhere. There are many other things that savor my legal tender, such as neuroscience textbooks and old science fiction novels. Consider this: I recently had nine days off from work. I never once turned on my 50" plasma and rarely used my $1800 headphone system. The bulk of that time was spent reading and writing. So luxurious technological entertainment devices are not that important, nor the media they play. As I stated, I only buy them because they exist and I would not care if they ceased to exist.

So you buy things, just because they exist!?
Man, you've got a LOT of stuff to buy then.

On topic, I think this is the natural flow of things and no, it does not piss me off.
On the contrary, the CD seems to me to be quite superfluous nowadays, what with everything being focused on Mp3s, most importantly portable audio devices.

I don't even HAVE a proper CD-player anymore, just consoles.

So I buy a CD, make mp3s of it for my iPod, put the CD away and never touch it again, so what then is the point of bothering with CDs at all!? I don't think the shift towards digital distribution is a bad thing at all, although I might miss the colorful packaging...

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First, that isn't true. Amazon and iTunes, at least, both have 256kbps files. Does anyone still sell 128kbps files? Anyway, why should the industry care about something that the vast majority of customers don't care about?

$15 seems to me like a pretty good deal for an hour of music that you can listen to as much as you want, whenever you want. Besides, haven't CDs cost around $15 for the last 20 years? If they'd kept up with inflation they'd cost almost $30 now. Sure, it would be nice if they were even cheaper, but it would also be nice if my landlord reduced my rent to $100/month.

Nobody's adamant about pushing MP3s over physical albums. Really. This isn't a huge industry conspiracy. But they'll only make what people will buy.

Also, they do sell at least some out-of-print albums in digital format. A couple of years ago I wanted to buy a copy of The Left Banke's There's Gonna Be a Storm, and used copies started at over $80. Now you can get it in MP3 format (256 kbps) for $9.49.

And of course, it could be that the same factors that made certain albums not worth brining back into print also make them not worth selling in digital format (granted, though, that the profitability bar is lower for digital distribution).

Eh? I've never heard anything other than the opposite.

Bernhardt, it seems to me you're always completely missing things. If I had more time, I'd go into detail, but suffice it to say the following:
-Usually $20 is the retail price if B&N are selling it that. Something they may sell something for $1 over retail, but no more. It's ALWAYS been that way for as long as I've been buying CDs.
-People are buying less CDs because they spend more on games, DVDs and other entertainment options than they used to.
-If Amazon isn't selling the CD but it's listed, it's usually OOP. Sometimes things don't have a US CDs release in the first place, but it's not Amazon's fault. Mp3s can't go OOP unless the label pulls them for some reason, but they are far less likely to do this

I think this is a very valid (albeit radical!) point. I understand your love for physical copies of your music, but all good things come to an end. A lot of people seems to experience severe terror when eBooks are mentioned as well, they go "ah but books are Gods words and age-long tradition and I'm proud of my book collection I would HATE it to go digital". The problem is, I think, that when people hold tightly onto yesterday, they delay the development of tomorrow. If book-loving people would direct their energy at eBooks, perhaps the world of eBooks would have been brighter? I don't know for sure, because I only use physical copies. (God knows why! )

Perhaps, instead of bashing the MP3-industry for their bad bit-rate, we could instead try to establish a business which deals in 96khz 24bits FLACs? I think that is what brings the world forward.

I'm often at Amazon checking up information and customer reviews about different CDs, and I absolutely cannot identify with your statement. Amazon has an immense selection of music CDs, saying "punch in just about any artist name, and they're only offering MP3s for them now" is just ludicrous. Can you give a few examples of not-too obscure artists/bands that they're only offering mp3s for now?

I really wonder where you get your mp3s from. 128 kbps, are you kidding me? Like its still 1999 or something. I don't think I've seen anything below 192 for years.

What's the problem? In most cases, high-quality rips are available, and if they're not, either the industry gets it's act together or the private pirates will take care of it.

No, not really. If the CD is fit (from an evolutionary perspective) to survive the competition from digital-distribution formats, it will survive. If not, it will go away. As simple as that. What matters to me is the music itself, not the format its stored on. If the CD's time is up: so be it, let's move onto the next level. I acknowledge the familiarity and also the nostalgia of the format, but I'm not so "loyal" as to cling to it if it becomes outdated or unpractical or needlessly expensive (as it now has). And why should I? A CD didn't save my family from a burning house or anything, its just a physical format, and as such, can be superseded.

Like Brandon pointed out, no one's "adamant" about pushing mp3s over physical albums. I think most retailers would like to see the CD going strong again, they would probably make more money that way.

That's usually what businesses do, right? It would be foolish to assume something else.

The physical CD being scratched/stolen/broken/otherwise lost or damaged is a possibility as real as any of the ones you mentioned. People have gotten so used to the CD-format that they put a lot of faith into it's supposed permanence. It reveals a quite conservative stance: "things are like this, and that in itself entails that they will always stay this way".

The same old unsubstantial arguments over and over again...

First: a hard drive or any other format storing mp3s is as physical as a CD or LP. If not, what would it be? Spiritual? Spectral? Ethereal? Give me a break.

Second: the "crappy bitrate" issue is easily addressed and isn't really an argument against digital formats, quite the opposite actually. It entails that if there are crappy bitrates, there must also be good bitrates. Solution: up the bitrate. It only shows that the industry is slow on the uptake and that the consumers are dumb and uninformed, there's really no reason why we shouldn't in 5 years or less see widespread distribution of music in FLAC or any other lossless format to replace low-level mp3s.

Yeah, right. You've played too many RPGs, McCall. Do you think future archaeologists would dig up stuff like you walk into a dungeon and open a treasure chest to find a new shiny sword? CDs are hardly the most durable things made, if they're stored for centuries or only decades in humid or putrid conditions, there's not going to be anything left of them, no more than hard drives or mp3 players. Also, what says these future people would even be able to hear the music on the CDs? You honestly think they would still have CD-players? Even after the CD-format falling out of use for a long time? Ridiculous.

And another "also": what makes you certain they would even care a shit about Christina Augilera or Nobuo Uematsu or whatever? How much time do you spend listening to old cylinder music from the 1890s, 1900s?

Its not about having "more and more", its about a better form of distribution that is cheaper, faster, more flexible, and more environmentally friendly. As for "more and more", you know compact discs, like most plastics, are made out of petroleum, right? Most scientists claim fossil fuels are quickly being depleted, which high oil prices bear witness to. I find your insinuation that people who forsake the CD and move to mp3s are somehow egoistic or "lazy" or decadent to be deeply misguided, since the CD-industry is just one of many, many, many industries that contribute to Western civilization's ravenous appetite for oil, with all the wars, environment problems, and economic meltdowns that includes. It is you who's craving "more and more" when you want CDs when you can easily get the exact same music in digital format, which would eliminate the cost in petroleum/plastic for everyone and the cost of the music for yourself. But hey, why stop? "More and more" is the theme song of this Babylon civilization we're living in. Knock yourself out, bop till you drop! Or at least till the oil's gone and our civilization drops...

I quote from Wikipedia:

The biggest threat to the conventional plastics industry is most likely to be environmental concerns, including the release of toxic pollutants, greenhouse gas, litter, biodegradable and non-biodegrable landfill impact as a result of the production and disposal of petroleum and petroleum-based plastics. Of particular concern has been the recent accumulation of enormous quantities of plastic trash in ocean gyres, particularly the North Pacific Gyre, now known informally as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex.

For decades one of the great appeals of plastics has been their low price. Yet in recent years the cost of plastics has been rising dramatically. A major cause is the sharply rising cost of petroleum, the raw material that is chemically altered to form commercial plastics.

Sorry McCall, I might agree with you, but we're deep into subjective opinion territory here. Many people would disagree with those assertions.

*hugs Daniels post* (:

affordable technology is available for artists to produce and release their own cds and sell them for $10 and make 80% profit instead of a record company selling them for $18 and keeping 90%. good riddance to the big labels...

Damn, son.

If you haven't already done so, you might want to read Rainbow's End. It's similar to Fahrenheit 451, except that books are being destroyed not because the government has banned them, but because everything is going digital. The method for destroying books reminded me of the Yuuzhan Vong's snake that would suck thousands of people off the surface of planets. (The Yuuzhan Vong are aliens that invade the Star Wars galaxy some 20-30 years after the events in Return of the Jedi.)

  Roger MacBride Allen wrote in Chronicles of Solace about a library orbiting the Sun somewhere in the vicinity of Neptune that held all of Earth's physical books, with digital versions on the spines. The atmosphere in the small world was nitrogen (to make the books last longer because oxygen is very acidic), so one had to wear a space suit when browsing books. If you wanted a book, you just swiped the spine, which copied the contents to an ebook reader equivalent.

  I'd prefer to convert my entire book collection to digital, provided the service was free. In other words, I'd be willing to trade in my physical copies for digital equivalents. I could save an enormous amount of space.

I haven't really noticed this myself but I will say that digital distribution is good in some cases. A great example would be the Madden games considering how many of these you see in an EB when the next year's model comes out.

Since each version of Madden isn't radically changed or an individual creation like an RPG's this would be the way to go.

Anyway, if everything does go digital I can't say I'll be as annoyed as say if super audio CD did become the next standard.

I love me some physical CDs, but...

... when I read about stuff like this I get a little nervous and feel a twinge of guilt for contributing to an industry that's hurting the environment (heh, what industry isn't hurting the environment these days?). I also feel like a hypocrite because I have been thinking about if and when I release any music I would mostly do digital-only, not just for cost reasons but because of the info that I just quoted from DK's post.

As much as I love my CDs, I hate to say it but they will probably become a thing of the past or something that is produced in much less quantities than they are now.   But it'll be better for the environment.   Hmm... if only there was a way to recycle old CDs so that they could be melted down and remade into new discs and packaging.

For the same reason, I continue to exist because I do. If for some reason I did not exist, then I would not continue. I'd like to trade in my existence for something else mainly because it's a hassle. I wonder what I could get for an infinitesimal disturbance from nonexistence? I'm sure there's a market, somewhere. Of course, I wouldn't be around to get my end of the trade, but I suppose that would be a gift in itself.

I do have some fond memories of Barnes & Noble specifically, as they were the one place that somehow had a stock of The Dig soundtrack CDs after they'd mostly gone out of print.  And while I remain the dinosaur that buys CDs and actually holds onto them after they've been re-digitized, I have the understanding that the method will eventually go completely out of fashion.  And I don't think the CD would ever have a late renaissance like LPs have, which I can actually see surviving the digital revolution.

.

Don't think Daniel was leveling that statement against you specifically, though.  Just that a lot of people fall back on the argument that mp3s will always be inferior due to "crappy bitrates" -- with no acknowledgments whatsoever to the likes of higher encodes or lossless.

I'm pretty sure standard iTunes is still 128kbps. iTunes Plus, on the other hand, is 256 and non-DRM. There are unfortunately some labels, at least in Japan (I'm looking at you, Avex), that still haven't switched to iTunes Plus.

I actually had a hard drive crash recently (literally, it fell to the floor), so you better believe I was happy to have my physical CDs as backups. Yes, I also had DVD-R backups, but they have a tendency to get scratched easily.

That said, I have no problem with digital downloads, as long as they're free of DRM. I usually just end up backing them up twice.

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/756/75/

Now I know what to do with my old AOL and Creed CDs!

Because the industry isn't living up to its potential! If you ask me, and like has already been said, some of these newer items and technologies are DOWNGRADES from their predecessors! We're going backwards! Furthermore, the industry could be making money from making better products! A case-in-point would be America's auto industry! They wouldn't be having to ask the government for bail-out money if they'd actually thought about trying to produce quality cars, as opposed to churning out the same thing they have for years!

But that's just my point! Irresponsible consumers are killing the market!

Whatever happened to "If you build it, they will come?" Before, we didn't even have MP3 players, or CD players, for that matter. Demand for new products has to be created! You have to persuade customers to buy your product!

For example, people buy iPods because they're so heavily marketed, pushed, and thus, available because of it, but so many MP3 players offer more features, and better versions of what the iPod already has to offer, but those MP3 players are losing out to Apple just because people just want to get the first thing dangled in their face! I have to worry about what I like dying out because of other people!

We've had this argument some time ago actually, and lot of you are saying the exact same opposite of what you did then!

...

People are just so much about instant-gratification and consumption, it makes me sick!

Some online music stores are starting to offer some of their music in lossless options, which is awesome, but finding what I want to buy in lossless is pretty impossible.  If CDs disappear completely and I can't buy lossless, then I guess I won't be buying music anymore.

Although, most bluray movies have a lossless audio track now, so I can see lossless music downloads becoming more popular.  Unfortunately there isn't a ubiquitous lossless format like mp3 amongst digital audio players and that might be the biggest obstacle to getting what we want.  Can you ever picture ipods supporting flac?  I can't.

That's just what they want you to think. You go to a store that actually sells the stuff for a reasonable price, and they just TELL you that MSRP = $20 to make you think you're getting a deal, when really, everyone was intent on selling it for $15 (or less) all along; and that way, wankers like Borders and Barnes & Noble can sell the stuff for an otherwise inflated price, BECAUSE people THINK $20 is MSRP. As far as know, MSRP has always been about $10-15 for a CD.

Never heard that...I always thought people were more and more downloading music AND movies FOR FREE. Or because people are discovering that most mainstream music sucks. And that's translating into people thinking that music in general doesn't sell worth shit anymore.

See, that's just thing: That would mean that alot of stuff that's been recently released is going out-of-print...never mind I can still find it as common as all f--- when I go to Best Buy, who only carries the common-of-most-common music...and even at Best Buy stores in my area, which are known to have lousy, limited selections...

Ah, okay, here's an example of one artist: Submersed: Amazon's no longer offering either their 2004 or 2007 releases: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_m?url … ed&x=0&y=0

And there's plenty more where that came from!

If you're a business, and that's the way you think, then you're headed for the crapper. Businesses are supposed to provide something of value. People aren't going to pay for something if it doesn't provide value to them, if it doesn't make their life easier. Making money should only be a post-text, not a pre-text. But I guess I'm just old-fashioned that way, eh?

You completely overestimate the intelligence of the consumer, as well as the give-a-damn-atude of the industry.

Because music that's really great stays alive through the ages (and, no, I'm not talking about Christina Aguilera; there'll always be replacements for artists like that): Like classical music, for example. Granted, contemporaries probably don't perform it with the fervor that the original composers did. Imagine if we had recording devices in the days of Beethoven or Mozart?

My question to the oil crisis will always be this: Why aren't we using more nuclear power?

Thing is, my biggest concern is this:

With the death of the CD will come the death of many of my favorite artists.

After all, if they weren't able to sell CDs of their work, then why would they bother trying to sell MP3s of their work? Why would they bother trying to sell at all if they have reason to believe there's no demand for them?

And, of course, what're we gonna do about all the old people who still use CDs, and couldn't fathom how to use digital, MP3 technology, how to work the MP3 player, or the computer you use to program it?

Riiiggghhhttt, you're going to stop buying music and not get tired of listening to the same stuff of what you already have over and over again?

Don't bother me one bit. Only CD's I ever seem to buy are VGM related anyways (and the very, very occasional anime OST), and those are generally not available at retail stores here anyways.

That's the hotness right there!

Wow, this thread exploded in just a few hours. Haven't read everything yet, will return if I find anything worthwhile replying to, just wanted to address this now:

I'm sorry, man. From your post I can tell that you're offended: I apologize. Maybe my tone was too harsh, I thought I was being diplomatic, but I guess not using emoticons in appropriate places can send the wrong signals. Like Angela said, many of my points were not completely directed towards you, like yourself I was going off on a train-of-thought (isn't that usually what we do when we reply to posts?).

Again, not you specifically. Its just the fact that we usually hear variations of the same arguments in this debate, which I find a little stale.

Dude, chill. You're taking this way too seriously. If you read my original post again and try to suspend the feeling of insult for a while, I hope you'll see that I wasn't out to get you or anything. I definitely don't think you should stop posting your opinions or thoughts, you're a cool guy and I like reading your posts. Besides, what's the point of running away and hiding your head in the sand? You'll only miss the party by doing that.

For the record, I'm not out to totally trash the CD either, even though it can appear that way. I do buy CDs now and then myself (addictions are hard to shake), and, having been a collector, I do know first-hand the enjoyment they can bring. Especially with game music soundtracks, there's something special about holding something like that, that they actually acknowledged that people might like the music from a game and pressed it on a CD for people to enjoy, and that it traveled half around the world to get to you. But on the other hand... There are other options available, and what matters in the end will always be the music itself, not the format (whatever you feel about the subject, I think all of us could agree with this point).

Heh, that's the first time I've heard the CD and Oil argument. Perhaps we should stop arguing on the Internet using our non-eco friendly computers as well and return to our grasshuts...

I knew someone would poke fun at that.

I was only bringing up the argument as one of many ways in which the CD-format is wasteful and unnecessary. Of course, CD or no CD makes almost no difference in the larger scheme of things, CDs are very low on the list of things that consume much petroleum/plastic, since its basically a thin slab of plastic (although the jewel case is also part of the equation). So its definitely just a small drop in the oily ocean, and I didn't mean to suggest anything else.

However! Unlike many other plastic/oil products that we absolutely "need", the CD can easily be replaced by something else right now (namely digitally distributed music). For many of the functions plastic serves in our daily lives, there might be no adequate substitute, so it is quite possible that once there is no more plastic, we won't have those products/functions anymore. As oil dwindles it will invariably go up in price (its already begun), and the small drop that the CD-format forms in the "plastic ocean" is one of the very easy ways we could save on petroleum today to make the final impact less catastrophic.

Not that I think that it really will matter in the end. If there's no proper substitute for oil once its gone, we'll all start killing and eating each other. Happy holidays.

*Sigh*

When I get down to the bottom of it, MP3 downloads shouldn't cost as much as buying a physical copy of the album; I'd pay about $5 total for a full album of MP3s, about half the price of a normal CD.

Maybe then I'd be more enthusiastic about it, but shit, them peeps need to get in gear and provide more stuff as MP3s, and in better quality, if they want to up and throw CDs out the window, or melt them down and recycle them, or whatever they want to do.

After all, data, which has no physical form, isn't as permanent as when it is put on a physical medium.

...

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go tell my kid sister that her "Baby Alive Go Bye Bye" was made from planet-threatening petroleum-based products...d'I mean, make her cry...

You know, Adam will probably remove this, but you really are a goddamn idiot, do you know that?

Best Buy doesn't always send the CD back when it's OOP. But they aren't nessesarily getting more. Also, often times Amazon will stop listing something for sale (from them), but later it's available again.

Look, I hate the direction things are going in too. It especially annoys me that here you have a chance to sell people selections with ease, yet the keep pushing things as 'albums' even when there's no real reason for them to be such outside the fact a CD was released that way (or not -- even when things are DL only). Then most digital stores charge 99 cents a track, no matter how short -- AND cut off at 10 minutes (give or take), forcing an 'album' purchase for them. It really, to quote Peter Griffin, grinds my gears.

Plus the absolute worst problem is the fact is that a simple virture of where one lives means it's impossible to get things legally sometimes. One would think digital distribution would make globalazation easier, not harder.

Thankfully, most of what I listen are in the genres that tend toward more 'collector friendly', as it were. I highly doubt physical formats will die, but they may be limited eventually.

But I really think the main reason people take to the compressed files is a simple one of size -- as you get better quality, the required space goes up. I got a free 24bit track, just under six minutes -- takes up 100MB. That's a gig per hour. That's quite a commitment in drive space for a little bit of extra quality, not to mention DL time.

Whatever, man. I go to FYE or Borders, or Barnes & Noble, or some place like that, and when I hear another person exclamating about how their prices are excessive, I know I'm not alone.

And I'm talking about even before the whole oil crisis shtick. What excuse did those places have, before then, other than that they wanted to squeeze an extra $5 out of customers for providing the same product?

After that, though you call me an idiot, you're the one who thinks it's not a bad idea to pay for something that's practically air, e.g., MP3 downloads.

I actually tried Amazon MP3 today; it has to do some bullshit encoding stuff before you can use it; more tedious than if you just downloaded a WinZIP or WinRAR file. For a second there, I thought I had paid for EXACTLY nothing.

I'm sorry to say, but I went through Wal Mart today and I saw these "eco-friendly" cardboard CD cases. Uh, no...digipaks are one thing, being a cheapskate is another.

I'm not big on paying for digital downloads, just because I want something physical for the money and especially if the cost is similar. Obviously though, some artists can't afford to print CD's or find digital downloads more cost efficient...I meant mostly as far as major labels go. Maybe mail out something akin to linear notes to people who buy the digital copies. *shrug* I do think it would be wise to lower the cost of CD's across the board (into the $12 range as a standard for new ones), now that people have the ability to "take matters into their own hands". That, and given the convenience of digital files (including the ability to adjust volume levels with mp3gain, something that is sorely lacking in most CD players) Maybe also include note charts for GH/RB with purchase (Metallica is doing this with Death Magnetic, but is just including a download code with a copy of the CD...What I mean is have a CD you throw in your system and play the notecharts right on it, with the option to export, like RB1 or the ACDC pack)