Today the CD is the standard form that albums take. I’m considering spending a fair amount of money on expanding my CD collection. Before I go overboard though, I’m wondering, what is considered the successor to the CD? How far down the road is this format (if there is one that we know of) expected to get big. In other words, how long until CDs go the way of tapes, 8-tracks and vinyl?
(I know this may be a matter of opinion, but I post in GQ because there might be a close-enough-to-factual answer as to what the industry expects to replace CDs and when. Sorry if this should be in IMHO or CS.)
Digital music, both legit, (ala iTunes or the new Napster) or pirated, (ala p2p programs) is what I see replacing CDs as the newest music medium - you get your music files from the net, then either play them right at your computer (like I do - my computer is my all purpose movie/music/game/entertainment center), stream them to your network aware stereo, or transfer them to a HD/Flash based music player.
The concept of using a physical media to transfer music seems be on the way out.
And Reeder, a DVD will only hold an entire .mp3 collection if said collection is quite small - most of the people I know(fellow college students) have 30 - 60 gigabyte collections.
There is no good choice at the moment. The designated successor is either SACD or DVD-Audio, depending on who you talk to. The things is, CD’s really only have two problems: not quite perfect quality and they’re only stereo. Both of these formats “solve” those. At the expense of $10 or so extra and very limited selection. Plus there’s a pretty good chance they won’t catch on at all. It’s been a couple of years and people aren’t feeling the need to switch.
Buy the CD’s. You can always make them digital later.
I don’t think so. There are many more people who don’t have access to multimedia computers or ipods that their ilk than do. There will be a next generation of store bought media.
I wouldn’t be surprised if memory cards (like what digital cameras use) become quite popular within a few years. They’re much smaller than any form of disk and you don’t have to worry about scratching them.
You have to look at what hardware the comman music lover has to play the media on. Most dvd players and many cd players already have the ability to play mp3’s. That’s what the market will aim for. You can’t put out a product and hope people will buy the player.
Except that they’re also about 1000 times more expensive, if not more, and have smaller capacity. Pressed DVD media, which is what both DVD-Audio and SACD use, is fantastically cheap for the storage you get.
Yes, we can all go to MP3’s if we hate music, hate ourselves, and want our world to just plain be a tinny, untextured, flat hell.
Go for it.
Or, keep going for the CD’s. Go in with a friend and burn one at perfect quality if you’re trying to save money. Or work for a radio station and burn theirs.
The statement that you can’t sell music in a way that people don’t have the equipment to play is very short sighted: no one had cd players either at one time, then suddenly they did.
I don’t think that there is much motivation for the public to move away from CD’s just for the sake of quality or storage space. CD’s are damn good. Their quality is such that they are providing (for most purposes and for your average listener) better quality sound than your amp and speakers can translate anyway. They store as much as the buying public expects to buy in one chunk. They’re light, cheap and portable. I can’t see anyone convincing the masses to convert to a different media to improve things on those grounds alone.
The only way CD’s are going to get superseded is by something that massively improves convenience in some way. And that is where transfer of files independant of media comes in.
You will just go into a store, or onto the internet, and buy a download of a file into your portable storage device.
And sure, mp3’s are crap quality, but that is a limitation of that standard, not a limitation on the concept: as those with their heads anywhere other than under a rock know, memory just keeps getting bigger and bigger and cheaper and cheaper. Before you know it, something that will hold more music than you will ever have time to listen to, at quality better than cd, will be available in something the size of your hand.
With that just around the corner, I don’t think anyone is going to push too hard to attempt to get the buying public off CD’s and on to some other form of hardware media
I think the music industry is quickly realizing that digital music is the Next Big Thing, thus iTunes, eMusic, the new Napster, etc, and the iPod, Rio, and all the other player. While the music industry itself hasn’t really hopped on board, they’re being dragged, kicking and screaming, to the realization that this is how people want their music now.
That said, I think this is much better suited to IMHO (or CS).
THAT said, harddrives are becoming smaller and cheaper. Other forms of memory are as well (TWELVE GB compact flash cards, anyone? (pdf file)).
Think about audio CDs now. What can you play them in? Your computer, sure. Your DVD player, your stereo system. Your car stereo (probably), your portable boombox, your portable CD player. Then you take one over to your friend’s house, and BAM, they work there too.
What I’m imagining in the future is similar, but based around either home networks or portable harddrives (or CF cards, etc…).
Well, as bandwidth/storage space gets cheaper, then hopefully you will be able to buy music made with a lossless codec like FLAC or even uncompressed files from iTunes/new Napster/other places. Already, you can find uncompressed .wav files from IP pirates on the net.
I see you’ve never actually listened to MP3s made by a decent encoder. It would be easy to create MP3s that sound noticeably better than CDs, given access to the master recordings. Imagine 48khz, 32bit stereo audio that hasn’t had the dynamic range compressed to hell. Now, imagine this audio compressed to a 320kbps MP3 using LAME. It will sound a HELL of a lot better than any CD. Oh, and the songs you hear on the radio? 256kbps MP2s.
I’m not sure that any one thing in particular can dethrone CD. As others have said, the age of physical media is slowly coming to an end. I think we’ll wind up with a file format becoming the “standard” with the media chosen by the user for his particular situation. For instance, the record companies may choose to use a format like .mp3 (not likely, but whatever) and users can choose CD, DVD, mini HD, Flash, computer hard drive, iPod, whatever floats their boat.
That said, CD will remain king for quite a while. Vinyl stayed on top for 50+ years, there’s no reason CD can’t do that as well. Individual physical albums are not going to go to other formats unless there is a significant improvement in usability. DVD doesn’t offer this, it’s already tough to get one full CD of good songs from an album, we don’t need 50 songs per album. Electronic media are more expensive, and will likely remain that way for a very long time, since CDs cost about $.10 to make, the packaging and shipping are what cost money, not the media itself. There’s just no major benefit to any of our alternate physical formats.
Electronic transfer of compressed audio will get bigger and bigger, that will eventually make CDs become a thing of the past, but it won’t be overnight.
“MP3” strictly speaking will not become the standard (it hardly is now and it never will be). Digital has a little more evolving to do, then it will settle with a format that offers both smaller files sizes and lossless (or near lossless) quality (see Apple Lossless.
I’m not sure physical media is ready to roll over and die just yet either. Grabbing my CD on the way out of the house is still faster than FTPing files anywhere or synching my iPod. People will always have a need and desire for a physical copy of some music. Sure I don’t care if my BB King CDs are digital only, but don’t even think of trying to take away my Cult CDs (it’s a fanboy thing, you know?)
I see a place for both over the next several decades. I see homes running WANs that connect the kids homework computer with the parents PC, and a server that controls the family entertainment. Music, probably video can all be grabbed off the server and delivered to various points in the home.