- Temple of Blood wrote:
- Sounds like they missed the mark by a few years but they were on the right track.
I'd like to read that article but with the emergence of mainstream internet, and especially the world wide web, I think it was inevitable that music would form part of e-commerce. At first it was all about shopping online, which was a very novel experience for the mid-90s and it really didn't pick up until probably ebay and amazon emerged in the late 90s. But with faster internet connections I think the business model changed even further, eliminating in theory at least the 'need' for media to exist in a physical format.
The technology for digital distribution of music has existed for the better part of the last 2 decades. If you were an internet wizkid back in the 90s, you would have known that irc servers like Dalnet and Undernet were an oasis of mp3 file sharing - this was well before the word napster was invented. The concept of digital distribution started life not with itunes or amazon but with illegal downloading, primarily the type that was happening on IRC servers. Most were unaware of it because of the non-user friendly environment unlike napster but it was there.
It soon became apparent to most in the music industry that if music could be distributed with such ease then why not make some money off it? After all it eliminated most of the industry middle men. It was and continues to be as much an opportunity as it is a threat to the music industry. In fact I would argue that the music industry, the industry that it was at least is what is dying first and foremost, not the format on which music is being stored.
There is imo a very cryptic message behind the news that the CD is on its last legs - the news is imo more about how the music industry is undergoing a massive change and the old model of promoting and distributing music is now obsolete. This is why the article singles out major recording artists and major labels, they are the ones that have depended on the traditional model of music promotion and distribution - where the physical recording of the album, the album itself, the singles that followed and the music videos were the tools of the trade. However, these are no longer the perfect fit in a world dominated by youtube, itunes, ever increasing speed at which information travels and the amount of information currently available (i.e. the vast amount of choices).
As for the format itself - well to answer the question, what is so sacred about the CD - nothing really, there is nothing sacred per se about any format because ultimately what matters is the information itself and that is what's behind the new business model for the music industry. Cut the costs of packaging, distribution and promotion and simply use a central hub like itunes to distribute information to end users.
Still what about the format itself - well we live in a retro-technology world where consumers now tolerate both the old and the new side-by-side. Turning the clock back some 20 - 30 years, consumer expectation was always for something new, better, flashy, and different. Over the last 30 years we have witnessed long and often rapid evolution of formats on which information is stored both in the music and computer worlds. We are now at a point where the rapid pace of technological advancements eludes consumer expectations. Note I said eludes rather than exceeds as I think we are beyond that point where consumers feel in-sync and can directly relate their experience and existence with current technology.
In this sense, I believe the consumer psyche is in a sort of stalemate and in some respects regression. Maybe neither terms fit the current consumer mentality but there is some degree of disconnect between how current technology can be of benefit and I believe that is, in part at least, because consumer expectation is still at the level of the late 1980s-mid 1990s. Put another way, technology has not always taken note of what the consumers really want and has often just been advanced for the sake of seeing how far things could be pushed.
This degree of disconnect, my own view of retro-technology, gives a false sense of variety of formats for consumers to choose from. If anything consumers go with a particular format because they can relate to it, there is no psychological barrier to overcome and there is a connection made to euphoric value, something that gives that "sacred" value to the consumer.
The change in demographics is not to be discounted either and this is the flip-side of the coin. Currently, despite shaky economic times, the spending power lies between two very different generations: X and Y. The former developed in a pre-tech savvy world and approached the internet with some degree of caution and skepticism - Generation X saw the rise and decline of many technological trends throughout the 70s and 80s, consistency and uniformity were mere marketing catchphrases. Generation Y is perhaps one of the first generations to experience technology as an extension of their lives, and likely the first to experience a very streamlined version of modern computing and internet communication. The value system is in a way turned on its head - now what matters is the speed at which information travels and the quantity of it. An mp3 file is seen as a more efficient way of extracting the information than a CD/Vinyl.
I would love to write more but I will leave it at this for now.
Subject: Re: More bad news for the CD. 
Tue Nov 22, 2011 12:48 pm
