More bad news for the CD.

Bands, like labels, will continue to get more and more greedy. They're doing it now. The complaint used to be that labels charge too much, yet now bands are charging more and for a far less superior product.

And now they're taking to things like PledgeMusic and Kickstarter to raise money to fund producing an album and such. That's fine. I'll pledge $15 for an album. It's like the new preorder. Problem is, any time a band is successful and hit that 100% goal...THEY WANT MORE!

Look at the whole Ginger (Wildheart) thing. He wanted to finance a new 3-disc album...and he hit his goal in six hours. Now the thing is still going on, nearing 400% of what should have been 100%. Sure, these are people basically preordering the album, but they've added all kinds of new incentives from the beginning, geared toward more and more pledges. Reality: they making a killing and it won't cost them nearly as much as they're pulling in.

One Minute Silence just did something similar. They reunited, wanted to do a new album, so they jumped on PledgeMusic. They're currently at 98% of hitting their goal. Sweet, right? Ah, but today they sent out an update that stated that, to "ideally" do this, they need to hit 140%. Pffft!

This is nothing more than bands being in control and doing the same thing labels did. If there is money to be made, people are going to be greedy. Simple as that.

So while I'm sure some bands will do right by their fans, most won't. Physical copies of albums will quickly become less appealing than digital copies.

Eyesore wrote:

mc666 wrote:

i don't know if i give a crap anymore. i used to really piss & moan about it, but it's gonna happen in my lifetime. i might as well roll with it. as i get older, stuff like this just means less to me.

Agreed.

I'm on the verge of selling my entire collection, to be honest. Although a love a Wall-o-CDs, the music is more important to me.

Since '08, I've probably sold 500 or so CD's. Cleared up space, made me listen to albums that I really cared about more, and I don't really care about liner-notes and artwork like I used to, because at the end of the day, if the music doesn't speak to me, I could care less what packaging it came in or not. I've started to go digital more and more.

BTW, if you start selling your entire collection, might as well call the Amazon warehouse, I'm sure they'll send a few trucks to pick up your CD's.

I buy most of my cds online anyways. Smaller labels will allways make cds and records...but it might cost you a hundred dollars per cd.

I still buy albums so go figure

I still buy CD's..... mostly used stuff... just grabbed Live After Death.... Double CD set used for $10...


Most labels are only 'sending' MP3's for review ... Roadrunner went that route 2 yrs ago....

I still prefer a hard copy with real artwork.... However I've been rolling with the punches as best as I can....

I've actually finally joined the download crowd as well. I now have 6 albums on my Amazon Cloud drive that I downloaded because CD copies were either entirely unavailable (on 5 of them) or prohibitively expensive on CD (the other one).

I still don't like it though.

tohostudios wrote:

I've actually finally joined the download crowd as well. I now have 6 albums on my Amazon Cloud drive that I downloaded because CD copies were either entirely unavailable (on 5 of them) or prohibitively expensive on CD (the other one).

I still don't like it though.

I didn't like it at first either, but back then I was still rockin' old school listening devices, you know. Once I got an MP3 player, one I could connect to the CD player in my truck, I began to appreciate it more.

I hated burning CDs, then liked it a bit more when CD players could play data CDs with like 15 albums on it. With my MP3 player, I can have a playlist of roughly 7,000 songs! Yeah, I dig that.

And at home, on my PC, I have 90,000+ songs. I'll really dig it when I can have my entire house wired, every room, with some sort of music panel system where I can turn on the tunes wherever I'm at. That'd be sweet.

My new car has a USB port and I've got an 8GB thumb drive that I leave permanently plugged in to it. I really love having a "Toho radio station" that I can listen to any time I want but I still like actually having a tangible product in my hands. I don't even log the albums I download in the spreadsheet of my CD collection because I don't actually have a CD.

Yeah, I'm the same way. Haha.

The day I can't find a physical copy of my favourite artists' music, is the day I stop buying music. I guess I already have enough music anyway. I'll just turn into an old geezer that refuses to listen to anything new.

I could see this coming I have a hard time believing that one year is the time frame but the Kmart, Best Buy and Walmart in my area everytime I go in there is less space for cds....and I do see fewer dvds/bluray space too. I do have lots of digital music because of price, but I do prefer cds for quality, artwork liner notes, and having something that will survive if my computer crashes ( that already happened to me once and I have still not recovered all of the music I lost). I actually decided before I read this article to try and buy most of my music on cd, because I can see that sooner or later cds will be done

Lari wrote:

The day I can't find a physical copy of my favourite artists' music, is the day I stop buying music. I guess I already have enough music anyway. I'll just turn into an old geezer that refuses to listen to anything new.

But why? Shouldn't the music be more important than the packaging? By refusing to buy digital formats says you care more about having something to hold.

Don't get me wrong, I was the same way many moons ago, but in the end I had to admit that I'm a fan of music far more than the means to which I receive it.

Eyesore wrote:

Lari wrote:

The day I can't find a physical copy of my favourite artists' music, is the day I stop buying music. I guess I already have enough music anyway. I'll just turn into an old geezer that refuses to listen to anything new.

But why? Shouldn't the music be more important than the packaging? By refusing to buy digital formats says you care more about having something to hold.

Don't get me wrong, I was the same way many moons ago, but in the end I had to admit that I'm a fan of music far more than the means to which I receive it.

This is where i am at. I love music but I also like the physical product. I love the music more though so if there is no more cd then Ill go on with life.

I think the excitement of going to get an album and open it for the first time or getting it from the mailbox and listening to it the first time adds to the experience. That part really cannot be duplicated by downloading.

I need to get a nice mp3 player before I take the plunge. my old one is dead.

exact33 wrote:

I think the excitement of going to get an album and open it for the first time or getting it from the mailbox and listening to it the first time adds to the experience. That part really cannot be duplicated by downloading.

No, it can't. I even miss the days when an album came out on a Tuesday and I'd be lucky to have heard one song on it. The young kids don't understand that feeling. It was very much like Christmas morning when I was a wee lad, you know. Kind of magical and exciting, even though I was much much older.

With such immediate access to everything, the world has forgotten how to truly appreciate things. It's sad.

Eyesore wrote:

exact33 wrote:

I think the excitement of going to get an album and open it for the first time or getting it from the mailbox and listening to it the first time adds to the experience. That part really cannot be duplicated by downloading.

No, it can't. I even miss the days when an album came out on a Tuesday and I'd be lucky to have heard one song on it. The young kids don't understand that feeling. It was very much like Christmas morning when I was a wee lad, you know. Kind of magical and exciting, even though I was much much older.

With such immediate access to everything, the world has forgotten how to truly appreciate things. It's sad.

I purposely stay away from the leaked albums in favor the clips to see what an album is like. I prefer to have some wonder in an album before getting it. I will listen to samples to see if its a dog or not though...

Quote :

Artwork is standard with digital music... if you buy legally. And even if you don't, it's pretty easy to copy & paste artwork into the song file.

Liner notes & lyrics also come with digital releases as well. Once digital truly takes over, this will become standard.

I don't want to see the art on a computer screen. It cheapens the experience of a new album. To me, the artwork is closely tied in with the music. Bands like Iron Maiden, Megadeth and Iced Earth always were associated with their artwork. In other words... Metal is a very visual genre.

I dunno, I guess this bugs me cuz I have a "collecting" gene. I mean, everybody's gotta collect somethin', right? And my "thing" is CDs.

Growing up, I collected baseball cards, comics, and beer cans. Over time I left all of those hobbies behind but I still collect music and probably will till they put me in that wooden pencil box that Kmorg mentioned.

I'm sure I'll survive if CDs do go away, cuz even if new ones are no longer produced, Lord knows there are more than enough of them out there that I don't own that'll be turning up in second hand shops, flea markets, yard sales, and thrift stores for generations to come.

...it just won't be the same!!!

Either that or I'll go back to vinyl... cuz as we all know, sacred vinyl is the only tr00 way to listen to arcane steele... ehehehehehehehe

What's next... digital t-shits? The green movement wants everything digital but at least they can't touch band shirts.

One more time for those that missed it.

COMPACT DISCS ARE DIGITAL. It's 1's & 0's, that's it.

A CD is just a container, an outmoded, over-priced container.

S.D. wrote:

One more time for those that missed it.

COMPACT DISCS ARE DIGITAL. It's 1's & 0's, that's it.

A CD is just a container, an outmoded, over-priced container.

Oh, don't go getting all literal!

Troublezone wrote:

What I don't like about the digital format is that there will no longer be liner-notes, lyrics and artwork... and the music quality is inferior.

I totally agree. Nothing is nicer than holding the CD in your hands.

CD's will always be around, and their value will increase for sure.

I wouldn't worry too much. Once the majors start dropping CDs, they'll start licensing them out to companies like Collectables or Rhino who will put out box sets and various other reissues, aimed at the CD collector.

Essentially the way vinyl is now, still being manufactured in small quantities, still collected passionately by a small enough target group to be easily advertised to.

I thought they would've come out with a smaller version of the CD years ago... back when everything was getting smaller and smaller. Kinda like those Sony PSP discs.

When it comes down to it, CDs will be around as long as there is money to be made.

Troublezone wrote:

When it comes down to it, CDs will be around as long as there is money to be made.

true but I dont want to pay $25 for a cd. A lot of the new Vinyl is quite expensive.

Eyesore wrote:

And at home, on my PC, I have 90,000+ songs. I'll really dig it when I can have my entire house wired, every room, with some sort of music panel system where I can turn on the tunes wherever I'm at. That'd be sweet.

If you have an iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and wifi, you can do just that! I can control my iTunes with my iPad from the comfort of my toilet!