Some say that music CDs will be gone like the dodo by 2007, but I have my doubts. I like being able to transport and play my music conveniently between work, home and my car and CDs permit me to do that. I know about iPods but I would have to convert all 600+ CDs to MP3s and buy a new deck for my car that had an audio input. As far as I’m concerned, CDs will still be around long after 2007.
Heck, I still have cassette tapes.
I doubt CDs will be completely phased out in 3 years, but I don’t doubt that they will eventually fall out of favor. I already rarely use my CDs anymore. When I feel the urge to listen to one, I generally encode it onto my computer at the same time, so I can throw it on my iPod if I feel so moved. In 3 years, hard drives that’ll hold all 600+ CDs with ease and portable players that hold most, if not all of them will be commonplace. I certainly think mass-market music is moving in that direction, though physical media in the form of vinyl and DVD audio formats for audiophiles, and standard CDs for the millions who are slow upgraders, will be around for a long, long while.
Please. I still have 8 tracks and records.
Everybody said the same thing about VHS tapes when DVDs first came out.
Mostly, at home and work I listen to CDs I’ve copied to my computer. I keep the CDs in the car. I’ve been thinking about getting an iPod. Is it worth it?
The transition from CDs to iPod and mp3 players will probably be at the same speed as it was from cassette tapes to CDs. There will always be people like Jan and myself who like the tangible quality of CDs. Plus at the price of an iPod or other high capacity mp3 players, I wouldn’t write off CDs quite yet.
I LOVE my iPod. It is wonderful. Especially if you like making and listening to mixes. You load on 10-20 gigabytes of music (which is big enough to hold a lot of people’s entire collections) and create playlists, or you can listen by artist, album, genre, etc. If you want to listen to something in particular, you never have to search your CDs, you just push a few buttons and voila!
I agree that there is no chance that CD’s will be completely gone by them. There is a large part of the populous that has not and likely will not embrace digital music. Until music DVD’s are standard (and probably after that) people will still use CD’s. There is no compelling reason to switch over to anything since CD’s have good quality, plenty of room and can be played most anywhere someone wants to play them. They will far out last VHS tapes.
I actually just bought a portable CD player. I thought I’d never buy one of those again, but when it came down to it, it made the most sense. I have a small mp3 player, but it doesn’t hold enough. Plus, I found that there are occasional CDs I need to play, where I don’t have access to a ripper. The player supports MP3, so I have a ton of songs available on some CDs, but can still play traditionals.
I used to have a small solid-state mp3 player as well. I think it held 64mb, maybe 128. I almost never used it; there was no point, as I could only hold an hour of music at the most, and then I’d have to change it again. The iPod is totally different; it’s like an entire music library at your fingertips. It’s like listening to music at my computer. I love not having to hunt for CDs when I get the urge to listen to something. And I love having random play through my entire collection, or through big playlists. It really changes the way you listen to music in a way that small mp3 players don’t.
1) Buy the iPod … it’s incredible. I was a vinyl and cassette guy, bought one, and have learned to appreciate music in a whole new way.
But,
2) Aren’t we missing the larger issue here? How are single mp3s going to massively change music? When we take a song out of context–away from an album, out of a decade–do we lose a sense of origin or do we begin to understand music on a new level? Not to be esoteric here, but I’m finding all this great, older music on the Internet. On a record, I may pass it by, dismiss it. But as a single, it relates to me in a different time and place. Non-linear rock-n-roll. What a rush.
I agree with you, Pete. The internet has made it possible for an entirely new way of obtaining and listening to music. With database sites like allmusic.com, you can easily find bands who influenced one another or belong to similar genres. You can explore new styles by finding a few ‘essential’ songs and grabbing mp3s for them. You can experiment with listening to new kinds of music with little to no cost. You can get even more history and context out of your music than before, in my opinion, not to mention the ease with which you can stay on the cutting edge of musical trends. And you don’t have to have any special sources (like promo CDs) to do it.
One of the things that I really love about saving music to my computer (and it’s one of the reasons why buying an iPod is so attractive to me) is being able to pick and choose what you listen to from particular albums. So much of modern albums is filler. Most CDs don’t contain 12 good quality songs; they contain two maybe three or four good songs and the rest isn’t the same quality.
I think that if buying individual songs at websites becomes more popular than buying entire CDs, it will force musicians to produce more higher quality work. If more of the public starts buying music by the song, the musicians who produce a lot of high quality songs will end up making more money than the ones who only produce a few; that’s a lot of incentive for making more good songs and less filler.