the column may be true, but i think this can only be bad. there are so many people who have and buy music in proprietary formats that will not be supported perpetually. after a few years of use this music will be useless to anyone who bought it, especially because by buying it they also buy the right to listen to it in perpetuity. its absolutely neccessary to have music in a physical, non compressed form so that technology will not leave it behind, and you will be able to enjoy it for decades afterwards.

in the future, the only way artists will make any money is from live shows and TV ads.

CDs have a life expectancy of somewhere between 10 and 50 years - it's not certain yet. So while vinyl gets pops and clicks and shit over time, CDs eventually become totally unplayable. I kinda think this planned obsolesence of the CD didn't do the industry any favors.

Hope they die before the get old.

Here's a thought though - part of the upfront cost that goes into creating an album is the duplication and (hopefully) distribution costs. Bands/labels lose a lot of cash on that step alone - imagine a world where investing in a hardcopy version of the album is not left up to the artist/label, but the user! Once we rid ourselves of a hardcopy-dependent medium/transfer format, that will cut out a large chunk of the costs that go into creating an album (from studio-to-sale). Most bands already depend on touring and licensing as their main sources of stable revenue channels.

Personally, I'd be elated to be in the position that CYHSY currently find themselves in, but in 5 years, I'd hope all the "mailing out boxes from the duplication press" business would be as arcane an act as pressing vinyl is today.

Most folks I know who own iPods buy albums from iTunes/eMusic (and tend to bitch about the annoyance of ripping songs from CDs). The convenience factor is really hard to ignore...

I also won't miss my son going into my office, and taking them all off the shelves and opening them and playing with them and breaking cases.

I also won't miss paying for shipping of cd's.

I also won't miss looking around for rare cd's or paying a ton for it.

I will enjoy being able to pick up 2 external hard drives and a player and having my entire collection with me.

Too much effort to back up everything digitally, even though I should do it.

I like getting a cd and opening the package, looking at the liner notes and artwork thank you very much.

I also love the feeling of thinking I'm crazy for spending $30+ on that out of print EP or album. BUT IT'S THE GREATEST FEELING EVER.

Amen. Wait til you drop a buck-twenty-five. Collectors are sick people, sick I tells ya.

Now I'm starting to do that with music books. Just spent about 5x times the face value for "Straight Outa Bristol--Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky and the Roots of Trip-Hop" which is OOP as well. It's going for $125 on Amazon, but I found it for cheaper on Amazon UK.

It's like crack, once you start, you can't stop!

what timmy said. all that's important to me is the music itself.

I think the iPod and sat radio phenomenons are only stepping stones. Sure, CD collections are unwieldy, but so are digitized music collections stuffing a hard drive.

Why do you have to "own" the song? Wouldn't a radio station that you could fully customize, create queues, whatever, be preferable? You don't have to worry about holding/losing/scratching the physical libraries. Like television, all music will be on-demand. You pay a monthly service and call up a song from a vast catalog.

I'm not saying it's good, but this is MY VISION OF THE FUTURE.

yeah, this is the future, as i last wrote here.

I can't wait to listen to my MP3's in my hover car commuting between Moonbase Alpha and my Enviropod home. That's going to be so cool!

They'll be MP5's by then.

Yep. These things are incredibly unreliable. An excellent example of poorly-made, disposable technology. I am constantly amazed by how popular these things are.


People are still going to want the actual cd's people. It's not going away.

Lately I've been moving away from CDs both backwards and frowards - im buying a lot more vinyl and downloading a lot more mp3s, and hardly buying CDs at all anymore.

i was so excited when i first saw that thing and now i'm just angry too.

The time I spent today shopping and buying CDs was quite enjoyable. I hope that doesn't go away.

If it does go away, I'll have to seek my thrills elsewhere, like crack houses.

I think Jobs is looking to merge this into the next gen ipod.

People still have to realise that we, as an obner community, and people like us, are still in the minority.

I work in a mainstream record store in the mall. I still have people coming in asking if we sell vhs tapes. There's just such a large slice of people that don't understand computers, sure don't understand how to download music, etc. They don't even know the difference between widescreen and full screen with dvd's half of the time.

So there will consistently be a market for something physical. Also, I will never ever pay for a music download. If I'm spending the money, I'm getting something to show for it.

MP5s make MP3s look like House Party 2