According to this article in today’s San Francicso Chronicle, the CD format is gasping for breath:
With sleek iPods rapidly becoming the hi-fi system of choice, satellite radio offering hundreds of specialty stations, and the Internet overflowing with all kinds of free and cheap legal digital music, suddenly the thought of owning an awkward polycarbonate plastic-coated disc that holds only an hour of tunes by just one artist seems positively prehistoric — even if it comes with a hastily produced “bonus” DVD.
It’s clearly time to move on.
The article goes on to describe 10 alternate ways to acquire music (legally and otherwise), includes the mandatory reference to labels “declaring war on consumers”, complains about CD jewel cases being too hard to open and even has commentary on certain older recordings sounding better on vinyl or cassette. So all in all, a soup to nuts article that the several million people shopping at Wal-Mart in the non-metro areas of the U.S. will probably find baffling as they wait in the register line to buy the new Kenny Chesney CD….
1 response so far ↓
1 isaac // Dec 14, 2005 at 9:40 am
This is classic, myopic, Bay-Area rhetoric, and it never fails to annoy me. Many very smart friends of mine who are caught up in it revert to sputtering irrelevant aphorisms like “the future is now” when I point out that physical music sales still account for $9.5 billion a year in revenue, compared to digital music’s measly $500MM.
There’s no doubt that the physical CD business has a serious long-term challenge on its hands, but to say it’s dead now is just not getting the big picture.
You must log in to post a comment.