The compact disk, its demise(?) and classical music

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

The other day, I was browsing in a local used bookstore, which also carries used LPs and CDs. They are quite ambitious in their pricing of the LPs ("Hey, these things are valuable now!"    ), and I see a lot of stuff that would not sell for 50 cents in the excess bins at Amoeba or Rasputin priced at $6.99 to $9.99. (This is SoCal--people are not too smart here.) They don't have any real knowledge of this market--they told me they just look up prices online for many things, and apparently they assume that any old LP must be worth at least a few bucks. They were also quite ambitious in their used CD pricing ("Out of print!" = $29.99    ) until just recently.

Anyway, while I was there, I noticed a large case of used CDs sitting outside the store (with the reject books they're blowing out for $1-2 ea.) priced at $1 each. They were all in very good condition, and there were some good titles. I picked up 20 or so--some jazz and a few classical. I asked the guy at the counter why they were selling them so cheaply, and he admitted they were having trouble selling them.

It is ironic in a way, and almost as if time were running in reverse. In the early 90s, people could not give their LPs away, and I bought some incredible pieces and collections dirt cheap. CDs, of course were the wave of the future, and were priced accordingly.

Now, CDs are sooooooo 20th Century: Like hullo! Hullo! Like, like, the 20th century like called and like, it, like, like wants like it's music (like) format back (like totally!)!!!

In any case, I have been an avid LP and CD collector since the early 90s. And even though the compact disk has about as much charm and personality as an office supply item, and even though I'm going blind trying to read the liner notes, and even though--to my ears--most good quality LPs sound better ("distortion!!!!", whatever    ), I still think that the CD has been very good for classical music in general, and at least offers a fairly high standard of audio quality. In addition, the number of titles and performances available is staggering, and even obscure works and composers often are represented by multiple competing performances. (or if you're a real nerd, you just buy all of them).

Now that CD sales are seriously slumping, I am wondering what the implications for classical music will be when it finally dies out--or even before. I highly doubt LPs will ever be anything more than a small niche, and it is clear the the sheep are perfectly happy to stream low quality versions of their Justin Beeber, Kardashian Sisters, and Kane West--and whatever other worthless horse-sh*t they listen to on their "Beats" headphones. However, many, if not most classical lovers seem to care at least somewhat about sound quality.

Despite the MP-3 versions Amazon and others offer, most of the CDs I buy, and see recommended here and in the classical music press seem to be available only as CDs.

I am trying to be optimistic that the eventual death of CD (if it ever does completely die) will not herald a lack of selection or decline in sound quality. Certainly some sites offer high res downloads (FLAC), but the selection still seems to be not on par with that of physical CDs. But here are some questions to think about:

Will the preferences of classical music lovers (a tiny sliver of the market) hold any sway over the likes of Apple, Amazon, and the like, who clearly could not care less about music or sound quality? Perhaps classical music lovers will increasingly turn away from these giants (and major record labels!) toward smaller purveyors of recordings?

Will the lifespan of the CD be extended by classical music lovers, who still prefer a physical medium with printed liner notes and good sound quality?

Will a download/stream only paradigm be friendly to classical music and those who collect it?

Surely, many recordings will not make the transition from one medium to the next. Who will keep these alive? Will it be illegal one day to "Own" a music file or medium? 

[Cato]

Yes,  I do wonder if CD's will not become an antiquarian item sooner - much sooner - than we thought.  Will we become like those collectors who search for cylinders for their Victrolas?   

On the other hand some labels seem to be tilting at the windmill of recording something by every composer who ever lived!   (NAXOS, cpo!  I am talking about you!)

I downloaded the opera The Oresteia by Sergei Taneyev and turned it into a CD: both it and the file on my computer sound very good, if not excellent.  (I believe it is a flac. file.)  So, if other works are of the same quality, I will not be concerned...too much.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I still buy CDs (not only classical), and I'm not into downloading at all. I like having my music in a physical format that won't die in a hard drive crash or somehow become inaccessible due to corporate bankruptcy or changes in policy or whatever.

Well-preserved LPs have a tactile, yummy quality that digital formats can't match. The problem is the LP is a temperamental format that is subject to all kinds of wear and tear. Overall, CDs win on points.

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

The future of FLAC is the subject for another thread, but none of the overlords--Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and the like--seem to have any intention of ever supporting it. It was hoped that Windows 10 would have native support for FLAC, but no luck. I am very happy with Foobar2000 for now, while it lasts.

[Andante]

What will replace the CD?  The latest surge in LPs is just something new the market has foisted on a generation that have never had a record collection, I have the remnants of my collection numbering approx 100-150 they are the only ones that sounded reasonable with not too many crackles and pops the rest were thrown out.
The CD is very user friendly compared to the LP and can get good reproduction on even a modestly priced player ($300 or so) whereas an LP requires a very good TT and system to produce a better sound and not chew up the micro grooves.
I have not seriously tried streaming but have d/l CDs in flac form but then I have burned to CD lol. 
There are now HD CDs far in excess of CD red book standards of 1411kbps but remember that was set in 1985 I think some form of solid state storage (usb) etc would be my preference.
It also depends on how you want to listen. 

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

CDs LPs and what not ae simply just object to store information on. There will always be ways to listen to classical music so I don't see why there should be much fuss about dwindling CD sales and OOP recordings. New things come up all the time.

What is more sad is that these big record labels are gonna be making more money than composers and musicians.

Support live music!

[Daverz]

I still buy CDs, and they are still a cheap and easy way to collect music, but I rip them to my music server as soon as I get them.  I don't even have a CD player hooked up.

[Jo498]

Yes,  I do wonder if CD's will not become an antiquarian item sooner - much sooner - than we thought. 

It can hardly be "much sooner than we thought" because people have been harping about the imminent death of the CD for more than 10 years now. And it hasn't died yet, so those augurs were wrong. In fact the CD is now almost as old as a mass market item as the vinyl LP has been. And the LP is still alive in a niche 25 years after it practically became obsolete.

I only witnessed the tail end of the LP era in the mid/late 1980s and I was too young and too impressed by the new format to make use of all those LPs being thrown away or sold off very cheaply. Later own I collected a few LPs on Ebay and other sources and I love the large covers, the general sense of nostalgia and the sound is also much better than I remembered from the 1980s. But I could never be bothered to learn to do a decent setup for them and they took so much space, so I got rid of all but a few dozen I felt especially attached to. If I had more space and money I would keep collecting LPs, I guess.

In any case, I think that CDs will stick around for a while. One simple point is gifts. I was told that before last Xmas some CDs went out of stock (in Germany, I guess) because the sellers had not expected to sell so many in the age of itunes and streaming. Sure, one can give away gift vouchers for itunes but somethin more physical makes for a much nicer present.
Therefore I predict that "nice and niche" disks, like the "theme books" by Savall will do quite well for several years to come.
Also, my generation (around 40) usually loves to collect the physical items and most of us will prefer CDs or LPs to mere data files; hopefully many of us will still be around and buying stuff for another 40 years.
And even if CDs tend to become mostly obsolete, if the used market for LPs ca. 12-15 years ago is any indication, there will be a used market for decades to come. And there will also be people being able to fix players, I guess. Apart from the fact that data CDs are still fairly convenient.
We should also not presuppose that the infrastructure needed for streaming and downloads will keep being available as cheaply as it is now.

[The new erato]

LPs will be niche, and downlaods will not generate the dollars of CD sales (and steaming virtually nil). The implications of less dollars I think we already see, in fewer orchestras where state support doesn't exist, and in performer labels desperately trying to garner some sales and garner interest in live concerts . I hope that will translate to lesser fees for big stars and not less music recorded anew (the fees of some are an atrocity), but I'm far from hopeful. Anyway, my interest mainly lies in niche stuff these days.....

[Cato]

It can hardly be "much sooner than we thought" because people have been harping about the imminent death of the CD for more than 10 years now.

I must have missed at least some of that harping!   

And I was under the impression that they would not be superseded for 50 years or so (i.e. until c. 2030), and then suddenly "downloads" took off, and the younger generation stopped buying CD's almost completely.

In any case, I think that CDs will stick around for a while. One simple point is gifts. I was told that before last Xmas some CDs went out of stock (in Germany, I guess) because the sellers had not expected to sell so many in the age of itunes and streaming. Sure, one can give away gift vouchers for itunes but something more physical makes for a much nicer present.

We should also not presuppose that the infrastructure needed for streaming and downloads will keep being available as cheaply as it is now.

I hope you are right!  The CD's tangible presence is more "reassuring" than the presence of electrons in a file on a computer!   

Quite true about presents! 

On live music: I would like to support orchestras more, aber es ist eine Kostenfrage!  Ohio is home to several excellent and even world-class orchestras (Cleveland and Cincinnati) but tickets - while much less than those for rock-stars' concerts - are still rather expensive.  One or two concerts a year are all we can afford.

[71 dB]

As a Kesha (formerly known as Ke$ha) fan I follow a pop music forum called FOTP and see what 15-25 years old pop music listeners think. To my delight many of those youngsters say they want physical CDs and are just as worried as we are. So, even the new generation (or a part of it) want more than downloads and streaming. I'd go so far to even predict physical media will become more popular again in the future. The vinyl revival is a sign of that. The question is how bad the situation will temporarily become before that happens.

[Spineur]

LP's are definitively gone for me.
I buy something like 60% of CD's and the other 40% is mostly hi-res flac, with some CD quality flac as well.  I rip my CD's to flac as soon as I get them.  So in practice I do not manipulate the physical CD much.  The problem with the digital media, is you need to go to the computer to check the digital booklet (if one is released !) to get the most basic info about the piece.

I buy a fair amount of DVD and blu-rays for the operas, although I do buy some CD's as well.  I never go for films downloads (files are too big and usually of poor quality).  I record some of the operas and concerts broadcasted by arte an FR-TV.  They are installing the optical fiber this fall, so things will change:  I will get a subscription to Mezzo the classical music channel once the fiber is here.

[Jo498]

I must have missed at least some of that harping!   

And I was under the impression that they would not be superseded for 50 years or so (i.e. until c. 2030), and then suddenly "downloads" took off, and the younger generation stopped buying CD's almost completely.

I cannot be more precise but mp3 was developed in the late 1990s, online sharing started in about 1999 (Napster) and at the same time around the late 1990s/early 2000s the burning/copying CDs for friends also became very common (because by then almost every computer had a CD burner).
So I am pretty sure that I read articles that spelled doom for the CD for at least 12 years now, probably more (and the industry really plunged in the early 2000s although of course classical music was not that affected by it).
My impression is that now we are getting to a new equilibrium between paid-for-downloads and streaming on the one hand and CDs on the other hand. There are still collectors fond of physical objects and the "gift argument" seems quite plausible to me as well. So I do not really expect fast developments although it is not unlikely that there will be some issues/re-issues as download only.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

So I am pretty sure that I read articles that spelled doom for the CD for at least 12 years now, probably more (and the industry really plunged in the early 2000s although of course classical music was not that affected by it).

I think the first article I read predicting the impending death of the CD was as far back as 1996. By 2000, it was fairly common to see predictions of its demise within the next few years.

[71 dB]

I cannot be more precise but mp3 was developed in the late 1990s,

Actually mp3 was developped in the early 1990s and released by Fraunhofer Institute in 1993.  0:)

[Jo498]

Wikipedia even says developed from 1982! on (which included previous research, I guess). But in any case it did not really become common enough for audio files until the late 1990s to serve as a serious threat for CDs.

Someone spelling doom in 1996 was really "prophetic", I'd say. Because the minidisc and DAT formats were never really a threat for CDs in my impression.
I vaguely remember the first CDs a friend burned for me in the late 90s. Both the devices and the blank disks were fairly expensive and often something went wrong and the copies were faulty. So it was often not worth bothering. I did not hear about sharing audiofiles until much later, around 2000 or so (I was never interested in that anyway).

[71 dB]

Wikipedia even says developed from 1982!

Digital music compression (the science of how people perceive music) was worked on from early 80s, MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (mp3) in early 90's.

[Andante]

Regarding downloads.Torrents d/l were the thing that upset CD producers and artists so being free even if illegal in some countries was too much a temptation for some and of course had a detrimental effect on their bottom line.
Perhaps if instead of a royalty system a decent one off payment could be paid to artists it would cease to be a problem, I understand Naxos did infact do this but don't know if they still do.

[(poco) Sforzando]

A CD can be extracted in WAV format, which is identical in sound quality to what's on the disc. I won't save as MP3s, which are lossy. FLACs are another possibility for a more compact lossless format. Unlike many DVDs, there is no copy protection on CDs, so anyone can convert them to digital format using a tool like Exact Audio Copy, and then edit them if desired using a sound editor like Audition. In this way if you're so inclined you can make your own digital library to store on your PC, or to burn to your own CD as a compilation.

I like the portability and compactness of CDs, too, as I often listen to music in the car and rarely travel more than a couple of miles without a CD for the player. But CDs take up space too, though not nearly as much as LPs. if future cars could be designed so you could access an online digital library while driving, then there would be no need for CD players or physical discs. And however comforting or reassuring CDs may seem, they are not necessarily permanent either, what with bronzing and things like that. I remember how in earlier days they used to include a little square of white foam in boxed sets to "protect" the discs; if you hadn't played a set for years and then opened it, you'd see the foam had yellowed and stuck to the disc. So much for protection.

All media have their limitations and potential for degradation - LPs, CDs, hard drives.

[Andante]

I like the portability and compactness of CDs, too, as I often listen to music in the car and rarely travel more than a couple of miles with a CD for the player. But CDs take up space too, though not nearly as much as LPs. if future cars could be designed so you could access an online digital library while driving, then there would be no need for CD players or physical discs.

I have a 6 CD player in my car, I convert CDs to mp3@192kbps so an 800MB disc will hold approx 5 normal CDs.
also have a lot of pod casts on CD some @192 and others a lower rate I find that the quality is good enough when driving but the wide dynamics of classical still make the quite passages too faint to hear over the road noise so I now have a few Folk and Jazz in the mix.