CD-format to be abandoned by major labels by the end of 2012

http://www.side-line.com/news_comments.php?id=46980_0_2_0_C

just to share...

recently Besnard Lakes - Canadian band released their album only in vinyl with free code for digital download.

Ooooh, dangerous subject here ...

bassraptor wrote:Ooooh, dangerous subject here ...

sting wrote:

recently Besnard Lakes - Canadian band released their album only in vinyl with free code for digital download.

Does that mean you have to buy the LP to get the download? Are they selling the digital download for those who are not into vinyl?

bassraptor wrote:Ooooh, dangerous subject here ...

hahaha..bassraptor, not my intention to creates any unfavorable situation here . I got lots of cds too... .

Vinyl for those into it of course but they do provide the code for digital download in case they need for the mp3, ipod..etc. separate code for digital download are available too...

correction on the first posting, the band released in cd too but they provide the code for digital download for vinyl buyer...

Last time I joked about a future without CD, my foot was shot at ...

bassraptor, there will come a day your joke will be a reality.

audiophiles will be searching for a used pristine copy of silver disc.

they will pay top dollars to own them rather to listen to it.

well, meantime....i'm building my CD inventory.

IMHO, I don't think the world is ready for a widescale format shutdown so soon. This may mean some local cd shops may fold in unless they think of something out of the ordinary to sustain profitability and continuance. As for me, I'll continue to like acquiring cd's for music I won't have on LP. As much as I like to venture into digital streaming, but I think I'd like to have a hard copy album of the digital stuff for keeps. As much I may realize the short comings of 16bit CD sound compared to LP, I had hoped that the 16bit format could be superceded by something greater although SACD wasn't quite or made it, digital streaming seems an amazing potential, I really dread the demise of the good ole CD. I'm perhaps lucky to amass to a huge collection of CD's since long ago and I really can't imagine how tough it'll be if I were to amass my existing collection in very recent times. I'd probably pay up to 10X the price which I cannot afford and my family would strangle me for paying silly money for plastic discs. I've already feeling serious possible dents to my bank balance when shopping for LP's or vinyl related barang. So costly now.

liaw la.. I just bought Zee Avi Asian Edition CD yesterday...

so low tech of me..

James wrote:bassraptor, there will come a day your joke will be a reality.

audiophiles will be searching for a used pristine copy of silver disc.

they will pay top dollars to own them rather to listen to it.

well, meantime....i'm building my CD inventory.

Problem is .. the silver CD doesn't quite stand the test of time. There are many CDs from the 80s that have started oxidising already.

(CD's that have their entire surface silver-coated are even more prone to this problem, like the polygram/polydor label CDs)

Once there are enough pinholes or edge-rot creeping into the playing surface (due to the oxidation to the aluminium layer), the CD player cannot read it properly anymore & the CD is then relegated to being just a plastic coaster.

Perfect sound forever ...

once it becomes unplayable .. it does indeed reaches its highest state of perfection .. and it is forever ...

Something akin to a Bhagavad Gita moment here.... hahahahaha

Hmmm... SJ, who ever did try to shoot at you... err your foot I mean... .

The Tom Petty MOJO album was similar actually. You buy either the LP or the DVD and inside they give you a code which you can use to download the digital version from the website. MOJO was provided in 24/48 lossless as well as MP3 and ALAC which were both lossy. I was given 24hours and as would be expected, downloaded ALL 3 version, just for keeps (paid for the LP already what ! )

I believe I don't even have one CD album thats deteriorated for any reason to the point of unplayable. My oldest cd's date back to the mid 80's. I've always followed my own methods of careful storing and maintenance proceedures that have kept each and everyone as prestine as possible. Except for a number of used cd's with already yellowed or less than prestine paper inserts due to its previous ownership, I can only maintain and not let it further deteriorate since I acquired them.

cmboy wrote:I believe I don't even have one CD album thats deteriorated for any reason to the point of unplayable. My oldest cd's date back to the mid 80's. I've always followed my own methods of careful storing and maintenance proceedures that have kept each and everyone as prestine as possible. Except for a number of used cd's with already yellowed or less than prestine paper inserts due to its previous ownership, I can only maintain and not let it further deteriorate since I acquired them.

Good for you. But don't expect the rest of the world to be as lucky (or as careful within practical limits) as yourself.

mugenfoo wrote:Good for you. But don't expect the rest of the world to be as lucky (or as careful within practical limits) as yourself.

Perhaps I should also wear gloves when handling them in future, they could become VERY precious if rumor is true.

Nope, not my hand, pic taken off the net, not surprised there ARE people doing it.

cmboy wrote:

mugenfoo wrote:Good for you. But don't expect the rest of the world to be as lucky (or as careful within practical limits) as yourself.

Perhaps I should also wear gloves when handling them in future, they could become VERY precious if rumor is true.

Nope, not my hand, pic taken off the net, not surprised there ARE people doing it.

Thats a marvelous idea !
Perhaps you could also hold your breath while you're handling your CDs as well. Or better yet, borrow one of those "bunny suits" from the Intel commercials of the Pentium II era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvt65mHXmR4

Cant wait for Amcorp Mall to turn into a CD flea market

Whatever the future holds for the music format, I am sure that CD will still have a place in user's heart.

Heck, I am still using MiniDisk after the format dies 11 years ago.

I am still using cassettes as well.

And yes, for someone whom never used LPs before, I went back to search for them.

Its a cycle which CD will face it to but does not mean people will stop using them.

So, major labels will stop producing CDs. Lets download them and burn it on CD.

I like the flea market sentence. Will still buy CD if the price is very low. Some albums are also easier to be found in CD format and I can play them in my car.

Cmboy, MF, you can always go to the extreme we do in the chip fabrication industry : build a clean room with filtration system that takes our 99% of airborne dust, entrance must go through an 'air shower' which blows away the dust on your body, then wear a clean suit, put on a respirator - mask type - so you don't blow your germs on to your precious CDs. Ah yes, don't let those dirty hands touch your precious CD, not even with a glove on, build a robot arm. Heck, build one of the catridge robots mainframe customers use, a huge enclosure with a computerized system which tracks where every one of the CD is stored, and then a robot arm which fetches the CD and puts it into the transport or CDP for you. However, I would recommend you retain the human aspect of playing your CD. At least give yourself the pleasure of pressing the 'play' button on the remote....

WongKN, thank you very much for amusing me on further extremes in this case. I love my belongings especially these things in near prestine or perfect examples. I'm like that. As for the human touch, I's personally do all the tinkering, tweakings and what have you on the equipment and you bet its a very personal human touch to the highest possible perfection. I've already instilled the same philosophy or culture to my son who'd inherit my stuff in future.

Hmmm..this reminds me start printing little labels to stick on each and every CD album. "Handle with extreme care".
I've bought a very great shareware program called Music Collectorz years ago to catalog my entire collection, it have all my extra input as to where and how much I got it for, my personal notes on nearly all the albums in my collection. Very very useful program to keep track and for any reference.


No joke!

WongKN wrote:Cmboy, MF, you can always go to the extreme we do in the chip fabrication industry : build a clean room with filtration system that takes our 99% of airborne dust, entrance must go through an 'air shower' which blows away the dust on your body, then wear a clean suit, put on a respirator - mask type - so you don't blow your germs on to your precious CDs. Ah yes, don't let those dirty hands touch your precious CD, not even with a glove on, build a robot arm. Heck, build one of the catridge robots mainframe customers use, a huge enclosure with a computerized system which tracks where every one of the CD is stored, and then a robot arm which fetches the CD and puts it into the transport or CDP for you. However, I would recommend you retain the human aspect of playing your CD. At least give yourself the pleasure of pressing the 'play' button on the remote....

Sounds like a wafer fab. Must not forget the ESD shoes!!

Ah yes, the ESD shoes. I forgot about those. Yes indeed, I modelled this after the wafer fabrication plants I visited, both locally and overseas.

Cmboy, now, does this get you thinking of how next to progress ? But I got to salute you for catalogging your collection. All of my friends only managed to get to the stage of buying and installing the software. After the first hundred of so titles, out of several thousands, progress becomes minimum. Or non existent. Too much work it seems !

I myself would like to catalog my collection as it has grown too large and I am starting to buy LPs I already have. But I seriously think I will probably go the same way my 'good friend' has gone with this catalogging business.

I think cd collecting is hugely more fun than invovling a postal stamp collection. Hmmm... Stamp collection? Fond memories of some trying, never got further than one album in those days. For years, cd collecting was a great personal satisfaction in many ways and eventhough its 2nd fiddle to collecting LP's. LP's are just too bulky, getting very expensive and I think there's only so much I'd further collect. CD's LP's..I just love both of it but can't have all.

This catalog program is really invaluable to me. In many instances I use this to compare some facts or physical data of what I've got and some potential disc that could be better (or worse) when I'm shopping around or something that comes up for sale. In short, I'll say..VERY useful when you need it most. I fully recommend it for people with large collection. For a small fee you can even host your collection online for your own easy reference if you're out.

The blunt truth and in practice of having a huge collection of albums is that a large percentage of albums are hardly or never played with, until you think of it. Mine doesn't collect dust..how can it? its well sealed up.

Until very recently I inherited from my late mom, a 50 year old huge burmese teak colonial type wardrobe. I had spent months refurbishing its wood surface it to its former glory. I'm thinking of doing a major internal conversion to house my CD and LP collection. I really got to put my mind on this soon. I had even thought of installing an old but functioning laptop inside just for the cataloging program (just WinXP and program, no other frills). Wifey is already grumbling at me to quickly do something about it.

50 yr old wardrobe eh ? Ever thought of the possibility that it might be worth a lot of money to collectors ? And if you sell it, you might possibly get enough to buy your CDs and LPs for the next few years, maybe even decades !!!

Nolah, just joking. My parents has one of these too, colonial type wardrobe and probably even more than 50 yrs old. Has had many people eyeing it, offering to buy it. But I agree with my parents; NOT SELLING ! It is something like one of the heritage of the family la. Our only regret is that we threw away the 'crown', sort of a 'hat' that adorns the top of the wardrobe. It has intricate wood carvings, of flowers, etc as decoration. We didn't know better then, 'chor then' (kacau space only) so we kept the wardrobe to as storage space and threw away the crown. Now only we regret. The ignorance of being young...

Well, back to the main topic at hand. Personally I am not so much disturbed by the prospect of whether the major labels will or will not be abandoning CDs but rather the question of "what, if not CDs". I.e. if ppl like Sony, Phillips, etc are not going to make CDs, then how will they distribute their music to sell. I suspect it will be via the internet as downloads. They have been fighting a losing battle against illegal file sharing site for decades. If can't beat them, join them. There have been numerous successes in selling music via the download path. When the singer Dan Fogelberg died of cancer, his widow released a love song he composed and sang specially for her on one Valentine's day when Dan was away on tour and couldn't be with his wife. What she did was to offer the song (in MP3 format) as download for a fee which is then donated towards a charity for cancer patients and research. It was hugely successful. Hundreds of thousands of downloads, and lots of contribution to charity. The same model can be adopted for commercial (i.e. for profit) distribution as well.

However, the details are where the devil is. To me, it is not so much the question of it being chargeable download, perhaps like HDTracks but rather WHAT SPECIFICATION will the CD replacement be. My main worry is the 'dumbing down' of the music. I.e. by far the most popular format for download ppl is MP3 and other lossy formats. So will the music majors be canning CDs and replacing it with downloadable music in MP3 format ?!!! My main issue is again that I notice that HDTracks is now promoting MP3 as 'standard definition' and CDs as 'high definition''.

So, if the music labels cancels CD but migrates to purchaseable downloads, but still in CD or better still, higher resolution, then it is progress and good news. Even if the resolution is 'only' 24/48, which the Tom Petty MOJO album is in, it is still progress and a step forward. My main worry is the replacement will be MP3 or lossy ALAC (for the Mac users).

And then, of course there is the issue of price. By right, the savings in manufacturing, distribution and retail selling of CDs, which is not incurred in internet downloads -should- result in cheaper music. But, how often does big manufacturers have us, consumers benefit in mind ?

Food for discussion ?

Linn took a bold step to abandon CD all together, no more CD player from Linn, btw do they still produce LP12 Linn Sondek turn table ? Anyway their CD players never stood a chance because always compared to LP12 ..

If not mistaken, not too long ago a decision by EMI Music affected the Malaysian music industry by dropping all their Asian music. However, WEA now hold the rights to reissues of local albums. In other words, EMI Music is now by WEA.

In recent months there's been a resurge of local 80's 90's Malay albums CD re-issue. Sudirman, Broery, Search, Wings, Othman Hamzah, Kathy Ibrahim, Fran, Sheila Majid. I picked up many of these. I think they issued one huge batch and thats it, no more. The issue that irked me most were some local EMI artist compilations that are audibly vinyl to digital rips. Some of these are REALLY BAD SOUNDING! probably a worn LP and FILTHY STYLUS!

Yup, LP12 is still a current model, albeit in its NNN'th incarnation already.
cmboy is the Linn expert.... he can shed more light on this matter.

Linn's foray into CD was their then-famous Karik/Numerik Transport-DAC combo.

But i don't forsee CD to die off anytime soon. Its still a pretty convenient and robust format for the everyday joe & jane.

mugenfoo wrote:cmboy is the Linn expert.... he can shed more light on this matter.

Me no expert, but passionate about it though!.. Nope! I won't hijack this thread and talk about LP12.

Quite a lot said in another past thread thats now stagnated.

come what may as i hv close to 1100cds that can last me a lifetime (thats what my wife said) listen to one cd/day and finish at the end of 3yrs and start all over again...

just read somewhere tht some music stores in united states are now offering downloads which they will then burn into a cd for the customer.
i.e. u pick the music files, the store worker will download for you and make a playlist and then burn into cd-r.

I could easily assume CD format by local artists or album re-issues will still be available for a longer time in Malaysia, even when cassettes are supposed to be dead, yet there's still exist a company that still produces cassette tape albums. I think Siti Nurhaliza would still insist albums on CD, not ready for music downloads quite yet.

I could foresee the rarity of original cd albums may bring about some repercussions to the displeasure for some or many who insist on buying cd's, despite whatever shortcomings in SQ. Ebay prices (obviously higher profitability for Ebay too)for used cd's may see a jump and we'd be seeing obscenity. I read that since the demise of Technics SL1200 TT, the price of NOS or NIB have jumped to something like US$1.2k.
Look at the prices for desirable LP's, prices can be mind boggling.
So, anyone having a sizeable and collectible collection, especially early, desirable and prized recordings may be sitting on a gold mine. I could include myself as fortunate?

yesterday i was at victoria music in amcorp mall and saw box sets priced at rm55.90.

these are no-frills box sets without any plastic jewel cases. each box set has five cds - so each cd works out to be rm11.18.

these are original stuff marketed by a company called rhino (www.rhino.com) and the cds are pressed in the EU.

needless to say i bought a few box-sets - coltrane, emmylou harris, linda ronstadt, carly simon, tom waits and charles mingus.

these box sets apparently went on sale only yesterday.

sflam wrote:yesterday i was at victoria music in amcorp mall and saw box sets priced at rm55.90.
these box sets apparently went on sale only yesterday.

No lah! these (if we're speaking about the same) were on sale many months ago, available at Rock Corner (last seen at Curve, Subang Parade branch) and Victoria (less album sets).

Yes, no frills, supposedly cheaply compiled ta'dak very laku considered oldies flocked to the market. Worth it if is just for the music. I happened to notice some sly Amcorp sellers selling the same set but EACH disc for Rm20. Crafty ploy if you asked me. Walk 2 escalators down ask Victoria to order the whole set if don't have for Rm55?.

ok, all musicphiles take note.

ignore all those unscrupulous amcorp traders and head to victoria to buy 5 cds for rm55.90.

there're no-frills box sets marketed by another company available - 4 cds for rm40 something.

Those box sets are rm90 for 2 sets at popular book store, ikano.

tx for info.

cheaper and cheaper...

will drop by popular next time i visit ikano.

did not spot them at popular, ikano, when i was there yesterday.
however, i saw them at rock corner, the curve. priced at rm55.90 each box and rm100 for two.

Last seen at Amazon UK, these box sets seemed to be selling at around £10-12 a box. How wonderful if our local exchange is the same rate and like buying these boxsets for RM10+.

Its really rock bottom pricing and deal for 5 cd's.

Unfortunately it isn't to be here. because prices like that can reduce disc piracy to minimum or none.

cmboy wrote:I think cd collecting is hugely more fun than invovling a postal stamp collection. Hmmm... Stamp collection? Fond memories of some trying, never got further than one album in those days. For years, cd collecting was a great personal satisfaction in many ways and eventhough its 2nd fiddle to collecting LP's. LP's are just too bulky, getting very expensive and I think there's only so much I'd further collect. CD's LP's..I just love both of it but can't have all.

This catalog program is really invaluable to me. In many instances I use this to compare some facts or physical data of what I've got and some potential disc that could be better (or worse) when I'm shopping around or something that comes up for sale. In short, I'll say..VERY useful when you need it most. I fully recommend it for people with large collection. For a small fee you can even host your collection online for your own easy reference if you're out.

The blunt truth and in practice of having a huge collection of albums is that a large percentage of albums are hardly or never played with, until you think of it. Mine doesn't collect dust..how can it? its well sealed up.

Until very recently I inherited from my late mom, a 50 year old huge burmese teak colonial type wardrobe. I had spent months refurbishing its wood surface it to its former glory. I'm thinking of doing a major internal conversion to house my CD and LP collection. I really got to put my mind on this soon. I had even thought of installing an old but functioning laptop inside just for the cataloging program (just WinXP and program, no other frills). Wifey is already grumbling at me to quickly do something about it.

Hear hear!!!