The future of physical media

[jdandy]

I still remember when vinyl was the primary source, tape and FM were the alternatives. When compact discs came on the scene in the early 1980's, the chant was vinyl is dead. In fact, CD's damn near did kill vinyl as witnessed by the gradual closing of practically all the popular records stores that flourished, and the closing of record pressing plants around the world. The audio pundits were in lock step with their advertisers, all licking their chops trying to sell new CD players. Yep, vinyl was dead, or was it?

In my opinion, the same thing is taking place with the CD versus downloaded digital music files. The music industry wants physical media to disappear to reduce their manufacturing and distribution costs, read bigger profits. I have slowly begun to embrace hi-res digital downloads, but still prefer to own the physical media. I like handling the CD/SACD's, having a music library I can touch, feel, and use. I like knowing I have the permanent backup copies of music I have stored on a server's hard drive.

I believe that CD's and SACD's will continue to be manufactured and sold for a long time. Despite the reduced annual sales of CD's, and the increased sales of vinyl and downloads, the compact disc still yields the largest annual sales volume of all recorded media. There is still profit in CD/SACD sales, and there is still substantial worldwide demand. The CD's death is over hyped by those with vested interests in other media, but far from becoming a reality. Just because big box stores fail to profit from CD sales doesn't mean an Amazon or CD Universe model isn't making a huge profit with CD sales. The CD is dead? I don't think so, not by a long shot.

[1KW]

I hope your right Dan. I have to admit that when I buy new music the CD's are loaded into my music server and new playlists are updated for certain genre . I like the surprise of not knowing the next song, its kind of my own personal pandora uncompressed . Yesterday I bought 8 cd's ( 3 by Shelby Lynn, 2 by KD Lang, Wynton Marsalis, Eric Clapton, Donald Fagen )at the Princeton Record Exchange for $1.99 each and they all look like new once you open up the jewel case and play just fine. I actually went to look for a LP which was on back order. Even if they stop making cd's people will be selling there collections for us to buy

[djwhog]

And how does one download 5.1 sacd's? If the media was no more?