Are CDs Going The Way Of The 8-Track?

The Closing Of A Major CD Chain Store Shows The Shift Towards Online Music Downloads

(CBS)  The song is over at Virgin Music Megastores.

The shuttering this weekend of Virgin's last two stores - in Manhattan and Hollywood - marks the death of a once booming chain - and another nail in the coffin of the music CD, reports CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason.

CD sales nationwide are down by half since 2000. So Virgin's parent company closed its 25 Megastores and is leasing the space to other businesses.

"Everything on these racks, though I don't like to say it, is available on iTunes, is available on Amazon," said Simon Wright, the CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group.

And that's where music sales have shifted. Apple's iTunes is now the nation's largest music seller - with 20 percent of the market. Amazon has about 8 percent. And some studies show most music is now downloaded for free illegally.

"The only reason people are coming here is because they like the buzz of it," Wright said. "They like the sound, they like the feeling, they like that they can hang put, pick things up and look at it."

Which leaves music lovers longing for that special browsing experience.

"CDs now are catering to fans who like the object, who like high sound quality of a CD, but then they also want the pictures and the booklet, and they want to look at the liner notes and the lyrics and the photos," said Michael Endelman, a senior editor at Rolling Stone.

Two years after the lights went out at the once mighty Tower Records chain, Virgin was the last giant standing. The void affects music fans, and artists.

"The death of the CD and the sort of shrinking of record labels makes it a lot harder for small acts and even for mid-level acts to get their music out," Endelman said.

And the big acts simply aren't selling albums like they used to. Back in 2000, when 'N Sync's album "No Strings Attached" debuted at number one on the charts - the album sold 2.6 million CDs in its first week.

This year, Green Day needed to sell only 600,000 copies of its "21st Century Breakdown" to hit number one.

"There's a huge generation gap in music," said Russ Crupnick, a vice president of NPD Group, a marketing research firm. "If you take a look at teens, for many teens the CD is to what an 8-track might be to me - it's an antique, it's an artifact."

An artifact, that's getting increasingly harder to find.

[cajundweeb]

At least there's Barnes and Noble and Borders- they sell music along with books

[cattlekate1]

CBS' new format is going the to the way of tabloid SKY news. Hate it. Let's just have a list or articles, and not so much photos, as well as fluff about nonsense.

[number1GI]

Well of course they will. Just as soon as something better is invented and marketed.
Why I remember when reel to reel tape recorders came out and one of the guys in the dorm bought one and set it up in his room. We all (those of us who could not afford one) went down to his room all starry eyed and breathless to hear the dulcide tones eminiating from the woofers and tweeters It was a sight to behold and a thing of beauty Yes I am being faceitious
Point being everytime you go out and spend beaucoup bucks for a system it's ancient history a short while later
I still have cassette tapes that belong in a museum. And CD's get all scratched up why chase windmills
Besides nI preffer live performances anyway Just have to keep fresh batteries in my hearing aides

[linuxglobe]

Purchase a usb vinyl turntable and find some good vinyl to rip into itunes plus format, it sounds so wonderful on your trusty ipod touch or shuffle! :D I sometimes still buy CDs so I can re-rip if I have to. Vinyl will be around a lot longer than CDs, however, so find some good albums to rip and then store them somewhere safe! :D

Markus McLaughlin
@linuxglobe at twitter.com
http://linuxglobe.net
Hudson, MA, USA

[mwg0735-2009]

I love CDs but the problem is that I usually only like one or two songs on the CD. So why pay for the full cost of the CD when I can get 2 songs for $2.00. If everyone is using MP3s then improve the audio.

But I am thinking that CDs are history.

[PsiCop278]

Way back in the 80s, I was an avid music buyer. I bought maybe 150 LPs (i.e. vinyl) and almost as many CDs once they had become the standard. I was a Rolling Stone subscriber with a strong interest in the music business, and a BMG Music Club member, for years.

But then, in the early 90s, I stopped buying music.

Was it because I could get songs online? No way. Although the Internet existed then, trading/selling music online simply was not happening at that time. Nor was it even in the offing. So it wasn't the online music trade (legitimate or not) that stopped me.

It was, instead, the crap.

Honestly, the music business fell to pieces in the space of just a few years. I got tired of spending c. $15-18 per CD to get one, maybe two good songs off it ... and was finding it ever harder to find CDs that had even one good song on them at all.

By 1994 my CD buying was limited mostly to gift-giving, and then only if I knew the person wanted that CD. When I got my iPod a few years ago I started buying music online, but nearly everything I've bought has been songs that had been in my LP library, thus saving me the labor of getting them rendered into computer files. I can count on one hand the number of new releases I've purchased.

It's disingenuous for the music business, now, to complain that iTunes and its alternatives are putting music stores out of business. From where I sit, they were doing that, years ago, all by themselves. By putting out crap instead of music. And they know it.

While I'm sure the business has been dented by piracy, that complaint is overblown. The success of iTunes and its alternatives shows that people are willing to pay for the music they want.

The problem is, the record companies refuse to put out music people want.

[TX-Sunset]

In my opinion, the Music industry, RIAA included, only have themselves to blame. I remember you could by an LP or cassette for 8 bucks. So what does the music industry do? Move to the CD format, charge 2x, 3x, 4x as much for media that is cheaper to make. The consumer is not quite as dumb as they think. And honestly, I think it is easier for new bands to emerge. Anyone can write a song and post it up for the world to hear. Make a video and throw it up on youtube. The internet is the new Record Producer.

[Dgunner]

I record everything through Bose system and transfer to ipod . This still is the cheapeat and clearest way to transfer sound . You gotta get yourself a Bose, All of the cmpressed and doctored music will sound so much better. I have a bose that can clean the hiss out of old lps and rerecord with the highest peak possible . If its not a bose your not rockin.

[Thalia-9]

by Hulk-Smash June 13, 2009 5:18 PM PDT
Hulk still love old Rush eight-track. Love to smash dashboard to Fly By Night.

How can anyone not love Rush! LOLOL

[Thalia-9]

by britney171 June 14, 2009 12:19 AM PDT
Music today IS crap, because artists are not being developed the way they were 10 to 20 years ago. It used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars of time and talent of recording engineers and producers who, spending months using the finest recording equipment available, took the raw creative ideas of an artist and turned them into a true masterpiece on every level. Now, most artists are left to produce themselves in their own basement

Guess it depends upon which genre you favor...to say that music today is 'crap' is very harsh as music grows and changes...we have droves of very talented musicians! The 'crap' you speak of may be on the reality shows who give hype for a few months, and then upon obtaining a record contract, the public speaks by not buying their music so they're dropped...but we have awesome artists who have withstood the test of time and are still playing to a lot of people, both young being introduced and old, who still appreciate, who pay to see them live or download their songs. And there are awesome new, and not so new bands as well! Sheesh! You must prefer only one genre???

[Thalia-9]

by azure13 June 13, 2009 5:12 PM PDT
I still prefer CDs. Much higher quality and they serve as a master copy. I can then convert the music the way I like for use on my MP3 player.

I have to laugh at people who buy all their music from Itunes. Talk about a rip off.

Huh...maybe you're ipod or dock player...or computer needs some work...cause all the music we've purchase from itunes is awesome...no different quality than the cd copy - i prefer to pay the .99 cents per song, or 10 bucks for the whole cd...it's still cheaper - and sounds just as good...at least on our computer, ipods and the dock...

[Thalia-9]

Guilty! we purchase ALL our music from i-tunes and can't remember the last time we even looked in a music store (unless it's for Carrington)not everyone likes every track on a CD, this way we can pick and choose our music that we want - or we listen to Sirius or KBPI, hear a song we like, go to i-tunes and buy it - and the artists get a royalty fee for every song downloaded, so I disagree w/ theartlover as for discouraging them to make music...on the contrary, if they have a huge hit and you can buy it for .99 cents, they'll make more than counting on people to buy a $20 cd

[ToolMangler1]

Not unless they make burning DVDs more reliable and faster than they now are. DVD might go the way of 8 track if Blu-Ray has its way.

[caligula1--2008]

<Nothing, MP3, CD, or whatever else comes down the track will ever sound as good as a well recorded vinyl recording.>

True ONLY if you have a super high quality turntable and an all tube based amplifier and speaker system. The REALLY good recordings are magnetic tape, but it decays far far faster than vinyl does. On a TYPICAL turntable system of the turntable era, the digital version will sound much MUCH better than the vinyl recording. So, unless you're willing to spend $20k on an analogue stereo system, go with the digital version.

[stickdog3]

Let CD's go by the wayside. And hopefully, that which is old will be new again. I'm talking about albums. Nothing replaces the Lp. Its sound quality is far superior than CD's. These digital discs, CD's MP3 and all these other computerized formats are junk. They don't have the tonality, the bass, nor, do they give you the sonic quality of an Lp. Most clubs still have DJ's playing albums.
Notice at The American Music Awards and The Grammys, its still "Record of The Year" "Album of the Year" it will never be CD of the year or MP3of the year, never. Please bring back Vinyl Albums full time. Boy, I use to love going to Tower Records every Saturday up on Sunset Strip here in L. A. that was an adventure every week, the comraderie of all the (real) music lovers, seeing the latest oversize albums attached to the outside of the bldg, to me this was nirvana. The recording Industry would do itself proud by bringing back the Lp for good. Let these artifical sounding formats (CD's MP3) go by the way side. Cassettes even have better sounding quality than thes formats. Like always the deciding factor is money, how unfortunate. Maybe just maybe Tower Records will rise again.

[caligula1--2008]

Posted by sly_64 at 5:26 AM : Jun 15, 2009 : "I download everything from Limewire, I've never had any virus. Since I originally bought this music on LP, casette and CD, I will not purchase it again in an MP3 format. They've gotten my money 3 times for the same product, that's enough."

Well Sly, you don't HAVE too, instead you can take your CD's and import them to your computer (re-compressing them to MP3 on the way) at high quality and NEVER have to buy the digital versions. Think of a CD as the backup copy for your digital copy. Once you've moved the data to your computer/entertainment system you carefully put the CD away where no one can get at it and scratch it (and preferably a temperature controlled environment to extend CD life, as they DO decay after a century or so otherwise, and you can maybe add another century this way). Since I DON'T think optical drives (CD/DVD readers/recorders) are going away anytime soon, that means your CD's will be a reasonable backup until some new storage media comes along that holds tons more, then you just burn those high quality digital copies to THAT format, but keep your original CD's as proof of fair use ownership.

iPods are comparatively cheap when placed against the value of the CD's they protect by NOT making you use the physical CD's and risking ruining them. My wife's 160G iPod saves many many thousands of dollars of CD's from being damaged or destroyed in a regular CD player, because all their content has been lifted from the CD and stored digitally both on her iPod, her computer and on a backup hard drive. Not much chance she'll lose any of her tracks that way. You can do the same thing with a direct drive turntable and the right sound program for your LP's, though the process is a bit more complex.

Think about it.

[sly_64]

I'm afraid this will discourage many musicians to persist in making music. Truly a shame.
Posted by PhilistineTheArtLover at 3:51 PM : Jun 14, 2009
----
Well said. And this is another reason why I still buy the CDs. How often have you gotten an album, because there are a couple of popular songs on it, only to find later that a few of the other tracks grow on you? Even to the point where those other tracks become your favorites?

I would hate it if CDs went away. I'm sure there will always be a market for them or vinyl.
Posted by azure13

Anyone who is a true musician will never stop making music. Those who would stop are only in it for the money.

[spiritwalk]

What is the major difference between Dark Side of the Moon on a vinyl album and on a CD?

You can't clean the seeds and roll one on the CD cover

[spiritwalk]

What was that Tommy Lee Jones line from Men in Black?

Everytime they come out with a new technology I have to buy the White Album again (?)

[azure13]

You know, I grew up listening to vynil (Thank God!) and on every album I bought there were plenty of songs I didn't care for.
At first.
But having the opportunity to re-listen to many of the songs I dismissed gave me the chance to reconsider and and learn to appreciate them.
Again, thank God!
Nowadays, you listen to an "album", dismiss a whole bunch of songs in them, buy the one or two you like, move on and forget about the entire body of work.
I really don't see the value in that.
I think this new way to purchase music is a slap in the face of the artists people claim to appreciate.
So now musicians not only have to put up with the doubts and put-downs of the businessmen running the music industry but also from their own "fans".
I'm afraid this will discourage many musicians to persist in making music. Truly a shame.
Posted by PhilistineTheArtLover at 3:51 PM : Jun 14, 2009
----
Well said. And this is another reason why I still buy the CDs. How often have you gotten an album, because there are a couple of popular songs on it, only to find later that a few of the other tracks grow on you? Even to the point where those other tracks become your favorites?

I would hate it if CDs went away. I'm sure there will always be a market for them or vinyl.