Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
Since the dawn of music, one constant has remained true — people love listening to their music.
One of the things that’s always changing and has great effect on consumers, however, is how we get our hands on our tunes.
Ever since the phonograph cyllinder’s introduction in 1877, the format for storing audio has undergone constant reinvention. Many of today’s audiophiles would argue the industry got it right 1948 with the release of the vinyl record.
Cassette tapes and 8-Tracks emerged in the ’60s, and it took a while for a decent replacement to come out. Then, in 1982, the world was struck by a revolution — the compact disc, or CD.
It took a while for the format to catch on with casual consumers due to the high initial costs of the CDs and players for it, but once it did, it was seen as a brilliant new way to compactly store music.
The CD revolutionized — or rather, invented — the idea of portable music when, in 1984, Sony introduced the Discman. The portable CD player was hardly larger than the disc itself. For the first time, people were able to listen to their music on the go.
Since then, digital formats have asserted themselves as the ultimate way to buy music and have it on the road, primarily thanks to iTunes and the iPod. In the wake of iTunes’ rising, industry people had to realize that would eventually lead to the end of the CD — really, how much longer could the format last against this kind of competition?
Well, CD collectors’ worst nightmare has come true — various news outlets have announced that in late 2012, they will stop releasing music on CD. This essentially means the CD will be the last physical music format, the final way consumers will be able to purchase music and have something physical to hold.
I know the main function of CDs for some people now is to be ripped into iTunes and never looked at again, but then there are those who unwrap the layer of cellophane as they breathe in that new CD smell, pop the disc into their player of choice and listen to it as they look at the extra art, lyrics and liner notes in the included booklet.
For many music buyers, getting new music isn’t simply about acquiring fresh audio. There is a lot of ritual and tradition involved in waiting for and then finally getting your hands on a new release by a favorite band.
You would either pre-order it and wait for it to come in the mail with eager anticipation, or go to the store soon after it came out and hope they still had at least one copy in stock. There was a certain mystique to having an album by your favorite band.
CDs are to music fans what trading cards are to sports fans — their chance to own a small part of the game and feel connected in some small way. To further explore this metaphor, imagine if sports cards stopped being produced. Essentially, these cards are only a photo with statistics and a bit of biographical information on the back.
This same information is available online from a variety of sources, so what is the point of producing the physical cards?
Hobbyists would answer that by saying there are certain emotional investments and nostalgic feelings attached to opening a new pack of cards and seeing what you got. Well, there is a similar sensation when buying a new CD and looking to see what sort of interesting content the band included in the booklet.
CDs won’t be entirely killed off, however. One expected utilization of CDs will be for special editions of music releases, where the little extra things like art and liner notes are the highlight.
Perhaps when the CD is close to dying out, it will see a renaissance much like the one vinyl records has experienced in the past few years. Fans of vinyl missed holding that giant disc and putting the needle on the right spot to find there track.
Consumers might not realize it now, but there is a certain set of nuances like this that will be lost with the discontinuation of the CD. The loss of the CD seems like a necessary evolution of audio storage, but it’s still sad to see it go.
