Say goodbye to the CD.....

[Esau]

....or at least in the future,perhaps anyway.

Interesting little article on the possible demise of the CD.I can relate to the writer of this article,as I imagine many other folks here can also.I doubt the CD will disappear permantly anytime soon,but I can see it slowly fading away I guess.

But I do also like the advantages that will and do come along with the idea of a home theater PC.I was and am also a collector of vinyl,CDs and cassettes,but latley my purchases have consideranly dropped (vinyl & cassettes anyway) due to the overall availablity and quality of most CDs out there and the amazing live downloads we all know so well,it also makes me wonder about the future of mp3s and if there will be new developments in how they are created and the quality of them in general(ie: lossy to lossless).I have recently obtained another computer and am already working on setting it up soley as another component to my stereo which is a major step for this stubborn music fan.

Anyway,I thought this was rather interesting and figured some of you folks would too.

http://www.itwriting.com/farewellcd.php

[Irie Guy]

For someone like me I will always prefer to have something tangible, ie. be able to hold. Showing off you collection is not nearly as impressive when there is no physicality to it. If all of your music is in digital form you also have to worry about having multiple backup solutions for when your HD fails. Long live the 78 and the 8 track!

[Esau]

I agree with you on the HD failure,but the chances of that occuring when the computer is not attached to the internet are considerably less.The tangible point you make I also have the same feels about,but also I am finding it really hard to replace much of my vinyl,except on CD.Plus the space all these milk cartons take up since I don't have a wall that I can put a shelve or case on to store the LPs.

But I sorta like the idea of having two 120 gig drives filled with music and readily available to me at the click of a button.It took me up until novemeber 2002 to finaly get a computer and stop using a friends to come online or download music,but now with all the live shows that I can get I wish I had done it long before,but what can ya do.

I still have a box of 8-tracks around here but my player has long bit the dust.Nothing like listening to wake of the flood or Europe 72 on 8 track.

[CyberHippie]

I have my fair share of cd's. But I have quite a huge music collection on my computer, in the neighborhood of 80-100gigs. Some of it ripped from my cd's, some live that I've never burned, some mp3's etc etc... I have my computer hooked into my stereo, and I probably listen off the computer more often than I play cd's. I love cuing up my whole digital music collection and just hitting random. It's a great way to hear so much different stuff that I forget about, or just don't get to listen to. It's CyberHippie radio. I love it!

Also I think services like Rhapsody, offering music on demand definetly have a lot of potential. Still I couldn't imagine giving up the tangibility of owning a piece of music. There is just something about opening and looking at the cd. I dunno, it's wierd...

[AdamH]

It's not the tangibility for me as much as the satisfaction of physically putting on a record. It surpasses the ease of both Mp3s and CDs. And there's no contemporary replacement for the vinyl sleeve that not only gives you track listings and band info (a la CD liner Notes) but usually interesting photos, and just a great canvas that many bands have taken advantage of.

One of my girlfriends co-workers lent her a record of some unkown german band, that was packaged in a folded roofing shingle. Ridiculous but more stimulating than staring at the Windows desktop while Winamp is playing.