Format Wars
April 6, 2013 6:41 PM Subscribe
40 Years of Music Industry Change, In 40 Seconds or Less: A gif showing the revenue contribution from various music formats, 1973-present, based on RIAA figures.
What kiosk? Who is buying music videos? Synchronization? Who is buying physical singles? Who is buying all these CDs?
*plays I Keep Forgettin off of an mp3 cd*
posted by cmoj at 6:54 PM on April 6, 2013
*plays I Keep Forgettin off of an mp3 cd*
posted by cmoj at 6:54 PM on April 6, 2013
It's like watching a giant red Pac-Man in slow motion.
Yes, saying that makes me feel old.
(went back and added the hyphen to Pac-Man before someone jumped on me for omitting it)
posted by 1367 at 6:55 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Yes, saying that makes me feel old.
(went back and added the hyphen to Pac-Man before someone jumped on me for omitting it)
posted by 1367 at 6:55 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Why does the graph keep changing sizes and moving around? That is not helpful.
posted by agentofselection at 7:03 PM on April 6, 2013 [16 favorites]
posted by agentofselection at 7:03 PM on April 6, 2013 [16 favorites]
This is incomplete.
The entire pie should also grow and shrink to represent the total revenue.
If my guess is correct, gross revenue from album sales has been on the decline ever since the late 90s/early 00s, when online sharing created no-cost duplication and distribution, leading the industry to make repeated flailing attempts to create artificial scarcity in order to keep afloat. Without scarcity, the supply/demand ratio moves toward infinity, rendering capitalism impossible.
posted by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 7:06 PM on April 6, 2013 [8 favorites]
The entire pie should also grow and shrink to represent the total revenue.
If my guess is correct, gross revenue from album sales has been on the decline ever since the late 90s/early 00s, when online sharing created no-cost duplication and distribution, leading the industry to make repeated flailing attempts to create artificial scarcity in order to keep afloat. Without scarcity, the supply/demand ratio moves toward infinity, rendering capitalism impossible.
posted by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 7:06 PM on April 6, 2013 [8 favorites]
Yeah, that's kind of sloppy.
It's also not especially interesting, because they're not doing anything with total revenue. The slices are useful, I suppose, but the truly important bit is the total size of the pie. That information is not, as far as I can see, being conveyed.
posted by Malor at 7:06 PM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
It's also not especially interesting, because they're not doing anything with total revenue. The slices are useful, I suppose, but the truly important bit is the total size of the pie. That information is not, as far as I can see, being conveyed.
posted by Malor at 7:06 PM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
First off all, oy vey so many compression artifacts, these people need some lessons in how to properly make animated gifs.
But more importantly: it would be much more helpful to use a different kind of chart. The pie chart neatly illustrates the share of each medium, but surely it is also relevant to see how the total amount of revenue changes. What mediums brought large profits, and what mediums didn't?
posted by gkhan at 7:08 PM on April 6, 2013
But more importantly: it would be much more helpful to use a different kind of chart. The pie chart neatly illustrates the share of each medium, but surely it is also relevant to see how the total amount of revenue changes. What mediums brought large profits, and what mediums didn't?
posted by gkhan at 7:08 PM on April 6, 2013
As someone that went from LPs directly to CDs, I was surprised to learn that Cassettes had over 50% of the market for seven years.
posted by otters walk among us at 7:08 PM on April 6, 2013 [7 favorites]
posted by otters walk among us at 7:08 PM on April 6, 2013 [7 favorites]
Here's a graph of US total recorded music sales revenue over time.
Not pretty. Still looking for a graph of global revenue, but I can't imagine it's much prettier.
posted by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 7:16 PM on April 6, 2013
Not pretty. Still looking for a graph of global revenue, but I can't imagine it's much prettier.
posted by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 7:16 PM on April 6, 2013
Another graph, more useful, this time global data, segregated into digital, physical, performance rights and synch royalties (movie&TV use rights).
I do wonder if the industry began including performance and synch rights after gross receipts began to tank, or if they put more effort into selling rights after the advent of digital sales in a failed attempt to find new revenue. I expect the answer is both.
posted by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 7:20 PM on April 6, 2013
I do wonder if the industry began including performance and synch rights after gross receipts began to tank, or if they put more effort into selling rights after the advent of digital sales in a failed attempt to find new revenue. I expect the answer is both.
posted by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 7:20 PM on April 6, 2013
Who's been buying all those SACDs?
Besides me, I mean.
posted by infinitewindow at 7:28 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Besides me, I mean.
posted by infinitewindow at 7:28 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Spoiler alert: 8-track does not come back.
Yet. I've seen a hipster taco trailer using an 8-track deck and it took me a minute to remember how to use the damned things.
Isn't there another, similar gif going around with this data? I'm pretty sure I've seen something very similar with slightly different categories for digital music.
posted by immlass at 7:32 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Yet. I've seen a hipster taco trailer using an 8-track deck and it took me a minute to remember how to use the damned things.
Isn't there another, similar gif going around with this data? I'm pretty sure I've seen something very similar with slightly different categories for digital music.
posted by immlass at 7:32 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Who is buying music videos?
I think I might have paid $1 for an SNL sketch/music/video thingy, at some point, before Hulu made that irrelevant. I think it was the Andy Samberg song about eating cupcakes and going to see The Chronicles Of Narnia? It was in high demand around the office, and this was when streaming video was still a total bitch. It was kinda worth it to pay a buck for the video and be able to play it sans buffering.
Who is buying physical singles?
Vinyl nerds, I'm guessing? Unless it's CD singles, and then I'm going to assume clueless grandmothers trying to indulge little Caitlyn's Justin Bieber obsession, but doing it totally wrong.
Who is buying all these CDs?
Your mom.
posted by Sara C. at 7:35 PM on April 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
I think I might have paid $1 for an SNL sketch/music/video thingy, at some point, before Hulu made that irrelevant. I think it was the Andy Samberg song about eating cupcakes and going to see The Chronicles Of Narnia? It was in high demand around the office, and this was when streaming video was still a total bitch. It was kinda worth it to pay a buck for the video and be able to play it sans buffering.
Who is buying physical singles?
Vinyl nerds, I'm guessing? Unless it's CD singles, and then I'm going to assume clueless grandmothers trying to indulge little Caitlyn's Justin Bieber obsession, but doing it totally wrong.
Who is buying all these CDs?
Your mom.
posted by Sara C. at 7:35 PM on April 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
Since 1973?
Stretch it back a few thousand more years. That would put the blip that this represents into better perspective.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:56 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Stretch it back a few thousand more years. That would put the blip that this represents into better perspective.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:56 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
It actually wouldn't be such a bad idea to add sheet music and 78 omnibuses to the chart.
posted by Sara C. at 7:59 PM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Sara C. at 7:59 PM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
Man, people really hung on to cassettes, didn't they? (says the person who still has cassettes from high school) (and listens to them)
posted by scratch at 8:06 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by scratch at 8:06 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Where's 'torrent'?
posted by mazola at 8:07 PM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by mazola at 8:07 PM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
Oh yeah. 'Revenue'. Carry on!
posted by mazola at 8:09 PM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by mazola at 8:09 PM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
This shows how catastrophically the RIAA fucked up in the late '90s, when their members were bickering over whether minidisc or music DVDs would be the next cash cow. No, everyone wanted internet-downloadable music, with some vinyl for the hi-fi hobbyists and turntablists.
Sean Fanning got tired of waiting, and created Napster. The industry then fought internet-downloadable content, until Steve Jobs convinced them not to, and this got them even deeper in the shit as the iTunes monoculture took over, and encouraged the non-kool-aid drinkers to just swipe what they wanted.
We're leveling out, now, with subscription services. This is bad, as no-one really makes a lot of money from subscription services except the subscription service. This is good, as, once one of them figures out how to pay even obscure artists a living wage and superstars a million-dollar paycheck, it will pick up where CD left off.
We may be a decade or two out, tho.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:14 PM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
Sean Fanning got tired of waiting, and created Napster. The industry then fought internet-downloadable content, until Steve Jobs convinced them not to, and this got them even deeper in the shit as the iTunes monoculture took over, and encouraged the non-kool-aid drinkers to just swipe what they wanted.
We're leveling out, now, with subscription services. This is bad, as no-one really makes a lot of money from subscription services except the subscription service. This is good, as, once one of them figures out how to pay even obscure artists a living wage and superstars a million-dollar paycheck, it will pick up where CD left off.
We may be a decade or two out, tho.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:14 PM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch: Here's a graph of US total recorded music sales revenue over time.
Not pretty.
Other sources I've seen, but can't remember, point out that the total amount of money going to artists goes up every year, even though the sale of recorded music is dropping.
Which, really, is as it should be; the record companies are trying to make money by charging usurious rates to copy bits, when basically everyone that can buy music has one or more highly specialized bit-copying machines, which are cheap to buy, easy to use, and cost very little to run.
In that environment, selling bits is a very low-value endeavor; you need to do a lot of it to make it terribly worthwhile.
posted by Malor at 8:17 PM on April 6, 2013
Not pretty.
Other sources I've seen, but can't remember, point out that the total amount of money going to artists goes up every year, even though the sale of recorded music is dropping.
Which, really, is as it should be; the record companies are trying to make money by charging usurious rates to copy bits, when basically everyone that can buy music has one or more highly specialized bit-copying machines, which are cheap to buy, easy to use, and cost very little to run.
In that environment, selling bits is a very low-value endeavor; you need to do a lot of it to make it terribly worthwhile.
posted by Malor at 8:17 PM on April 6, 2013
Man, people really hung on to cassettes, didn't they?
The cassette was just about the perfect medium, really. Just the right size, never skips, never breaks. If you wanted to listen to your music while walking down the street or driving in your car, it was pretty much the only good option for a solid 20-30 years there.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:23 PM on April 6, 2013 [5 favorites]
The cassette was just about the perfect medium, really. Just the right size, never skips, never breaks. If you wanted to listen to your music while walking down the street or driving in your car, it was pretty much the only good option for a solid 20-30 years there.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:23 PM on April 6, 2013 [5 favorites]
Slap*Happy: This is good, as, once one of them figures out how to pay even obscure artists a living wage and superstars a million-dollar paycheck, it will pick up where CD left off.
We may be a decade or two out, tho.
I'm really not sure that will ever happen. The days of artists making millions from selling copies of music are probably permanently over. For almost all of recorded history, musicians made very little... enough to live on, if they were good, but they essentially never got wealthy. So there was no retirement plan, but most of them could continue to play well into old age, and it sure doesn't look like the great ones could ever give up their instruments; that would be like asking them to stop breathing.
For several decades in the 20th century, companies that recorded music, and then sold copies on vinyl, made huge amounts of money. This was because the recordings could be nearly perfect, every single time, and you didn't have to deal with the musician just to hear some music. This made them untold billions, while the actual artists got almost nothing.
Eventually, they were shamed into sharing more, though they did their damnedest to cheat artists out of every dime they could. The window during which a recording artist could get really wealthy was very short, in the span of human history, no more than a couple of decades. And very few artists did that well; the vast majority had most or all of their earnings stolen.
So that market is collapsing; it is not worth $15 anymore to make a copy of an album. It's truly worth maybe a nickel. Maybe. The hard cost of making a copy of a single song is something like a thousandth of one cent. So, with that little real value in that service, it seems unlikely to me that very many people are going to be getting wealthy from selling copies.
What appears to be happening is that the really smart artists are connecting with their fans and selling them tons of other stuff directly, cutting out the middleman. They're avoiding a system that has exploited them for nearly a century, and are now directly providing a product to their fans, and asking for money. And, while they're not making millions, many of them are doing far better than they would have in the tender embrace of the record companies.
Having lots and lots of people making some money every month seems much, much fairer and healthier than the old system. The streaming services are loss leaders, just like radio always used to be. And the sooner the record companies go away, the better for everyone. We absolutely do not need their services anymore, at least not as a conglomerate.
posted by Malor at 8:38 PM on April 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
We may be a decade or two out, tho.
I'm really not sure that will ever happen. The days of artists making millions from selling copies of music are probably permanently over. For almost all of recorded history, musicians made very little... enough to live on, if they were good, but they essentially never got wealthy. So there was no retirement plan, but most of them could continue to play well into old age, and it sure doesn't look like the great ones could ever give up their instruments; that would be like asking them to stop breathing.
For several decades in the 20th century, companies that recorded music, and then sold copies on vinyl, made huge amounts of money. This was because the recordings could be nearly perfect, every single time, and you didn't have to deal with the musician just to hear some music. This made them untold billions, while the actual artists got almost nothing.
Eventually, they were shamed into sharing more, though they did their damnedest to cheat artists out of every dime they could. The window during which a recording artist could get really wealthy was very short, in the span of human history, no more than a couple of decades. And very few artists did that well; the vast majority had most or all of their earnings stolen.
So that market is collapsing; it is not worth $15 anymore to make a copy of an album. It's truly worth maybe a nickel. Maybe. The hard cost of making a copy of a single song is something like a thousandth of one cent. So, with that little real value in that service, it seems unlikely to me that very many people are going to be getting wealthy from selling copies.
What appears to be happening is that the really smart artists are connecting with their fans and selling them tons of other stuff directly, cutting out the middleman. They're avoiding a system that has exploited them for nearly a century, and are now directly providing a product to their fans, and asking for money. And, while they're not making millions, many of them are doing far better than they would have in the tender embrace of the record companies.
Having lots and lots of people making some money every month seems much, much fairer and healthier than the old system. The streaming services are loss leaders, just like radio always used to be. And the sooner the record companies go away, the better for everyone. We absolutely do not need their services anymore, at least not as a conglomerate.
posted by Malor at 8:38 PM on April 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
The tl;dr version of that: making millions in the music business was a brief aberration, one that we mistakenly think of as being The Way Things Are And Should Always Be, because we reached maturity right in the middle of the boom.
We will probably not see its like again.
posted by Malor at 8:45 PM on April 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
We will probably not see its like again.
posted by Malor at 8:45 PM on April 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
My copy of Use Your Illusion I disagrees with your "never breaks" part.
I first decided that record companies were all bastards when I listened to my sister's copy of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on cassette. The record company had sped it up so it was a semi-tone higher and faster, presumably to use less magnetic tape and keep the per-unit cost down. Everything counts in large amounts, right?
posted by infinitewindow at 8:50 PM on April 6, 2013 [4 favorites]
never skips, never breaks
Stretches and breaks. Melts and demagnetises in the sun. Suffers from track bleed as it ages quite ungraciously.
posted by Wolof at 8:55 PM on April 6, 2013 [6 favorites]
Stretches and breaks. Melts and demagnetises in the sun. Suffers from track bleed as it ages quite ungraciously.
posted by Wolof at 8:55 PM on April 6, 2013 [6 favorites]
Yeah, I kinda LOL'd at the "never breaks" part. They broke all the time, one time the tape somehow melted into the capstan and ruined the whole player.
posted by DecemberBoy at 9:56 PM on April 6, 2013
posted by DecemberBoy at 9:56 PM on April 6, 2013
I first decided that record companies were all bastards when I listened to my sister's copy of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on cassette. The record company had sped it up so it was a semi-tone higher and faster, presumably to use less magnetic tape and keep the per-unit cost down. Everything counts in large amounts, right?
posted by infinitewindow at 8:50 PM on April 6 [1 favorite +] [!]
never skips, never breaks
Stretches and breaks. Melts and demagnetises in the sun. Suffers from track bleed as it ages quite ungraciously.
posted by Wolof at 8:55 PM on April 6 [1 favorite +] [!]
Yeah, I kinda LOL'd at the "never breaks" part. They broke all the time, one time the tape somehow melted into the capstan and ruined the whole player.
We all bought blank TDK Super Avilyns and we all dubbed our friend's LP's because the quality was so much better than those official legit crappy cassettes...
posted by ovvl at 10:12 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by infinitewindow at 8:50 PM on April 6 [1 favorite +] [!]
never skips, never breaks
Stretches and breaks. Melts and demagnetises in the sun. Suffers from track bleed as it ages quite ungraciously.
posted by Wolof at 8:55 PM on April 6 [1 favorite +] [!]
Yeah, I kinda LOL'd at the "never breaks" part. They broke all the time, one time the tape somehow melted into the capstan and ruined the whole player.
We all bought blank TDK Super Avilyns and we all dubbed our friend's LP's because the quality was so much better than those official legit crappy cassettes...
posted by ovvl at 10:12 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Yeah, butt a cassy could be taken apart and played BACKWARDS!!!
posted by buzzman at 11:43 PM on April 6, 2013
posted by buzzman at 11:43 PM on April 6, 2013
"For almost all of recorded history, musicians made very little..."
MOST made very little. There has always been, in centers of civilization, a journeyman and an elite entertainer class. If you were worth seeing live, you made a decent living, and if you were elite, you could get rich.
Consider the NYC and LA jazz scenes today: the medium to bigger fish in those big ponds make most of their money performing. They sure aren't rich, but they get by.
posted by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 12:24 AM on April 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
MOST made very little. There has always been, in centers of civilization, a journeyman and an elite entertainer class. If you were worth seeing live, you made a decent living, and if you were elite, you could get rich.
Consider the NYC and LA jazz scenes today: the medium to bigger fish in those big ponds make most of their money performing. They sure aren't rich, but they get by.
posted by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 12:24 AM on April 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
ovvl: "We all bought blank TDK Super Avilyns and we all dubbed our friend's LP's because the quality was so much better than those official legit crappy cassettes..."
I even dubbed my own LPs onto the TDK SAs I bought. Then I could wear out the TDK tapes, and record another one when needed. I bet most of my 300 or so LPs that I still have have only been played a few times at most.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 12:24 AM on April 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
I even dubbed my own LPs onto the TDK SAs I bought. Then I could wear out the TDK tapes, and record another one when needed. I bet most of my 300 or so LPs that I still have have only been played a few times at most.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 12:24 AM on April 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
Wow. Oh, wow. This is...this is really embarrassing, for you, the pie chart people, I mean, not me, but it's OK, there's still time to add it, just add it to those little pie chart things, if you could, just 'MiniDisc', just like that, one word, big 'd', ha, everybody puts a space, or forgets the capital, I mean, I remind them but they just keep forgetting, that'd be great.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 2:08 AM on April 7, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by obiwanwasabi at 2:08 AM on April 7, 2013 [2 favorites]
It actually wouldn't be such a bad idea to add sheet music and 78 omnibuses to the chart.
I was watching a documentary about Elvis Presley last week. The King? The guy who revolutionized youth culture and pretty well launched rock and roll.
According to Peter Guralnick in this documentary, Elvis's big breakthrough first album supposedly only sold 200,000 copies in the USA in the year of release -- despite topping the sales charts for ten weeks.
Wikipedia's Elvis portal claims 'logically, it sold a million' but I've no idea what that means and they don't provide a source for the claim.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:17 AM on April 7, 2013
I was watching a documentary about Elvis Presley last week. The King? The guy who revolutionized youth culture and pretty well launched rock and roll.
According to Peter Guralnick in this documentary, Elvis's big breakthrough first album supposedly only sold 200,000 copies in the USA in the year of release -- despite topping the sales charts for ten weeks.
Wikipedia's Elvis portal claims 'logically, it sold a million' but I've no idea what that means and they don't provide a source for the claim.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:17 AM on April 7, 2013
Wow, that is an really really terrible way of presenting the data.
It literally made me so angry that I spent a good fraction of an hour copying the damn data from the individual damn frames and making a better chart that doesn't have god-damn stuff jumping around all the god-damn fucking time.
Um. Here it is. I'll step away from the computer now.
posted by narain at 3:33 AM on April 7, 2013 [25 favorites]
It literally made me so angry that I spent a good fraction of an hour copying the damn data from the individual damn frames and making a better chart that doesn't have god-damn stuff jumping around all the god-damn fucking time.
Um. Here it is. I'll step away from the computer now.
posted by narain at 3:33 AM on April 7, 2013 [25 favorites]
Now let's see the chart of how much the artists made from each format.
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:31 AM on April 7, 2013
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:31 AM on April 7, 2013
narain the Internet thanks you.
I find the fact that singles stick out (cassingle, download, vinyl) says a lot.
Too much.
posted by Mezentian at 5:44 AM on April 7, 2013
I find the fact that singles stick out (cassingle, download, vinyl) says a lot.
Too much.
posted by Mezentian at 5:44 AM on April 7, 2013
The big takeaways for me were:
A) CDs still make more money than digital downloads. Huh.
B) The LP monolith was replaced by the cassette monolith, which was in turn replaced by the CD monolith. CDs were replaced by 15 new, smaller markets. No wonder the music industry's in a tizzy; no one knows where to jump ship to.
posted by Peevish at 6:48 AM on April 7, 2013
A) CDs still make more money than digital downloads. Huh.
B) The LP monolith was replaced by the cassette monolith, which was in turn replaced by the CD monolith. CDs were replaced by 15 new, smaller markets. No wonder the music industry's in a tizzy; no one knows where to jump ship to.
posted by Peevish at 6:48 AM on April 7, 2013
I'm kind of amazed that pre-recorded cassettes became so huge. I honestly never bought one back in the day, and few of my friends did either. I never heard a factory cassette that didn't sound like shit, especially when compared to a careful home dubbing of an LP to cassette on a moderately well-specced machine.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:11 AM on April 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Thorzdad at 8:11 AM on April 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
That's probably because most people care more about convenience than sound quality. Did you hear about Lady Gaga's new wheelchair?
Kids these days. Where I come from, "Wheelchair" meant something entirely different.
posted by sneebler at 8:23 AM on April 7, 2013
Kids these days. Where I come from, "Wheelchair" meant something entirely different.
posted by sneebler at 8:23 AM on April 7, 2013
Careful home dubbing of an LP on a well-specced machine sounds pretty great, but I was a little kid when cassettes were big. I was happy when I could hit 'pause' on the tape recorder at the exact moment before Casey Kasem started talking.
posted by box at 9:04 AM on April 7, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by box at 9:04 AM on April 7, 2013 [3 favorites]
Kinda surprised that people still buy CDs that much. I'd love to see this data limited to only original albums by artists, so things like compilations and greatest hits releases are excluded.
posted by cellphone at 10:04 AM on April 7, 2013
posted by cellphone at 10:04 AM on April 7, 2013
Country music fans seem to be the compact disc holdouts. Their past format demands kept the 8-track in production for many years past its heyday.
posted by porn in the woods at 11:16 AM on April 7, 2013
posted by porn in the woods at 11:16 AM on April 7, 2013
CD is the best format to buy music in. Below 22.1KHz, at least assuming competent mastering, it will reproduce any sound essentially perfectly. It has no copy protection, and nothing is missing, like with the lossy compressors.
CDs are still popular, I think, because CDs are fundamentally superior to all other formats on offer. Buy a CD, and you can generate any kind of compressed audio you want from it, but if you buy compressed audio, you're stick with that version, at least if you want full fidelity. If you buy AAC, you can't have MP3, and vice versa. Buy a CD, and you can have both, plus anything else that comes along.
posted by Malor at 3:37 PM on April 7, 2013
CDs are still popular, I think, because CDs are fundamentally superior to all other formats on offer. Buy a CD, and you can generate any kind of compressed audio you want from it, but if you buy compressed audio, you're stick with that version, at least if you want full fidelity. If you buy AAC, you can't have MP3, and vice versa. Buy a CD, and you can have both, plus anything else that comes along.
posted by Malor at 3:37 PM on April 7, 2013
A lot of older/less "with it" people have no desire to digitize their music, obtain music digitally, or subscribe to something like Spotify. They just want to buy CDs like they've been doing for 20 years, and not unlike how this has worked for presumably their entire lives.
I've offered to rip all my dad's CDs to iTunes a million times. He just doesn't get why he would want that. He has CDs and a stereo system for home, satellite radio for the car, and those are the only two places he listens to music aside from live shows.
posted by Sara C. at 3:45 PM on April 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
I've offered to rip all my dad's CDs to iTunes a million times. He just doesn't get why he would want that. He has CDs and a stereo system for home, satellite radio for the car, and those are the only two places he listens to music aside from live shows.
posted by Sara C. at 3:45 PM on April 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
Neat, but this would have been so much more compelling as a graph with total sales.
The CD was a great package, but when I could buy a terabyte drive for less than $100, I ripped all my CD's and ditched the physical copies. I kinda miss them sometimes, but don't miss the storage, moving and display space they took up.
Caveat: I still have a record player.
posted by sauril at 9:55 AM on April 8, 2013
The CD was a great package, but when I could buy a terabyte drive for less than $100, I ripped all my CD's and ditched the physical copies. I kinda miss them sometimes, but don't miss the storage, moving and display space they took up.
Caveat: I still have a record player.
posted by sauril at 9:55 AM on April 8, 2013
narain suffers so I don't have to. I don't even have words for an animated time-series pie chart GIF that arbitrarily changes size because labels have to fit. I can't even. I can't. My soul hurts.
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 11:01 AM on April 8, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College at 11:01 AM on April 8, 2013 [1 favorite]
CDs are still popular, I think, because CDs are fundamentally superior to all other formats on offer.
This.
Whenever possible, I still prefer to buy a CD over a download. I'll rip them to listen on my iPod, but I will always play the CDs on my stereo system.
I still have my turntable, too. And the vinyl.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:01 PM on April 8, 2013
This.
Whenever possible, I still prefer to buy a CD over a download. I'll rip them to listen on my iPod, but I will always play the CDs on my stereo system.
I still have my turntable, too. And the vinyl.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:01 PM on April 8, 2013
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