Beginning of the end?

[Jeff In San Diego]

...or end of the beginning?

 

Sony closes CD plant

 

I'm just old enough to lament the thought of no more CDs (not today because of this, but just as a general trend). Got my first (expensive) CD player as my college graduation gift in 1984. Easily said "good riddance" to LP's at that time, but I think I will miss Redbook. Especially if the only thing that replaces it for "mainstream" music is 256kbps iTunesPlus downloads.

 

cheers,

jp

 

[Bones13]

I think the era of having a physical copy of most any media - books, CDs, VideoTapes, DVDs is heading down the road to oblivion.

 

Cheap digital storage, both locally, and eventually in the cloud will allow one to access the media anywhere, and on different machine types.

 

Sure my Sony CDP from 1984 is still doing a great job in one of my systems, but increasingly that system is playing Pandora/Sirius music streamed to it via Airfoil and Airport Express from my wife's computer. And she only entered the computer age kicking and screaming.

 

More and more often we watch Netflix streaming movies, and use the AppleTV to rent some.

 

Ultimately you will rent/lease media as needed, and perhaps either pay for permanent access, or download some to a permanent location in the computing cloud, and pull it up on your iPod, in your car, or on your refrigerator. (or your toaster). One advantage is that there seem to be enough audiophiles still around for the business to support not only lossless CD quality files, but HiRez as well. The market will have to decide of course, but I think if there are enough people who will pay more for the quality music, it will be available. This would actually be better than the other direction the CD production has been going with more compression to make it "louder", which is perceived as "better" by the masses apparently.

 

We are still in the early phases, and there is still plenty of struggle left.