Rockitt Rant – The Death of the CD
It is no real surprise that the Compact Disc is dying a slow death. The digital age of music is here, and illegal downloads have been killing CD sales everywhere.
I have been noticing as of late a shrinking amount of retail space in my local stores where CDs are sold. Around Christmas time, Best Buy started shrinking down their CD retail space for a row of iTunes gift cards., and books. Recently, Walmart took their music dept down in my local store from four aisles to one. Hot Topics never really had a huge CD section, but they have eliminated their CD retail section, with a digital ordering system (the CD is mailed to your house).
Soon the only place you will be able to buy your compact discs are with the independent records dealers, online or in expensive mall stores. A lot of folks like to download their music, either through iTunes or other e-tailers. Personally, I would prefer the option to still buy a CD. I like being able to open the digipack or compact disc, and read the booklet, and song lyrics. I also like the bonus material, and DVD’s that have been included with some of the newer releases.
I soon fear that music featured at Hard Rock Hideout.com and other hard rock and metal sites will soon become impossible to find in most music retailers. Illegal downloads have all but guaranteed that the only thing you will soon find in the big box retailers are the bland pop releases, and the latest Hannah Montana or Jonas Brothers CDs.
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Although I no longer know him well, my younger brother owned a CD shop for awhile. watching him go under was not the selfish revenge of long time sibling rivalry that I ‘msure he presumes. The loss of the whole concept of albums and music stores is tragic and further seeing the transaction that was made for his backlogged merchandise was truly crimanal to behold. I painted on a few of the cds that landed on the junk pile. painted tiny little miniture album covers right onto the shiny discs Let It Be and Abby Road on mariah Carrey and so forth. Intending to fashion a wind chime sort of a wind chimes or something. maybe a candleholder. i don’t know. The whole thing is unfathomable to me. I own now two old lps. The soundtrack to Deliverance (Dueling banjos)and the Austrailian released Dirty Deeds. My old collections were twice stolen and once sadly I sold myself for a fraction of their worth. In my defense I never had my friends chuck my old Kiss albums up into the back yard shouting PULL while I fired off the old wrist rocket! I’ll miss my albums for the rest of my life and there are still SO many albums that I wish I had…,-at all.
this whole fiasco is a genuine heartbreak. I have loved music all of my life and album artwork and printed lyrics occasional posters and various surprise items in the albums I scrimped and saved to own were always beyond cool with me. I hated to see the end of LPs if only for the sake of downsized album covers and double albums no longer fold out the same way and now? Wow. I’m at a total loss. I guess I’m just glad to know that I still remember the way it was. The loss of the entire concept of an album is so far beyond a genuine heartbreak to me I can’t even put it into words. A woman once approached me when I was photocopiing a picture I drew and she commissioned me to paint an album cover for Moby Grape. I was so completelt thrilled and flattered. My own art on an album cover? I can still think of no higher compliment. This didn’t pan out as I was evicted from my humble abode soon after for various long ago reasons but to this day I recall how extatic I was. Long live Lars. Keep the faith.
I hear you guys. I work for one of the Mall retailers, there’s probably only one left in the USA, and can’t really understand the “expensive” comment. What’s a download cost nowadats? $9-$10??? You can buy most cds NEW at this price. In fact, FYE has lowered its most of its Metal prices to $9.99 and $11.99! The new Carnaflex is $8.99!!! People need to get out more and quite believing everything they read online. Times are changing.
I too have noticed that Walmart & Best Buy have narrowed their music sections. But is that really a reason for the low cd sales? I’ve griped for over a year that lables like Frontiers are making their product exrememly hard to find by signing horrible distribution deals! I have been to every music store within a 100 miles from my house and could only find 1 Frontiers title, Primal Fear’s “16.6”. That’s it!!! How are we suppose to buy cds if they are not even offered to the reatilers in our area?!? I actually sent a Myspace message to Frontiers about this, asking what retailer carries their titles so I can buy them. I got a notice from Myspace that Frontiers had read the message. You know what their response was? Nothing.
Yes, you can order online, but with sites like like CD Inzane rippping people off (I’m not gonna get into how they rip people off, but the guy who runs it knows. I have 3 friends that have credit cards hit after ordering from this site and 1 is still waiting for the 2 cds he ordered 4 months ago), it hurts honest sites like Impulse Music & Neh Records. While I have ordered from both the aftermentioned sites in the past, it;s not the same. Which brings the next problem with ordering online. They thrill of the chase.
Does anybody else miss going through the Metal section of your favorite music store and touching that one missing hard to find disc that you have been searching months, maybe even years to find? Remember how it felt in your hand as you jerked it up, out of the bin, and gasped for air? Personally, I just had that feeling again at a 1/2 Price Books when I bent over to read their $2.00 Section & my leg locked on me. my 2 year old son heard me in pain and brought my wife over to help me. When she got there to help me up, even though I was in pain, I was smiling just liek the old days. As she reached for my hand to help me up, I handed her the cd that my eyes had fell upon when my leg locked and I went down It was a Lion “Dangerous Attraction”, Japanese Secial Edition with Gold foil stamping on it for $2.00!!! I’ve never been in pain like that and been happy about it.
Somehow, “add to cart” doesn’t give me the same rush, lol!
Holy crap, that is a good two dollars spent. I love Half price books. One of my favorite stores! I was in FYE yesterday. They were still charging 18.99 for a lot of new metal. That is too much in my opinion.
txGreg is spouting the usual college-boy napster BS. Just curious, how -do- you prove that piracy averts sales? So a convenience store armed robber would actually -buy- things if we could figure out a way to stop the robbery?
While I agree with you on the apparent impending demise of the CD, I have to take exception with your limiting the blame to online piracy. Real record stores have been dying out for a long time. I live in a large metropolitan area, and there were already very few stores long before Napster and such came on the scene.
Real music stores were able to carry a large selection of titles (many of which might be called niche, or underground) by subsidizing that shelf space with sales of “top 40 crap.” When your Best Buy, Wal-Mart and other big box stores started using their buying power to stock the popular titles, their convenience (and often better price) diverted that money away from real music stores.
For a while, they followed a similar model – stocking a few extra titles based on the sales of those pop releases. Now that the masses (many of whom I would call “fad fans” rather than “music fans”) are buying their “songs of the moment” from iTunes or something similar, the big box stores are simply finding themselves on the other side of the equation, and are divesting themselves of a no-longer-profit-making line of product.
Getting back to piracy – it exists. However, real piracy is not often talked about, nor is it targeted by the music industry. No one has yet proved with any clarity that a single download results in a single lost sale. However, the purchase of cheap CD-R bootlegs does appear to do so.
In fact, I know many people – myself included – who got tired of not being able to find music and had quit buying for a long time. With the advent of the ability to download songs over the ‘net, and find out if the music was worthwhile, we are now back to buying music again. These “illegal downloads” have resulted in thousands of dollars of purchases (of real CD’s by the way, not crappy, low-quality MP3’s) that otherwise would never have happened.
Lament the decline of the music industry, the death of the music store, and the potential death of the CD – I’m with you. But don’t just blindly jump on the RIAA bandwagon and blame the music fans for the problem. Blame a broken industry model, and lots of greedy individuals in large corporations…