The Slow Death of the CD

Believe it or not the audio CD will be going the way of the cassette sooner than we think. Unfortunately it’s place in music is slowly fading away. Now the CD is a very versatile tool. We use them for DVD, Blue Ray, SA-CD, HD-CD and of course you standard issue audio CD. But with the way the music industry is moving, the  CD is pretty unnecessary if you think about it. It’s just a matter of time that everyone else realizes the fact that it’s become a digital dinosaur.

The first band to grasp hold of this reality is “Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground”, a project formed by members of “Gatsby’s American Dream”. The album is truly amazing, but I’ll leave it at that to avoid going off topic. The group decided to release there album as an LP with a free digital download. Now packaging LP’s with digital downloads is becoming more and more popular and a wonderful idea. You get the endless versatility of an MP3 along with the exceptional quality of an LP with a beautiful showing of the album art. In an interview with the band they explained their reasoning:

“In our humble opinion, the compact disc format is dated and disposable. Digital audio sounds like balls and we prefer hearing our music in a more dynamic setting. We believe listeners will definitely enjoy the listening experience on vinyl more.”

The CD is truly a compromise between vinyl and the MP3. The LP has the highest sound quality out there but it’s fragile and about as portable as a microwave. The MP3 is the most compromised audio you can get. It’s compressed until it’s soul is gone and as you may have heard it sounds like balls, but when you can fit your entire library onto one player you can’t complain about the convenience it offers. The CD gives you good sound quality but not as good as vinyl, and it’s pretty portable but can still be scratched and you have to carry them in a book. If I toted around my iPod in CD format it would look like I was dragging an encyclopedia set around.

But being a compromise between the two doesn’t seem that bad, right? It seems like it could be the best of both worlds. It could bridge the gap and fulfil all of our needs. It even makes neat little rainbows of light when you look at the under side of it. How could something so magical be thrown to the wayside. Unforutnately that’s not what listeners want today. When you think about it, it’s almost like killing a unicorn. Well in today’s most listeners are willing to kill unicorns and sacrifice sound quality for convenience no matter what the alternative. The other listeners are the ones that see the inferior sound quality MP3’s pose and want to counter the MP3 culture by buying vinyl, the highest sound quality out there. The records show vinyl has become more and more popular in the past few years. There are many independent labels releasing there albums on vinyl with a free MP3 download and major labels are starting to do the same for some of their artists. This truly gives you the best of both worlds without any compromise.

When you look at any media device that has a CD player in it you see that the CD drive with a nice coat of dust over it. We don’t mean to neglect them after all they have done for us, but do we really want to go through all that work of putting the CD and finding a track only to take it out again.  I mean seriously, I haven’t even had batterys in the remote of my CD player for over a year. It just isn’t needed anymore. Most new car CD players and home theaters are coming equipped with ports to plug in MP3 players and it seems like every company under the sun is making an iPod dock whether they make audio gear or not. I hear Purina is coming out with one next month. But serisouly, in our fast paced word convenience is king and quality means nothing. Sadly this is the case for more than audio. Why spend time going to the store to buy a high priced CD. Besides the game of “find the corner you can peel the plastic seal off from” there really isn’t any point in making the trip. Being able to buy songs one at a time on your computer with a single click sounds a bit easier. Another problem is the poor shape the music industry is in. Sales are down from piracy and a slow economy so the extra manufacturing costs that go along with making CD’s are just too much. The last thing a dying format needs is a weak industry to support it.

The strange part is with video we are fighting to make higher and higher quality presentations with HD-DVD (R.I.P.) and Blue Ray and the public can’t get enough. Now when we did the same thing with audio by putting out HD-CD and SACD we passed it off as a waste of money. If we focused on the quality of sound as much as we did video the CD would still be a powerfull force and the MP3 would have a run for it’s money.

If you need any more evidence just ask youself the last time you said, “Hey man, nice Discman.” Still thinking? I rest my case.

To read the whole interview with Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground click here

• Now Playing: Desaparecidos – Manana (the MP3 I got with the vinyl)