Damn, Mark Cuban is intelligent. I guess that’s why he’s a millionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. I’ve started reading his blog, and he’s got an interesting essay on the beginning of the end for the humble music CD.
Then it occurred to me, that I haven’t used my CD Player, portable or at home, in a long, long time. That I rarely, if ever see anyone walking around with a portable CD player anymore. They have all been replaced by MP3 players. If everyone is switching to MP3 players, whether they are iPods, in phones, in PDAs, in cars, whatever, then that means that everyone is going to have to go through a multistep process in order to get the music from where or how they buy it, to the place they want it.
That’s not good for the people selling music. Particularly retail stores…
This is something my Uncle Melvin would be interested in reading. I’ll have to point him there. The rest of you already know:
2 replies on “The end of the humble music CD”
in don’t actually think that cds were ever that humble. with new technology, the truly humble musicians can afford to record themselves and then promote and sell their own music online without the greedy, non-talented people who happen to have connections.
i believe people working for the music industry long ago, had talent. but now days, the people are just trying to make money and they know nothing about music really. they just happen to be the son or grand-daughter of someone who used to be a big shot in the music business. it’s all in who you know, not what you know. i think this is fading. i am grateful.
big corporations, like clear channel, for example, that don’t know the first thing about art or music, are controlling the airwaves. with satelite radio and internet radio stations, however, things are getting better. don’t fear change. i believe it’s all getting better. music isn’t an object to be owned and sold by big industries who claim to have rights to it. i’m glad that musicians are losing their need for these greedy middlemen.
Oh, I agree whole-heartedly with you Brandi. The new freedoms that artists have are coming from the fact that music is so much cheaper to produce now that it’s digital. One of my favourite artists, Jonathan Coulton, produces almost all of his music at home in his “bedroom”. Only occasionally does he meet in a studio with his drummer.
And with the peer-to-peer nature of the web and the Internet, the cost of getting their music to the customer is essentially zero.
The Mark Cuban article is about the physical form-factor of the CD becoming obsolete. But in counter-argument, I’m finding that some people are still distrustful of only having a virtual copy of their music in the form of an mp3 file. They still like the security of having that plastic disc. I mean, it won’t crash like a computer’s hard drive or a dropped iPod, which can wipe out your music collection in the blink of an eye.