|
Compact Discs, We Hardly Knew Thee |
|
|
|
Dr. Samuel Says -
Bidness
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Wednesday, 27 February 2008 |
The death knell continues to toll for CDs and the traditional retail music business this week. A new report making the rounds suggests that, at some point this year, Apple's iTunes service will surpass Wal-Mart to become the largest U.S. music seller. In other news, the sun is expected to rise in the east tomorrow.
Some of the grim details, as compiled by market researchers the NPD
group: Last year, digital sales were up 50 percent; CD sales down 20
percent. Nearly half of U.S. teens (48 percent) did not purchase a CD
last year. And the music business as a whole lost about 1 million CD
buyers permanently, according to NPD's estimations.
 It's inevitable, of course. And, yes, kind of sad. CDs are going the
way of cassettes, 8-track tapes, and LPs before them. The
digital/download revolution is more than just another iteration of
media, though. The whole concept of media -- by which I mean CD as the
physical, portable medium for music and audio -- is dying. Music is
more virtual than ever. Distribution is just a matter of artists
putting it up on the network, and buyer getting it down to their
digital players.
Apple's iTunes is but one of many commercial services facilitating this
new vector of distribution, but of course there need not be any
standardized commercial system at all. The transfer of money within the basic
schematic of artist > network > listener can be realized any
number of ways. There are, in addition, some old-school methods that
bypass the network entirely. What you do is, go to a show, give your money to the guy standing at the gate, then bootleg the performance using wantever clandestine recording method you prefer. This is how we used to do it back in the day. Leaves a little to be desired from a strictly ethical standpoint, but then again -- what doesn't?
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
