CDs Dying Out, But So Are Many Music Downloading Stores

from the makes-sense dept

I doubt this is all that surprising to most people, but Forrester is predicting a shift from the CD to buying downloadable music, while at the same time predicting that about half of the current music download stores will go out of business by the end of the year. I think they're being a bit optimistic on both predictions. I'm still not convinced the CD is going to go away that quickly. While I also agree that many of the music download stores aren't long for this world, I'd be surprised if most of the current ones didn't at least make it through a year - but perhaps not much longer than that.
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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2004 @ 8:12am

    Forrester = idiot

    I'm one of the people who will keep on buying DRM-free music on a tangible support.

    No SACD, no DVD-A, no downloading.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Beck, 26 Jan 2004 @ 8:47am

    Re: Forrester = idiot

    I have always found Forrester predictions to be worthless. They'll see sales of $1 million last year, $10 million this year, and then predict sales of $1 trillion in five years.

    In this case the guy from Forrester has "lost" quite a bit of music. He claims that CD's will be obsolete in 5 years, and that downloads will account for one-third of all music sales. So where will the other two-thirds of music sales come from?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Dan Z., 26 Jan 2004 @ 8:59am

    Why not one store that does both?

    There's a lot of used CD stores on the internet. I've never understood why there isn't one of them that pre-rips their CDs and lets you instantly d/l MP3s of the CD you just bought. It'd be cheaper than iTunes, you'd get the instant gratifcation of digital music, no DRM, and you'd get the physical CD for liner notes and backup a few days later.
    This isn't illegal, and it isn't what MP3.com tried to do. It's simply transferring fair use digital archives from one owner to another. The store would be obliged to delete the MP3s once they'd been downloaded by the customer.
    It seems like an obvious step. Anyone know anyone doing this?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    aNonMooseCowherd, 26 Jan 2004 @ 10:01am

    Re: Forrester = idiot

    I have always found Forrester predictions to be worthless.

    I wonder if anyone has ever done a study of just how accurate these analysts are over the long run.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Galley, 30 Jan 2004 @ 5:56am

    24/96

    If it's not an SACD, then I will be happy with the sound quality of an AAC or MP3 file.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Mick, 25 Jul 2006 @ 1:40pm

    Bye bye CD

    It may not be today, tomorrow or 5 years from now...but it is ultimately inevitable the CD will go the way of its vinyl and tapey predecessors. Especially once the dinosaurs of the older generations that were programmed to hold "albums" or "product in hand" are dead and gone.

    Young generations of kids today don't think that way about music, don't approach music from an "I must have a discular thingy with 10 or 12 songs on it", nor do they in general listen to radio. Those are old concepts by old people.

    25 years into the future the youth that are grown then will have completely rewritten the whole music-for-consumption thought process from the ground up, and all the old, dusty diehards still alive and clinging to their disc-type objects will be irrelevant in shaping what exists at the time.

    The biggest noise and resistance re CD's dying out, as is usual, comes from those who are making their living peddling the atrocious little things, and who can't accept change. As for the sites selling downloads, all they have to do is come up with the monthly bill for some bandwidth, quite unlike having to have a building, tons of insurance for every idiotic thing a bunch of humans can do in a store, etc., etc. They just don't have the tiniest fraction of hassles and overhead associated with a brick&mortar business.

    Of course, what I'll miss most about not having CD's around someday, is the wonderful packaging; having to find a knife, or car-key or screwdriver to rip it open; then taking that clever little sticker off along the edge, which always rips into a thousand sticky pieces in your hand trying to get it off, and leaving a gluey residue on your brand new purchase. The guy that dreamed that up should have a CD shoved up %$&...well you get the idea. Cheers

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Mick, 25 Jul 2006 @ 1:40pm

    Bye bye CD

    It may not be today, tomorrow or 5 years from now...but it is ultimately inevitable the CD will go the way of its vinyl and tapey predecessors. Especially once the dinosaurs of the older generations that were programmed to hold "albums" or "product in hand" are dead and gone.

    Young generations of kids today don't think that way about music, don't approach music from an "I must have a discular thingy with 10 or 12 songs on it", nor do they in general listen to radio. Those are old concepts by old people.

    25 years into the future the youth that are grown then will have completely rewritten the whole music-for-consumption thought process from the ground up, and all the old, dusty diehards still alive and clinging to their disc-type objects will be irrelevant in shaping what exists at the time.

    The biggest noise and resistance re CD's dying out, as is usual, comes from those who are making their living peddling the atrocious little things, and who can't accept change. As for the sites selling downloads, all they have to do is come up with the monthly bill for some bandwidth, quite unlike having to have a building, tons of insurance for every idiotic thing a bunch of humans can do in a store, etc., etc. They just don't have the tiniest fraction of hassles and overhead associated with a brick&mortar business.

    Of course, what I'll miss most about not having CD's around someday, is the wonderful packaging; having to find a knife, or car-key or screwdriver to rip it open; then taking that clever little sticker off along the edge, which always rips into a thousand sticky pieces in your hand trying to get it off, and leaving a gluey residue on your brand new purchase. The guy that dreamed that up should have a CD shoved up %$&...well you get the idea. Cheers

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Wesley, 25 Aug 2006 @ 2:01pm

    CDs , RIAA, Ripping, Downloading

    Why on earth do we have to deal with so many stupid people? Cd's are dying yes but mainly because the music that has been recently released is getting worse.. to find a good album is hard these days people are getting tired of purchasing a whloe cd for 1 good song. What a waste of money.

    As far as internet company's getting popular ... I doubt that will happen either and people dont wanna pay for a song for 99 cents when they have to give their credit card info.

    RIAA needs to eat my A** . They seriously need to get a life they want us to continue purchasing cds to be legit and it seems like every time I want to be "LEGIT" I go to purchase a cd I lost or want and they tell me "I'M SORRY IT'S OUT OF PRINT" ... What does that mean ??? So they are telling us to buy cds to be "LEGIT" but you can't buy them...

    As Far as "COPYING & RIPPING"... My personal feelings are until they learn to keep everything on hand everywhere ... Don't as me to be "LEGIT".. Until they learn how to carry everything at my disposal. I'm getting so tired of going to the record stores and trying to be "LEGIT" and can't buy what I want...And lower the price of CDs to 5-7 dollars since the only pay a few cents to make... So this is from me to the great RIAA "Leave People Alone About COPYING & RIPPING...

    link to this | view in thread ]


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