6 Feb
2007
6 Feb
'07
5:05 p.m.
Another point made that I do agree with - because of
all the music CDs made,
the players will not go away. All the major players in CDs and DVDs have
tried for many years to force to another form factor. Those mostly empty
5.25" chasses are really offensive to design engineers trying to push the
state of the art. And how can you resell the same music again, if you don't
change form factor or format?
But the customer base won't budge. They don't want to render obsolete their
sizeable investment in CDs. (Last year I have data for shows annual
production of CDs in the billions world wide!) Legacy demands will keep the
5.25" form factor around for the rest of my life. Can't speak for you
youngsters. But say another 25 years minimum.
I agree - the CD format will not completely die any time soon, or even
in the distant future. There will always be demand to read music CDs.
There is a huge number of artists that release things on CDs every
year. Most of these artists are releasing their first work, probably
on independent labels in pressings of less that 2000 disks. Yes, most
of these artists go nowhere - maybe the band breaks up, the musicians
are not serious, maybe someone died, or maybe (often) the music just
sucked. There are, however, a very few that stick up from the crowd,
and become very successful, maybe even cultural icons. Typically, a
major label picks them up, and away they go.
Often, however, those mega-success artists have a backcatalog of
obscure recordings on CD - maybe tied up in an independent label,
maybe too harsh or underproduced for the mainstream, or maybe the
artist just wants to disown it. The fate of these is that many do not
get rereleased. Look into the detailed history of many popular artists
today - you will see there is often an album before their first album,
or a bunch of tracks only found on weird compilations.
There can be a huge demand for these obscure backcatalog CDs. They
will likely never get rereleased by the major labels on whatever
format is king at the time - not enough money to be made. There will
be people that will want to play their copy of some superobscure live
recording or remix of some well established band that is only
available on CD. And so, there will be CD players to play them. Yes,
they probably will become niche items in the audio world, much like
turntables - but if you are serious enough, you will shell out the
money.
I am quite amazed by the toughness of the CD. I only have one that is
rotting a little, but it is from a known batch of crummy CDs Wax Trax!
made around 1991 or so. Even with burned CDs - they just always work
for me. I wonder just what you people do to your disks to make them so
unreliable. They are not coasters for your beer.
Somewhat related, I am also somewhat amazed by my old Sony CD player -
now pushing 18 years of age, and still going strong. It has a very
crudely implemented error recoverly system, so if there is a small
scratch, you actually here a pop. My one rotting CD pops quite a lot,
almost a steady static.
--
Will