The end of CD's

[Spudman]

I came across this today.:(

Subject: CD - The End - now it's official

Dear Angela,

The IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) announced today the

result of their latest survey as to the future of the CD format as a music

media. The vast majority of IFPI members, including all majors (Sony / BMG,

Universal, Warner & EMI) and all big independents predicted that they will stop

pressing CDs by 2010. All of them also said that they would be cutting down the

available catalog of physical product about 50 % or more each coming year.

Although most companies quote download as future means of music distribution,

they also admit that the actual download format is not yet certain.

That really puts the lid on the CD as the music carrier. Funny - I've been

saying this for the last 2 years, but everybody said I'm crazy.

Of course some CDs will still be manufactured for the niche markets, offered

mainly to the existing collectors base, but soon the CD will become mainly a

second-hand market. This will probably mean another increase in the price of

CDs, as pressing small quantities will become much more expensive per unit.

In the last 2 years I find it increasingly more difficult to buy CDs from the

labels, which keep deleting items from their catalog or simply not repressing

sold out items. This is of course understandable in view of the future

prospects. In the 7 years since the Jazzis Web Shop started I tried to keep the

availability of the items in my catalog at 90+ % at all times, but this is no

more possible. At the moment by availability is only about 65 % (meaning that

over one third of my catalog is out of stock, most of it being out of print).

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that now is the time to grab whatever is

available.

Have Fun!

Adam Baruch

Jazzis Web Shop

[SuperSwede]

www.ifpi.org doesnt mention this at all..

"It doesn't take a genius to figure out that now is the time to grab whatever is
available."

And he probably fabricated this news so that he could shift all his current stock...

The CD might not be forever, but it IS pretty much the only physical format for the distribution of music available at the moment.

[Jimi75]

Recently, I read an article that quoted Slipknots Bassit I think. If you listen to their music or not, doesn't matter, fact is that they sold millions and millions of albums. That guy stated that he didn't earn something with the cd sales. The money went directly into covering touring and promotion costs. The only thing that artists earn money is with excessive touring and merchandise. I think this is also a reason for merch being that ridiculously expensive.

It's sad to whitness the downfall of products like vinyl and cd.

[FatCat]

I personally feel they should release the stuff on flash memory cards or USB drives. CD's just get scratched no matter how good you try to take care of them. Same goes for DVD's, especially the ones you rent.

[jpfeifer]

Yes, I was thinking that this day would be comming sooner or later. People are just finding it easier to buy their songs from iTunes and download them than buying the physical CD.

This is exactly what's causing such financial woes for the music industry (apart from the pirating of free music). The record labels' business model has always been structured around selling the physical medium. But now with the digital age, people are less concerned with buying CD and are opting to only buy the songs they want rather than whole albums.

I think that the whole music industry will be changed drastically as they are forced to figure this out or perish. There's some who are saying that the music content will eventually become completely free since people seem to value the digital content much less than the physical medium, for whatever reason. Then the record labels will be forced to make their money in some other way, whether that's through sales of merchandise or concert tickets, etc.

I work for a company that provides the technology for turning your mobile phone into an ipod of sorts (music purchase over the air, with digital rights management of the music tracks, etc). Most of the people selling music online at 99 cents per track are not making any money with it. They are basically keeping the lights on and paying to keep their online store fronts open but they aren't making much on top of this. In Apple's case, they are making their money on the sales of iPods, iPhones, and other things that would access iTunes. In that case, iTunes is just a place that creates more value for the things that Apple does make money on.

But for the other guys (other than Apple) there has to be something else (other than the music tracks) that they make their money with, wether that's selling ad space on their site, etc.

It will be interesting to see how all of this pans out over the next 5-10 years.

-- Jim