14 DAY TRIAL // So far, the CD music sales in the united Stated are 17% down. Now, it's the first quarter only, but the difference is clearly not to be covered for during the remainder of the year... CD sales are going down and this is a fact.
People in the industry music are asking themselves more and more about what's causing this decline for the CD music. The answer is a rather complex one and it contains more than one or two factors. Nevertheless, two of them are the most important causes for such a market behavior.
First of all, it's the digital music. More and more people each day are selling off or simply trading their "solidstate" gear, all their 80's and 90's audio gear racks and choose the freedom and portability of the iPod-like devices.
From the large and very heavy vinyl, cassette and CD collections which need a van to be lorried away, down to all these which are stored in a small device in your pocket, even smaller than a cigarette pack and offering a decent sound. The ubiquity of the portable music player and the new options of wireless downloads are pulling CD sales down.
It is indeed way more convenient to simply enter a wi-fi hotspot and download your fav artist's latest album while on the go throughout the country than to buy a CD and either carry a discman with you or wait until you get home.
Secondly, there are the other things people spend money on in their quest for entertainment: PSP, PS1, 2, 3, Wii and the rest, do they ring any bell? People are not turning away and refusing to buy music - they have simply found something new, a new cool toy and it's only natural for such a behavior to appeare and develope.
As a third cause, the wide spreading of the MMORPG genre is daily constraining more and more people to rely on the in-game reality rather than going out. And since a guy would rather stay in the comfort of his home and play an online reality game rather than go out, have a face to face chat with friends, meet new people, listen to a beach radio or go to a concert...here is the completion of the "no need to go outside" recipe. Can you really fit some music CDs in here?
Then, it's the downloads, the illegal filesharing. Indeed, this is one very serious cause for the CD sales decline and it comes fourth in this article just by pure happening. I won't go that far and embrace the crap RIAA always puts in that the illegal filesharing is the most important and severe cause for music sales dropping down; but I must agree that it has its own special role in our equation.
Unlike some people who are listening to illegally shared music, who find something that they really like and then go and buy the music and even go to that artist's concerts, people who are fine with the rather "sucko mucho" quality of lousy MP3 files won't: they'll just keep on downloading music, rarely looking for better formats.
And this brings us to the final stage of today's article on industry: what do digital formats have to offer and what can traditional media provide you with?
Now, there are opinions and opinions and one thing is for sure: there isn't a single sane person to say that the MP3 is perfect (the way a genuine audio CD is). Verybody agrees on one thing: the digital format music sounds shitty if compared to the real thing. Having said that, I must be true and also say that to the untrained ear, a good MP3 file does not necessarily sound lousier than a SACD played on audiophile gear; so if we're truly speaking about the public, it's possible for them to simply be that ignorant as far as how should premium audio sound like. It's not a very nice word to say about those music buyers but WTF, it's the naked truth whether one likes it or not!
Now, I don't expect a 12 yo child to come crying to his father asking him to buy a Bowers & Wilkins Nautilus pair of speakers instead of the latest iPod... this will never happen and I guess this could pose an even more serious problem! Gadget is and gadget does, this is one thing that's not going to change very soon: maybe the future of technology will bring such high standards that the portable devices will be able to both carry and playback files large enough to contain as much binary data as the CDs and the sound chips will have high performance such as to be able to replicate the inner workings of a proper hi-end audio CD player... Even if I rather doubt it...
Since more and more people are less concerned about the quality of what they're listening to, them not buying mid-to-high end sound gear is one of the most normal things to ever happen. Still, I am quite sure that individuals who are seriously preoccupied by audio quality are still buying Hi-Fi equipment, vinyls, CDs and so on.
Indeed, you can't carry your music in the mountains with you, but in a compressed digital format in the tranquility of your home, why settling for less than the best you can buy? Today, children have absolutely no idea on how a tube headphone amplifier sounds like when running with sound coming from an audio CD.
I know one thing: by the time my children will be able to understand music I will surely have even more and better audio gear in my house and they will know how to make the difference. They'll have their portable devices but also guitars or drums and they'll have the chance to hear how music should really sound like.
In the end, I guess that CDs won't die, at least they won't die too soon. More and more, artists tend to release breathtaking-looking CDs, many of them in digipack presentation, with additional stuff from bonus tracks to videos and other band/artist memorabilia, limited editions, hand-numbered series and other nice palpable things a binary sequence will never be able to offer. And yes, CDs still sounding million times better!