Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Nowhere Man]

http://www.negativland.com/minidis.html

[Hyeon Een]

In a few years music will all be free, bands will make their money from touring, and record companies will be investing in condoms and bauxite and left handed screw drivers and so on. The End.

[Nowhere Man]

Remember when "you could play frisbee with a CD" and it woud still play?

Record companies making condoms?

no

No

NO!

[Dev]

I'm surprised that the record co's haven't all closed down by now with all this downloading going on. This gives you a hint to how much of a profit they've been making.

I guess that's one reason why they're pressing records again. Vinyl has a warmer sound and to many ears sounds better than cds or mp3s. Wouldn't it be ironic if vinyl, that medium that the record co's ditched, saved their asses?

[mindmetoo]

[Qinella]

I loved the last paragraph, about how EVERYONE in the music reporting business has kept quiet about this scandal because of fear of losing advertising revenue. Conspiracy theorists always have some lame excuse as to why they're the only ones saying what they're saying.

The fact is that CDs are a higher quality than records or cassettes, and arguably better than 8-tracks. The reason the price remains high is not some nefarious scheme, but simply economics. S&D. Consumers are willing to pay up to $23 for a new release CD, so guess what the max price is? If everyone were to stop buying CDs, the price would, obviously, drop.

Q.

[Dev]

You can hear vinyl's superior sound if you have a decent turntable and excellent loudspeakers. During winter break, I walked into a used record shop in Canada. They were playing a Bob Dylan record. Now, Bob is not my style, but I was blown away by the nice sound that came out of those speakers. CD sound is a little flat and unbalanced at times. The trebble and sharp sounds are great but the bass doesn't sound as good as on vinyl. Like listen to Led Zeppelin on cd and it will sound clearer, but something's missing. I used to have Pixies Surfer Rosa on vinyl. I sold it and bought it on cd. Oh, boy! I regret that.

[Nowhere Man]

I agree with Dev.

But you have to have decent speakers to hear the difference/care.

The true audiophie generally goes for decent headphones.

But true enough in terms of mass marketing.

Which brings up a pointed point: Apple chose to take the going rate for their download price: 99 cents a song is not a bargain.

Say 15 songs an album. That's $15 an album.

A lot of people will ignore the fact that the costs of production/shipping have suddenly disappeared.

Another issue goes back to the "frisbee" days.

Back home, I have 5.25" computer discs that still work. One reason is the protective cover they were packaged in.

CDs should have come in a form similar to mini-discs to provide "lifelong listening".

They didn't. They came with the most obvious flaw of LPs: scratching.

One might argue that better packaging would have cost more. Read the article in my OP. CDs were cheap as all get out to produce. It is, as MM2 indicates, more about what people were willing to pay rather than production costs.

Hence, it's obvious that the scratchability/non-frisbee-ness of CDs was a kind of built in obsolescence.

[Demophobe]

CDs indeed brought "pure" sound...no hiss, scratches, ticks or clicks. However, if I recall correctly, wiith every "advance" (i.e: making things smaller, both physically and in terms of file sizes), the quality has been somewhat compromised. MP3s are the worst for this, and my ears can easily tell if a low bit-rate was used for the encoding.

Like "ripping" a DVD...to make it small, a lot of infomation is removed.

LPs, to 8-track, to cassette, to CD to MP3...all are perhaps more convenient, but all have steadily reduced the quality of the sound.

CDs? Honestly, they are a rip=off. The quality of the media is such that yes, even one drop and it's scratched to un-playability. I like MP3s because they are so easy to store reasonably safely. 256bit + is best...

[SirFink]

[Moldy Rutabaga]

I have no love for record companies, but I don't agree with the essay; some of it is simply incorrect. Early CDs and players were in prototype stages in the late 70s, not the 80s. In many areas, such as Canada, prices of CDs went from high prices to lower consistently over twenty years, not up. 33 RPM records stopped being sold because no one was buying them and they weren't cost effective. The idea that CDs were simply an industry conspiracy is far-fetched.

I've written about the fate of record companies before at http://keneckert.com/resume/filesharing.htm. Comments welcome!

As to whether vinyl or CD sounds better--well, if you think an 8-track sitting on your dashboard sounds better, then it does. But I'm surprised that there are still people out there defending vinyl records. A fresh record on an expensive turntable with a premium cartridge, a top-end amp, and studio-quality monitor speakers sounds great, but it's not fair to compare that to a 96 kps Mp3 on your computer speakers. A CD played on expensive equipment will likely sound better. I think a lot of people have a romantic memory of turntables; they seem so much realer and more tactile than a microchip, even if the sound is inferior.

Many of the early CDs were very poorly converted to digital recordings from studio tapes in order to rush them to market. They really did sound poor compared to LP. But as older CDs are now being remastered and tweaked from better source tapes with more patience, to me they are sounding clearer and brighter. Some psychologists say that the rumble and crackle of a turntable is soothing to us. If that's so, then yes, a CD will never have that "warmth" unless we add low-frequency white noise to it!:>

Ken:>