Compact Disc = Endangered Species

Is the age of the compact disc over?

I’m trying to remember back to the last one I bought, which would have been in the wake of Christmas and the ubiquitous cash gift. In a lot of ways, it makes me sad.

So much of our enjoyment of music is the romance that we as people and as consumers have with the record store. That feeling of finding that album you’ve been dying to hear, giving the cashier your hard-earned dough, combing the liner notes to see what is what…it’s fading in favor of the convenience of the digital download. I love the digital download – with a busy life that includes lots of quality time with a young child, it’s the easy way for me to keep up and keep listening to the music I enjoy. And yet, I get sad thinking about how the experience of enjoying music has changed. It’s certainly not technology’s fault – it’s how life is.

The music industry is gasping for air – a bloated entity that can no longer thrive by the business model it’s designed for itself. The compact disc is in trouble because the industry is accustomed to charging retailers out the arse for it, which subsequently forces the retailers to mark their product up to the point that ordinary joes no longer see it worth their while.

At best, the compact disc is soon to be in the same category as the vinyl LP – something that people who truly believe in that relationship to the physical object will continue to ooh and ahh over, and will no longer fall under the same rules of economics that mainstream consumers have to shop by. That group of people is most likely to include me for a long time, money willing.