Labels Ditch CDs?
Saturday, November 5, 2011 at 12:02AM CD collectors, begin your long goodbye. Apparently major labels are banding together to ditch the CD format by the end of 2012.
Yep. It’s the end of an era. Nearly an end to music, too.
I’m one of the few people I know who still prefers a physical CD over an album download. I do buy lots of music on Amazon and iTunes, but I still get the physical CD if at all possible. I feel like having something tangible 1) proves what I spent my money on and 2) that the band is worthy of existence. Any musician can record a song and throw it online these days. It takes just a little bit more effort (but not much) to release a physical CD.
I know people say I’m old fashioned or even antiquated, but I loved going to music stores when I was kid. That was how I found new bands to like! I would wander the Kmart music section constantly, just looking for that next big “thing” in my life. I picked up bands because of cool album covers. I also grabbed CDs because they were playing on the record store’s sound system at the time. And sometimes I watched what other people were buying and then I would copy them (usually these people were wearing band T-shirts, etc.)
Since music stores – and music sections – basically don’t even exist anymore, I guess music is less important to our lives, right? Well, not less important to our lives, but to the general public. Anymore, music is nothing more than a throwaway commodity to be used in car commercials and to usher models down runways. Audiophiles are few and far between because everyone listens to compressed tunes through inner earphones. It’s sort of sad.
Remember back in the 80s when people would walk around with those giant boom boxes, blasting tunes? You heard new music that way too! And hey, I won’t bash all technology. I’m very grateful I can Google the lyrics to literally any song and find out the title/artist/album in about two seconds. But still, I’m sad. I spent all my money on CDs as a teenager and now kids just steal music. It really is true: when you work and spend your hard earned money on something, it’s a little more important to you.
I’m resentful that major labels are forcing this change on all of us – because, hello – not everyone uses an MP3 player (at least, not yet). I’ve got music strewn about everywhere. CDs, records, tapes and tons of MP3s on about 15 different electronic devices. I doubt I am unique in this situation. I suppose the phase-out of CD players will come at us fast. I guess this means I need to move all my CDs to my iTunes library. What a bloody hassle.
