Are Downloads killing the CD industry?
by Karen W. on Jul.23, 2007, under General
More and more these days, people seem to be downloading there music via the internet from sites such as CDbaby, Napster and PayPlay, but are these sites killing off the CD industry, are we turning into a collection of consumers that would prefer to download a track or complete album straight away, instead of waiting for a physical CD to arrive through the post, or pop down to the shops to get that CD by your favourite artist.
It has been reported recently that digital sales have increased by 49% where as CD sales have fallen by 15% is this an ongoing trend, or is it just a fact that we have another media to choose from.
Some think that we are becoming very lazy and impatient and have got to the point where we must have something there and then instead of waiting.
But are we sacrificing sound quality for instant music, take for example downloading a track from iTunes, you can download a track at either 128kbps or 192kbs with iTunes Plus on some selected tracks, but, if you purchase a CD the sound quality is far superior and is usually 1411kbps, ok, so if you’ve got a bog standard HiFi then you may not notice the difference, but most HiFi’s these days have superb output and the difference is noticeable.
So is the CD going to slowly disappear in favour of digital downloads, is it going to be like Vinyl, Tape and MiniDisc, media that is still around but very rarely mentioned.
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July 23rd, 2007 on 6:09 pm[...] a collection of consumers that would prefer to download a track or complete album straight away.read more | digg story sb_url_to_rate = [...]
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August 4th, 2007 on 12:14 pm
I don’t know that a lot of people care about the quality overall, some people just can’t tell the difference.
It is a matter of ease and price… If I order a cd from Amazon it is a couple more dollars than if I download the entire album on itunes and that is before the cost of shipping. Also I can download a few tracks if I want preventing me from wasting my money on a whole album.
How many times growing up did you by a cd or tape of a band you liked or because you liked one or two songs of theirs only to find the album was filled with garbage?
The digital age allows the users to gain back some of the control from the record companies, well at least I see it that way.
August 10th, 2007 on 6:12 pm
The worry with buying MP3s is that you’re not really getting anything concrete for your money, and the overheads in producing the files are ridiculously small, while the profit on them is, generally speaking, a complete ripoff. Why should I want to pay 7.99 UKP for a bunch of files, when I can likely get the CD by mail order, and cheaper too?
I much prefer to buy CDs, and do my own high-quality rips.
I do have an eMusic account, and I use that to download stuff that I’m not fussed about going out to buy.
But with downloaded music, the “buyer” needs to be careful. If you get music from iTunes, for example, you had better back those files up – if something happens to them, you’ll need to pay again to get fresh copies. eMusic is better in this regard in that they will allow you to download the album again free of charge anytime, as long as they still have it on their site.