Are CDs dying out in the market place?

[Old Listener]

good remasterings and sources for recommendations

I share RBLNR's concerns... Sure, studios CAN do whatever they want...but with margins compressing in the music space (4 bucks for an mp3 download of gaxzillions of albums)...and an i-tune world that has not demanded higher resolution BACK to 16:44.1 CD let alone beyond CD...why would they bother? Then there is the DAC needed to take 24.192...again "easy" to install in any new component...but why bother? In fact, if they start selling hi-res and "ordinary folk" start downloading them without realizing they cannot play it back on their equipment...they get pissed off with the constant changes. Why would they risk this?

I'm already noticing albums on Amazon sold only as MP3 files - neither new nor used CDs are available.

ArKivMusic.com has a growing catalog of recordings they offer as CD-Rs made on demand. The corresponding pressed CDs are not longer available. However, the prices are rather high. (They are having a sale right now but the ArchivCDs are still not cheap.)

And in the meantime, i am hoovering up Amazon CDs for 4 bucks each while they last. in fact, i just got Penguin Guide to Classical and expect within 12 months, i will own every classical CD i have ever wanted to own...got a few hundred already over the last years. \Probably same with Jazz and blues... then at that point, i am fairly independent of hi-rez/no hi-rez/no CDs except for modern music.

Leave a few for me. I too am filling out my wish list now too -- mostly at Amazon used CD prices. Berkshire Record Output is sometimes cost effective. ArkivMusic has the best search engine but the prices are a bit high.

Be careful of the Penguin Guide to Classical Music. They have a rather systematic bias toward recordings with a British connection: record label, performer (by birth or long residence) or orchestra. They also recommend some quite bland performances.

Here is another guide to classical recordings that might be useful:

http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mus...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297721094&sr=1-1

Some bias against HIP or period instrument performances in that guide but I found their recommendations to be more to my taste than those from the Penguin Guide.

The rec.music.classical.recordings newsgroup has lots of recommendations for recordings. If you access the newsgroup via Google groups, you can search past threads.

---
The Good Music Guide site has lots of discussion of classical music recordings.

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php

The quality of the recommendations varies.

Final question...has anyone noticed a surge in 24/96 resmasters on 16:44.1? Rudy Van Gelder Remastsers, all of U2 and Police works...just picked up Four Seasons by Nevill Mariner...redone on 24/96 onto CD. Also Blue Note. So far, they have been amazing compared to my old 16/44s...i have replaced every single one o fthe ones i found "unlistenable".

I think that careful remastering from master tapes is more crucial than the intermediate format used. There has been a steady improvement in sound quality in remastered releases of classical music.

The Sony Original Jacket sets with Szell leading the Cleveland Orchestra are much improved from the earlier Essential Classics CDs. One set has Beethoven Symphonies and another set has Mozart Symphonies, Serenades and Divertimentos.

Bill

 

[Jay_S]

The RVG remasters seem to be somewhat controversial. I've seen a number of recommendations for the CD versions prior to the RVG remasters.

 

[LL21]

Old L - thanks for the recommendations! last nite i bought a slew of classical recordings from neville mariner, jacqueline du pre, rostropovich, trevor pinnock, plus US 3 (Blue Note) and some other older albums i could not find anywhere...plus 10,000 Maniacs MTV Unplugged and Bruce Springsteen Live in NYC...61 CDs for an average of 3.50 each!!! Nearly all of them new.

As for RVG, i will say i have compared original CD and RVG Remasters on Red Garland Trio and Quintet albums, as well as the Thelonius Monk albums...i much prefer the RVGs. Better in every way possible? i am not sure i cared enough given how much better (overall) they were. it was substantial, probably more on RG Trio and Quintet than on TM. I also own the Police and U2 remastered albums, and the Guns & Roses as well (never owned the orignal). Plus others...in all cases, i have been pleased and not looked back. and not felt the need necessarily for a better quality recording. sure, on a few i know it could be better...but for the first time, i did not feel like i was listening to more scratch/sizzle than music.

 

[Lee]

The RVG remasters seem to be somewhat controversial. I've seen a number of recommendations for the CD versions prior to the RVG remasters.

I find many to sound bright. I would say that being suspicious of remasters is a very good rule.

 

[rblnr]

This has it's own thread now, but it's relevant here:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/02/22/24.bit.music/index.html?hpt=T2

what's interesting and it's something I've been hopeful about in that I see many of the younger crowd I work with going to better quality headphones is that they are somewhat of an impetus for higher rez stuff to be readily available.

 

[DaveyF]

While all of the above posts are certainly accurate, what I think we (society) are forgetting about are the older generation who may not have access to a computer, or are not computer savvy enough to download. What happens to this group, who are now unable to acquire music...
Perhaps this is one of the reasons that we are now seeing an upturn in the sales of LP's
Just a thought

 

[amirm]

While all of the above posts are certainly accurate, what I think we (society) are forgetting about are the older generation who may not have access to a computer, or are not computer savvy enough to download. What happens to this group, who are now unable to acquire music...
Perhaps this is one of the reasons that we are now seeing an upturn in the sales of LP's
Just a thought

I don't think we give enough credit to our seniors. Many use PCs now, browse the internet, use email and are on facebook. If they have a real need for something, they will adapt.

Beside, the old people we are talking about is "us" not the current old people. After all, it will take a while for these things to become mainstream and by then, we will be counted amongst the "old."

 

[DonH50]

How old "old" is gets older every year...

 

[LL21]

And sometimes Old can mean a little wiser or more experienced...or just "once burned twice shy". i have long thought buying D/A over transport was the way to go and got my Zanden s/hand when everyone thought i was a little crazy since i was not buying the transport. on the other hand, i still think servers have a ways to go and am not going to jump yet...hence i use oppo transport that has been modd'd...which either makes me old and unadaptable...or more patient/deliberate. (BTW, when i buy, i typically buy for 10 years before i change/upgrade so i will wish to buy a server that can go up to 7 years. my home laptop has run 8 years)...that will take time before servers settle down. meanwhile, i continue to gobble up CDs/SACDs/remastered CDs at 3 bucks each.

in fact, if you are looking for Marinner 1971 performances, or Starker 1965 Bach Cello Suites, or Dr. Dre or Tupac, or John Lee Hooker More REal Folk blues, Gypsy Kings, Take 6, Wayne shorter Juju or Ella Sings (just about anything), Dennis Ferrer Deep House...i have yet to see any of these available on hi-res. the most is remastered on CD/SACD...where again it is cheap.

so if being old means i get to buy high-ish quality music for at or the same price as mp3's and wait a bit til servers settle down (i am not the tinkering kind...much more "old fashioned" plug and play)...so be it!

 

[Alan Sircom]

Back on topic, the sad answer is "yes". They are dying out and will continue to do so fairly rapidly. They are dying out because the methods of distribution used to get music from record company to listener are collapsing, and painfully slow, inefficient and expensive next to the 21st Century alternative. They are dying out because the record companies are moving inexorably toward a subscription model (pay us $10 per month and you can sit on our cloud) and are already looking at pay-per-download as outgoing and outmoded. They are dying out because the practically the only people under 40 these days buying CDs are buying them for the over 40s as presents (in the UK, one of the best-selling CD in 2010 was by the 92-year old WWII forces sweetheart Vera Lynn... I can't see that taking up much storage space in a typical teenager's cellphone).

CDs are still selling in large numbers, but significantly down on a decade ago, and no real sign of an uplift in sales in the offing. Sales of CD are faring better in the UK than the US, because CD sales in 2010 were only about half those of sales in 2000; the best estimate in the US puts sales of CD at around 20% of where they were a decade ago. UK sales are buoyed by there still being a 'high street' (main street) market environment here and there still being a high street vendor (HMV). However, the economic downturn looks set to damage that significantly, with HMV struggling against dreadful trading conditions, having to close stores and seeing its share price plummet on profit warnings. Assuming it survives, it will be substantially smaller and weaker, and as it represents the main destination for offline CD sales now, that too will take a chunk out of CDs market share.

Right now, it's a fine time to buy up every disc you want to own. They are cheap and plentiful because they are overstocked and selling to an ever-decreasing sector of the market. But that's not going to last. Even though they are still selling, the music biz thinks CD is dead and is buying flowers for the funeral.

The big concern for the audio sector is just how fast CD player sales have plummeted. Because separates audio appeals to an older, more conservative buyer right now, the downturn in CD disc sales didn't really hit the audio sector at the same time the music sales began to decline. Then it did, and it hit hard. We saw a single-year near 40% drop in the number of CD players sold in 2009, followed by a similar decline in 2010. Value declined slower than volume in 2009, but faster than volume in 2010. It has reached the point where CD player sales (by volume at least) are almost half that of turntable sales today. A similar drop in sales happened to turntables in the mid-1980s however, and they then stemmed the decline. Whether CD can turn this round like LP did, or whether it goes the way of the VCR and the floppy disk, only time will tell.

 

[LL21]

Wow...thank you for gathering the statisical information. it helps illustrate the decline that many of us "feel" but did not have the facts to support. Well, for one thing, i will continue to gobble up CDs...mainly because (in particular SACDs or 24/96 remasterings) i think there is a chance for sometime that they will be the best quality digital versions of music out there.

secondly, while it is clear that vinyl is a stable medium (and still for many the superior medium in musicality) and therefore maintains a stable base of demand...i think the only string keeping CDs from disappearing altogether is the fact there is not a full-time equivalent medium in quality at the moment. mp3 is acceptable to many...but not the same quality. That might just keep cd's from rock bottom...paticularly from Amazon who can afford to sell high quality cd/sacd's of classic for 3 bucks incl shipping...so do CDs disappear entirely in 3 years? or just stay at rock bottom until higher-res downloads become the norm? just might get lucky on that score...but high cost platforms to sell CDs (high street retail) is not going to make it at 3bucks/cd.

 

[Old Listener]

some comments by Andrew Rose on the rec.music.classical.recordings newsgroup in a thread titled "Decline of CD?":

"Not in a million years - this so-called [LP] revival is largely being driven
by DJs and the nostalgia market. A global total of 2.8 million LPs sold
in 2010 (if true - all sorts of figures get bandied about without source
reference) is a ridiculously minute number - Michael Jackson's album
Thriller alone has sold in total well over 50m copies since its release
and I'd like to bet that of these perhaps 28m or so were on vinyl, which
perhaps puts this into some kind of perspective - that's a single album
selling 10 times as many vinyl copies back in the day than an entire
year's worth of black plastic today.
Or perhaps try some more big sales figures before getting too excited
about the LP: Apple expect to ship around 40 million pricey iPads this
year, and passed the 10 billion downloads mark for iTunes over a year
ago - that's after just six years in operation. Even little ole Pristine
sold over 10,000 albums last year in CD and download forms.
Sorry, but nostalgics and sadly misguided audiophiles aside, the LP is
dead and buried. It's a deeply flawed product in so many ways, based on
long-redundant 1890s technology, and one that should be allowed to rest
in peace or in a museum.
As for the CD, it's hard to find hard figures without paying a lot of
money for an IFPI report - press releases on behalf of the industry
spend a lot of time and effort talking about percentages as they argue
for more copyright restrictions, but real numbers are rarely seen.
However, it seems CD sales peaked in 2000 with nearly 2.5 billion sales
worldwide, dropping to 1.33 billion by 2008 - but this seems to have at
least as much to do with the rise in singles sales over the same period,
up from 370m to 1.5bn between 2000 and 2008, rather than the usual story
of Internet piracy being the sole culprit. The pop market has realised
they were being sold a load of crap fillers on their long players and
opted for single tracks instead."

And some references:

http://musicbusinessresearch.wordpr...ssion-in-the-music-industry-a-cause-analysis/

http://baasnotes.com/blog/

My comments:

In the USA, the home theater market absorbed the audio gear market for non-audiophile adults a long time ago. I think that home theater is becoming a mature replacement market too.

For young people, portable audio gear and headphones makes far more sense than a traditional stereo system. And MP3 files in an iPod are way better for them than CDs in a portable CD player. LPs area non-starter.

I think there will continue to be a market for music. The music business may have to figure out a new business model. Lower prices may be an essential part of that model. Subscription services may be the main way some people consume music.

Bill

 

[JackD201]

Rose' references to the DJ market may have been true 2 years ago. Vinyl is practically dead for that segment now and so are the hopes of my SL-1210s to see a wide choice of new releases as my go-to online sources have either closed down or are in the process of migrating to MP3 and WAV downloads. Yet growth continues today. One can only surmise that the "nostalgia" market has taken over the slack.

 

[mep]

Bill-I know there are lots of analog haters on this forum and your last post will give all of them some comfort I guess. It doesn't change the fact there are currently more new pressings of LPs for sale right now than anyone could possibly buy. You or anyone else can spin things however they want. It won't change what's available in the marketplace for purchase. My whole point in starting this thread is that I went out to buy a simple Lyle Lovett CD and four stores later I came home empty handed and had to order it on line. CDs are dying out and vinyl is not. All this means is that the digital market has shifted from software that you go to a store and purchase and exists as something physical you can hold in your hands to software that you download and it only exists on your hard drive. I can take solace that it doesn't appear that vinyl will stop being pressed anytime in the near future. The digital crowd needs to be worried that CDs will cease to exist before you are able to download any digital file you want in at least a 16/44.1 file format. I would have downloaded the Lyle Lovett CD I wanted if it would have been available at the 16/44.1 format. All I could download was an MP3 version.

 

[caesar]

If you look at the actual number of LPs produced compared to CDs, it's a drop compared to all of the water on earth. The audiophile (and retro) market is quite small in the scheme of things. Some vinyl runs are probably not more than 1,000 or 2,000 records. There will probably be cd's produced as long as cd players are produced, and beyond. It's definitely not a growth area, but even if people are purchasing less cd players, they are still available in computers and cars, etc. Even if you won't be able to find them at your local store, you will find a deep collection of an artist's life work at places like Amazon and other web sites, which may even charge a premium for them.

Time to play some music now.

 

[Old Listener]

haters?

Bill-I know there are lots of analog haters on this forum and your last post will give all of them some comfort I guess. It doesn't change the fact there are currently more new pressings of LPs for sale right now than anyone could possibly buy. You or anyone else can spin things however they want.

Mep,

Over and over you have turned threads into a debate about analog versus digital. Whenever people react to your assertions and mention well established shortcomings of LPs and analog playback, you label those people "analog haters". You are the "hater" here.

I provided links to discussions of music sales. I provided no spin on the contents of those links but made a couple of different observations. If you find discussions of actual CD and LP sales to be painful, you might stop reading such articles.

> It doesn't change the fact there are currently more new pressings of LPs for sale right now
> than anyone could possibly buy

I choose what I buy based on my own tastes and most of what I want to buy is not on vinyl at all. Maybe everything you want is available on LPs.

> It won't change what's available in the marketplace for purchase.

If I chose 100 CDs at random on Amazon, how many would have an LP equivalent? Here are some results from Amazon searches:

Artist="Louis Armstrong" - 2077 CD listings and 499 LP listings.

Composer = "Beethoven" and Conductor="John Eliot Gardiner"- 37 CD listings and ZERO vinyl listings.

Composer="Gottschalk" - 124 CD listings and ZERO vinyl listings.

>The digital crowd needs to be worried that CDs will cease to exist before you are able
> to download any digital file you want in at least a 16/44.1 file format.

In an earlier post in this thread, I pointed out that some albums on Amazon are only available as MP3 downloads. The underlying problem is that material is deleted from record labels' catalogs after a few years. That has been going on for many decades with 78s, LPs, 8-track tapes, cassettes, CDs and SACDs. Once a recording goes out of the catalog, there is no guarantee that it will ever come back.

It is much cheaper to bring a recording back as a made-on-demand CD-R or a download than as a manufactured CD or LP. ArkivMusic.com has a large catalog of CD-Rs of classical music CDs that are no longer in the catalog of the recording company owning the rights. I am not sure that there will be a broad market for full CD quality downloads of most of the music currently available in CD form.

My whole point in starting this thread is that I went out to buy a simple Lyle Lovett CD and four stores later I came home empty handed and had to order it on line.

Big deal. Bricks and Mortar stores are shrinking and going out of the business of selling music. CDs are still available online.

I buy exactly what I want from Amazon.com for a lot less than I could have at Tower Records years ago. The breadth of inventory at Amazon or at ArkivMusic.com is far better too.

Bill

 

[Alan Sircom]

Bill-I know there are lots of analog haters on this forum and your last post will give all of them some comfort I guess. It doesn't change the fact there are currently more new pressings of LPs for sale right now than anyone could possibly buy. You or anyone else can spin things however they want. It won't change what's available in the marketplace for purchase. My whole point in starting this thread is that I went out to buy a simple Lyle Lovett CD and four stores later I came home empty handed and had to order it on line. CDs are dying out and vinyl is not. All this means is that the digital market has shifted from software that you go to a store and purchase and exists as something physical you can hold in your hands to software that you download and it only exists on your hard drive. I can take solace that it doesn't appear that vinyl will stop being pressed anytime in the near future. The digital crowd needs to be worried that CDs will cease to exist before you are able to download any digital file you want in at least a 16/44.1 file format. I would have downloaded the Lyle Lovett CD I wanted if it would have been available at the 16/44.1 format. All I could download was an MP3 version.

This is hugely disingenuous. CD sales have dropped considerably over the last decade. Vinyl sales have risen from their lowest ebb. The two things have happened at around the same time, but correlation does not imply a causal link. What is not discussed in all of this is numbers. The 2.8million LP units pressed annually is roughly correct, because it's based on the activity of the surviving pressing plants. Assuming none of these pressing plants dies of old age, the absolute max-out capacity for these plants is about 4.5-5m world-wide; after that, someone needs to start making a new pressing plant. If those pressing plants keep going and work at full capacity, and CD continues to drop sales at current rate, LP sales should eclipse CD in a little over 50 years.

It's also worth looking at the sales of turntables a little closer to show why this is not something to pin hopes upon. In the UK at least, last year separates turntable systems outsold separates CD players, by volume. In the year to May 2010, there were 77,400 turntables sold against 41,400 CD players. This shows a 11% rise in turntable sales on the previous year, in volume terms. However, the value of CD players sold has increased by 31% (to an average price of £386), while the average turntable price is now down 10% to £122. The increase in volume and decrease in value all point to a single player in the market; the Ion USB turntable. Compare this with almost 300% year on year growth (by value, not far off by volume) in media gateway products; streamers, music servers, Sonos and Squeezebox devices. That total market represents more than 67,000 units sold, 9,000 of which were in the £500 and above category (source GfK).


LP is a fine format even today. Especially today, in fact; you can't push LP into a 'loudness war' clipped and compressed model without grooves almost ready to collapse on the first play, so modern loud and dynamically compressed albums are less loud and dynamically compressed. And its positive impact on the audio sector cannot be ignored. But neither should it be overstated.

 

[Ron Party]

It's also worth looking at the sales of turntables a little closer to show why this is not something to pin hopes upon. In the UK at least, last year separates turntable systems outsold separates CD players, by volume. In the year to May 2010, there were 77,400 turntables sold against 41,400 CD players. This shows a 11% rise in turntable sales on the previous year, in volume terms. However, the value of CD players sold has increased by 31% (to an average price of £386), while the average turntable price is now down 10% to £122.

Alan, do you have any information as to what comprises a CD player? While there are many dedicated, stand alone CD players, there also are, of course, separate CD transports and DACS, to state nothing of the fact that some (many?) people play CDs in their DVD/HDDVD/Blu Ray players.

 

[RBFC]

Excellent point, Ron.

Lee

 

[Alan Sircom]

I believe, 'CD players' in this context covers everything solus with a disc mech that doesn't include video output (CD, SACD, CD transports, but not DVD, BD, or people who use games consoles). How this works with CD transport+DAC combos, I don't know (I think if sold as one, they are treated as one, but I'm not clear on this).