nice to see you have lots of free time. I guess without having to go through CD's to listen to your music you can sit on the internet playing "Mr. Know-It-All".
heh...so says Mr. 3494-posts to Mr. 854-posts! But yes, you're correct that if I had to spend time searching for music, I would have less time to do something I enjoy more, namely, fact-checking peoples' posts on the Internet.
Lots of my CD's have a story to them on how I got them or something happened that day. When I look at it, it is just more than a disc.
Same for me. My current satisfaction with electronic downloads doesn't mean that I didn't once have the exact same experiences as you did with CDs. When Iron Maiden played "Wicker Man" at their show last weekend, I remembered how on the day 'Brave New World' came out, I was exploring the narrow, mysterious streets of Venice, and finally found a small shop selling the CD, a few days before I would be seeing them play in Milan. And then listening to it on my discman while lounging on a bench in a secluded, sun-dappled campiello, watching Venetians go about their daily business. Jose wrote a nice post along the same lines describing his past experiences with CD searching/buying.
But those were *effects* of our love of music, they were not the *cause* of our love of music. Thus, when those effects disappear, sure, our behavior and our memories change, but our love of music is not damaged.
I can't detect any negative effect that the lack of new CD-buying memories has had on my life. I have many other fine memories of that time in Italy that have nothing to do with music buying, and I continue to form great memories and great social experiences today, even though I no longer shop for CDs. Either I haven't noticed the hole waiting to be filled with new CD-buying memories, or I have taken the time I would have spent CD shopping and used it to fill that hole with other memorable experiences. Conversely, I also continue to form special connections between particular pieces of music and times/places, even though I no longer buy a physical product.
The way some of you guys are so militant about your attachment to the CD-format makes me wonder, if mp3s had been invented in the 1960s and physical formats disappeared by 1980, does that mean that you simply would have never become a fan of music? Without the opportunity to collect something physical, or make social connections at record stores, would you have just opted-out and never become a fan?
I'd find that hard to believe, so the only other conclusion I can come to is that you overestimate the loss that you would feel if you could no longer buy something physical.
What else asides shirts are bands going to sell on tour????
Belt buckles? Patches? Flags? Posters? Nothing? Selling recorded copies of your music is something extremely new in the history of live music performance, and in the end, will just be a blip in the timeline. Bands managed to tour before they thought to sell their recordings at shows, some tour currently without selling their recordings at shows, and they'll be able to tour in the future when they're no longer able to sell their recordings at shows. Adjustments will be made as necessary; it's not like the death of the CD will occur in a vacuum, while everything else about the music business remains exactly the same.
There are lots of small factors like this that bothers me about people all excited about the death of CD's.
Who here has expressed excitement about the death of CDs?
It seems the ones that are excited are the same people that probably never leave thier house to go places so now they feel validated for not having to go out into the real world and experience things.
Ah, yes, brilliant deduction, Mr. Holmes!
The bottom line is support the music you love, be it physical product or digital.
Agreed!
@ Neil - You make some valid points but fail miserably in understanding that physical VS digital is a personal choice. Sorry friend.
Er, I totally understand it's a personal choice. What did I say that made you think otherwise?
The origin of this thread is not about the end of me buying CDs, or the end of you buying CDs, it's about whether the CD format will die *as a whole*, and that will be determined not by me or you, but by the world's population of music buyers. To have that discussion, you need to look beyond your own personal preferences, or at least get an understanding of how normal or abnormal your personal preferences are in comparison to the rest of the world. As one who has experience both as a passionate CD-buyer AND an exclusive-mp3-buyer, I think I have a pretty good perspective to understand the pros and cons of both approaches.
Among the CD-only buyers here, there are a lot of misconceptions about buying music electronically (understandable, since they don't have any experience to draw from). I've been trying to correct those misconceptions for three reasons: 1) so they can make a clearer judgement about the end-date of the CD and prepare themselves for it; 2) so they can get a better perspective on the pros and cons of mp3-buying, and discover that maybe it's not as scary as they thought, and that the pros may actually outweigh the cons; and 3) because I like correcting misconceptions!
But I have no desire to "force" anyone to stop buying CDs!
Neil
Seriously?
