Death of the disc?
 

Last night I stopped at Walmart. Having a few minutes to spare, I walked through my favorite section, media & electronics.

I knew it was coming, but it still surprised me: they now sell CD-looking boxes with no CD in them... just a small SD flash card with mp3 music files. One GB cards with a few songs and room for a lot more of your own, as specified on the box. Pop it in your iPod, smart phone, or whatever player you may have and go.

Made me wonder... is this the end of disc-based media distribution?

I read about this coming a few months ago. CD's aren't dead for music yet, but it's heading that way. Home stereos, car stereos and personal music players are defaulting to the mp3 format, so why not distribute them in that format?

Given that audio files are so relatively small and easily downloadable for most, I think the delivery of audio content on physical media is on the wane. I haven't bought an audio CD in over three years and I'm hardly a trend setter.

Video is a different kettle of lobster. Disks will be around for a while, at least until the Internet speeds to the average household substantially increases.

Like CD was to Vinyl, people won't give up on uncompressed audio. Uncompressed sounds better than MP3.

PCM all the way baby....

Why not something like a micro-sd card with WAV files on it - I mean, your average CD occupies less than 700Mb - which is nothing.

Sure RIAA screams bloody murder about copying, but it doesn't take much to imagine such a device, and with a one time programmable random encryption key and a key exchange mechanism as is common in computing today. Smartcards (credit cards) are a rather early example.

Or they might use lossless codecs that support DRM... WMA Lossless anyone?

Sony is releasing a digital distribution only version of the PSP called the PSP Go. For $250, it seams a bit pricy especially because of the slightly smaller screen than the standard PSP, but it does add Bluetooth and 16 gigs of internal solid state storage. Most likely Sony will include some game software to make people feel more comfortable about the price. Ars talks digital distribution with Sony, plays with PSP Go - Ars Technica

At first I was thinking that the PSP 3000 is a far better value but having Bluetooth is intriguing. With Bluetooth, you’d be able to play with the PSP Go using a PS3 controller and it does look like an awkward combination but it definitely makes sense if you decide to hook up the PSP Go to a TV. Never mind the fact that you’d probably be able to go on the web almost anywhere as long as you have a Bluetooth capable cell phone which a lot of them are. The Bluetooth possibilities are endless. The other big plus toward the PSP Go is the fact that you’ll save a lot of energy because of no moving parts, but than again, because of piracy fear, their is no external battery that you can change out.


I don’t think Sony would like my idea but I think they could have made a disc drive attachment.

Anyway, it looks like Sony is going to use this to test the market’s acceptance toward online distribution.

I still buy CDs monthly, I do have an MP3 player but much prefer CD in a CD player in my home system. Rock on!

Of course I think they'll be on their way out eventually.. an uncompressed CD worth of 44/16 bit is only 650 mb, so you could almost fit 2 uncompressed albums on that 1gb stick, or one uncompressed album and a music video.. CD still isn't up to vinyl quality but 48k/24 bit is getting there, you could just as easily provide the higher quality format on flash card provided enough storage room

I've already heard upcoming artists talking of skipping CD release altogether and simply selling their project through flash cards and itunes

I believe both Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have done something similar to this. Radiohead put it on their website and asked fans "pay what they want' via paypal thru their site. And NIN I think released their latest on their site, then thru stores a few weeks later.


I may be wrong on some details, but it was something like that.

From a frequency response, noise floor/signal to noise ratio, clarity perspective, CD is VASTLY superior to vinyl. It's the aesthetics of the "warm vinyl sound" that make it "superior" to some ears.

I prefer to get something physical when i buy...

I've bought more vinyl than cd's this year... don't see that changing soon!

in the last time I often thought about this actually. I mean with all the information and services programs like iTunes provides it is kind of useless nowadays to buy cds or dvds if it is even cheaper via iTunes or the internet - even legally. I mean iTunes is much cheaper than going to the store and buying a cd.

I just had a disk crash. (It crashed while I was backing it up, thank you very much.) It had several thousand songs on it.

I was really grateful to have almost every original CD. All I lost was the time I had to spend re-ripping.