CD Players Soon To Disappear From Cars?

[daf62757]

Originally Posted by bronsin

I am old (55) and have already bought ALL the music I like on CDs starting 25 years ago. Still have the CDs and they will prolly be good long after I am dead.

Theres nothing new in music I want to listen to!

Thanks to the internet no artist can make money any more composing music like in the good old days before you wippersnappers ruined the music business!

I am about the same age. I only listen to Classic Rock and for the most part, all the songs will never change. I do get CDs from the public library and upload them to my computer which gets loaded on a IPod and used as a hard drive for my Sony Radio in my Yaris. Unless some great Classic Rock band cuts a new record that I like, I am just about set for life.

[bronsin]

Originally Posted by Kal-El

You make a real point. Notice artists are not making as many albums anymore, and music of less quality. It all comes to incentive, in other words MONEY. Much less opportunity to sell albums = less work from artist. This is regardless of the fact that a lot of their money is from touring. You can still tour with just one album every 2~3 years.

I remember when bands (the Beatles) used to complain the record contracts they had with record companies were taking all their money away. What did they get...15%?

Now there are NO intellectual property rights to ANYTHING. Everything is now FREE on the internet!

Free in a pigs eye.

[Shroomster]

Originally Posted by bronsin

HA! Someday my CD collection will be worth a FORTUNE when the electromagnetic pulse form the nukes the Koreans, Iranians, and Chinese are going to bobmb us with wipes out all your electronic data!


YESSS!!!!

I thought compact discs had a shelf life of about 10 years give or take a few before the audio quality started degrading.....

[bronsin]

I have plenty from the 90s and they are still good...

[mr_miles]

I occasionally wonder if my cd player in my headunit works, lol. it has USB on it and my ipod is routed to one of the storage bins. my first car had an 8 track player in it, and i kinda miss it. it was neat. it came with a steppenwolf tape in it when i bought it

[Damo]

I play and tour in bands a fair bit, and Ive got to disagree, there is PLENTY of money still to be made if youre clever enough about how to do it.
What we are seeing less and less these days is obscene amounts of money being outlayed to MAKE a band, with the record comapny taking it all back at the end of the day. Their revenue stream comes primarily from music sold under their label, so when people download the music illegally and no money fills their coffers, its less they can afford to throw at a new project that people otherwise wouldnt care about.

The advent of the internet and file sharing is a double-edged sword for some... Bands trying to get somewhere with nothing but label support are going to struggle, but the amateur muso revels in the free ability to share and promote to a Worldwide audience.

Bands pretty much HAVE to tour these days to make money, as its the one thing they can do (also, perhaps merch) that allows them money directly in the bank, without fear of it being shared illegally. Of course, touring can be expensive and certainly separates the artists who have followers from those that think they do! :)

[Yury]

Originally Posted by bronsin

I have plenty from the 90s and they are still good...

I had one or two go bad all of a sudden. And not the CD-R type, actual albums from a store.

CD-Rs are failing on me regularly. Several years and they are garbage.

[Captain Slow]

doubt it....look how long cassette decks stuck around in cars.

my wife's 2004 Honda Pilot still has one! cassettes were obsolete by 1997 (at the latest).

of course in the late 90's (in my late teens) I still had a portable 8-track player that took something like 16 D cell batteries. my friends and I used to sit in the shed behind my house, listen to 8 tracks and get drunk, hah.

[Captain Slow]

Originally Posted by bronsin

Thanks to the internet no artist can make money any more composing music like in the good old days before you wippersnappers ruined the music business!

While I do agree that it's unfair to artists it's also in many ways been a boon to many small artists that would never have gotten any following. The simple fact is that some people make way too much money for certain things. Sure I do think a band should make money for playing music (but it should first and foremost be about doing something you love, if you also make a living that's great).

A good example is novelists. The vast majority of novelists have to work a day job to pay bills, they write because they want to write. I think it's great if a musician or sports star can make a living off of doing what they like...but they also don't need gold-plated toilets and 7-figure salaries for doing it either. The one thing the internet actually has done for many artists is to free them from the yoke of record labels that stole practically all of their money.

In the end things always work out, the internet music age helped weed out a lot of the ones who were only in it for the money. People that love music will continue to make music, don't worry.



As for the CD issue, I do use CDs in my car, but only the MP3 disc function. I can't stand having only one album on a disc....too much swapping. So even the albums I have in hard-copy get ripped and put onto compilation discs. I can fit a large amount of music into one of those small binder CD holders that goes in my glove compartment.

[Shroomster]

Most likely, they (cd players) will become an add-on, just like tape decks. Every new car on our lot has a cdplayer/radio with aux jack....only one still without an aux port standard? Ford crown vic/merc grand marquis......what is even weirder is the new ford edge doesn't have an aux port(or I haven't found it yet), instead it has rca inputs o.O

[bronsin]

Yeah "shared illegally" is causing a lot of grief people dont need.

There is a terrific ammount of illegal stuff going down on the interent besides sharing too. Maybe half of everything that goes on?

Plus I hear theres sites run by child molesters saying "What I do is normal".

The internet is one big shit factory.

Nothing going to happen about it anytime soon either...

Originally Posted by Damo

I play and tour in bands a fair bit, and Ive got to disagree, there is PLENTY of money still to be made if youre clever enough about how to do it.
What we are seeing less and less these days is obscene amounts of money being outlayed to MAKE a band, with the record comapny taking it all back at the end of the day. Their revenue stream comes primarily from music sold under their label, so when people download the music illegally and no money fills their coffers, its less they can afford to throw at a new project that people otherwise wouldnt care about.

The advent of the internet and file sharing is a double-edged sword for some... Bands trying to get somewhere with nothing but label support are going to struggle, but the amateur muso revels in the free ability to share and promote to a Worldwide audience.

Bands pretty much HAVE to tour these days to make money, as its the one thing they can do (also, perhaps merch) that allows them money directly in the bank, without fear of it being shared illegally. Of course, touring can be expensive and certainly separates the artists who have followers from those that think they do! :)

[RedRide]

Quality audio has been dumbed down so much in the past few decades. .....now the average consumer thinks that audio from a mp3 player fed through cheap ear buds is great audio.

While audiophiles still exist and things like vinyl and vacuum tubes/valves are making a comback due to the better sound, the average consumer is now satisfied wth junk audio played through garbage speakers.
So, the recording companies are laughing al the way to the bank and telling customers they can just DL music and play it on their junk systems like happy idiots.

As far as car CD players, the same applies. Just think of all the monery they will save not instaling CD players in cars!
Even a couple of dollars per car mutiplied by hunderds of thousands can add up and the average consumer will be happy with less.
It's an established fact that MP3s add certain kinds of distotion that CDs do not for example.

BTW, I run as fast as possible from anything labeled HT. HT simply means junk audio for the masses to any audiophile.
Call something HT and the average consumer thinks it's great audio!

[Damo]

While audiophiles still exist and things like vinyl and vacuum tubes/valves are making a comback due to the better sound

Ive been a pro musician for over 20 years now, and a budding recording engineer for the last 3-4.

Some elitists do try to claim that there is a huge favorable difference with vinyl over digital formats when it comes to sound, but personal preference is not fact. The 'fact' is that vinyl pressings have absolutely horrendous amounts of artifacts in their sound, which some may prefer, but the sound is NOT superior to a digital format, especially with recording equipment being used today.

HOWEVER, the big thing ruining modern recording is the war for volume, and from that comes equally as horrid compression of recorded material. Itunes is also notorious for adding things like soundcheck and loudness options, which kills the dynamic range of music, but as we've been discussing, kids these days are accustomed to thinking louder is better.

Its obvious when you look at the number of youngsters installing their audio systems for maximum bass or maximum volume. Thats like turning the colour, brightness and contrast on your tv up to 100% to make it stand out on a shop floor with other tv's around. It gets your attention, but the image isn't displaying as it was intended and its horrible to look at.

Fortunately, there has steadily been an awakening from some circles though, and some bands are now opting for the full dynamic range being left in tact in their recordings by not wanting to compete in the loudness war. Commercial releases are unlikely to go down this road while the listening audience remains oblivious to how music should sound, but we can hope :)

[bronsin]

Remember tape hiss on cassette decks back in the 70s? Cassettes were supposed to be so cool and replace vinyl records. I didnt notice until my roomate pointed it out to me.

Of course vinyl records have nasty pops on them from dirt on the records.

All of this just underlines how old I have gotten. CDs were the greatest thing and now they are history. Ive already been through vinyl becoming history. And cassettes.

[RedRide]

Well, whether a tube/valve or a transitor is better can certainly be debated. However, it is usually agreed that tubes/valves can often give a warmer, more musical sound for whatever reasons. This is when comparing equal qualty systems.

MP3s do impart certain orders of distortion that many interpret as sounding somewhat better with cetain types of music (mainly rock) but, it certainly is not a totally accurate sound.

I completly agree that compression is degrading good music and I'm a big proponent of high dynamic range in all components, not just in the program source.
One irony is, when CD were first available to the public, one of the main selling points was a wider dynamic range over vinyl. WTF happened?

Also, I hate the obsession with overbearing bass! Give me a "flat" sound!

Tape hiss was mostly elimated with "Dolby" encoding.

As far as pops and clicks on vinyl records..........
Yes, on records that were not treated correctly. My records never suffered from this.
The ability to treat recordings like yesterday's newspaper was the main selling point of CDs.

BTW, I have been a musicain (bass guitar) an audiophile since the late '60s.
So I do not "hate" bass. I just want a well balanced bass.

[jambo101]

Originally Posted by WeeYari

Can't remember the last time I actually played a CD.

On a recent trip to Florida and back my 2 teenage girls never played a CD the whole trip, it was all downloaded music on their iPods or Satellite radio.
I'd say music on hard copy is just about done, Books may also be headed in the same direction as E-readers become more popular..

[bronsin]

Originally Posted by jambo101

I'd say music on hard copy is just about done, Books may also be headed in the same direction as E-readers become more popular..

Ah now the bastards will do the same thing to writers that they did to musicians!

[RedRide]

Perhaps we should eliminate movie theaters and just watch movies on a smart phone's tiny screen?
Then, should we eliminate real food and just take a nutrition pill?

New technolgy is great but, we must be careful not to replace an augmentation to something as the only way to access it.
The digital technology should make life easier, not replace real hard copys of anything!
Would one want to replace their wife with a facsimile on an I-pad?


Consider this.... I remenber when we all watched a TV on about 5" screen and we could not wait until they got bigger. Now people want to watch TV on a 4" screen. Is this progrees or regression in the false name of progress?

There are certain things that have stood the test of time and we should all think long and hard before throwing them in the dumpster of history.
I know many people who have abandoned their land line phones and just use their cell phones. Then, they complan that their carrier frequently drops service. This almost never happens with a land line! Yes, I have a cell phone but, still keep my land line!

The digital word is somewhat fragile, this is a given and as a society, we should never place all our eggs in one basket

BTW, I got my first computer over 30 years ago so, I know the digital world has its place. The challange for all of us is to keep it in its place