Remember the days of vinyl? There was nothing quite like buying a brand new record, bringing it home and playing it for the first time. The sound on that first playing was so crisp and clear you felt like you were actually in the room.
I used to DJ in my high-school days. The very process of cueing up a record would damage the vinyl, and it would never sound the same again. I rebelled against the onslaught of CD’s, since they wouldn’t allow you to control the music in the precise way that putting your finger on a record could. Only that control would allow exact mixes and scratches to work.
Over time, of course, the technology would overcome that, providing turntable-like jog wheels for professional use, and I caved in. But now, 15 years later, CD’s are facing the same obsolescence.
People are not interested in CD technology anymore. They want small. They want light. They want hours of music, not minutes. They want to support the artists, but not the conglomerates that publish them. They want to purchase music from home and listen to it right away, not go to a store or order online and wait a week. They want to transfer their music to their mp3 players without having to hack their way around copy-protection.
They want the control that they had with the $5.99 record that they could get 20 years ago. CD’s are fading, just like vinyl, audio cassettes and 8-tracks before them.
Dire Straits will soon be singing “I want my MP3.” A comment on society when people think it means getting your music for nothin’ and your (MP3 player) chips for free.
