Death of the CD - why?

There are reasons why the CD is dying and the future of audio is downloads. And there are other reasons why those downloads have to be of better quality than MP3.

What are they?

The CD is a locked delivery chain, tied to the labels, distributors and retailers. Although some say that they like to buy something physical that they can own, many more want to buy music as computer files, for use on every level of equipment from the £5 MP3 player to the £10,000 audiophile HiFi equipment.

There are already lots of outlets - iTunes and Amazon being the most notable - for buying MP3 or AAC (a slightly better quality MP3) downloads. There are conspicuously fewer download sites for files of CD or higher quality and their offering are usually only Jazz or Classical. But hopefully this will change as the public desperately need a new purchasing route for medium quality (CD) and high (HD) audio downloads. Today the labels are hanging on to low quality MP3and not offering CD quality downloads, just to keep in place the CD delivery chain on which their business model is based. Take away the CD and they are bankrupt. The cost to the consumer of the music is much less than the cost of the retail CD.

The problem, as everyone knows by now, is that a change in delivery to internet downloads will break the stranglehold business model the labels have over artists and consumers.

Storage cost

But think also of the cost to the consumer of keeping his music, a CD costs £10 (say) and stores just 0.6GB of information - one album - costing £12/GB! In a computer a Hard Disk Drive of 500GB costs £100, or £0.4 per album stored!

Guess which consumers will go for?