
How the compact disc lost its shine - bufordsharkley
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/28/how-the-compact-disc-lost-its-shine
======
hackuser
Almost everyone has forgotten this vision:

We now have a way to distribute works of art (i.e., any that can be digitized,
including music) freely, easily, globally, and immediately to everyone, in an
open, free-as-in-speech form that enables further innovation. Works of art
aren't limited, as they have been for all of human history until now, to a
specific object or location. What an incredible boon, a miracle, and or
artists too, whose vision can spread from their studio, or parents' basement,
around the world, effortlessly.

But an industry had been built on the old distribution medium; it earned money
by limiting and selling access to the artwork. Rather than someone creatively
disrupting that industry and replacing it with something native to and
facilitating the advantages of this miraculous medium, instead we've imposed
the old industry on the new tech, crippling it with DRM and laws (and by
framing the discussion to the degree that everyone refers to music as an
article of commerce and not as a work of art, to the point that even artists
speak that way and buy into the 'threat' of the Internet).

If anything should be open and free, it's art.

~~~
bsder
> If anything should be open and free, it's art.

Wrong. Art really deserves copyright protection. However, that protection
should not extend past the author's lifetime. Twenty years on a work is
probably about right--maybe forty if we consider extended lifespans.

The social good of copyright is to incentivize creation. We tolerate the
social bad--the monopoly--in order to get more works.

The problem is that copyright law no longer carries out the social good.

~~~
frik
That's it. Though the law (US, EU) has been changed recently to extend
copyright protection for an even longer time past the authors lifetime. Some
year ago it was afaik 70 years after the author died. The Encyclopedia
Britannica from 1911 is now public domain but songs from Elvis Presley were
owned by Michael Jackson (his daughter was together with him for some time)
and will make another generation or two of his childrens rich (or whoever owns
the rights now/then).

------
jerf
"Webster remembers one industry Cassandra, Maurice Oberstein – who ran CBS and
then Polygram in the UK – making a similar point. “He was the only one who
went: ‘We’re making a huge mistake. We’re putting _studio-quality_ masters
into the hands of people.’ And he was absolutely right in that respect. Once
you made a CD with ones and zeroes it was only a matter of time before that
was converted into something that was easily transferable.”"

Emphasis mine.

Well, the Loudness War fixed that problem right up, didn't it? Now CDs aren't
"studio-quality masters" anymore.

~~~
mark-r
Once you had digital mastering and digital manipulation, the loudness wars
would have happened no matter what the output medium.

What I don't understand is how this appeals to the bean counters. Were any of
the best-selling albums of all time noticeably louder than their peers?

~~~
DanBC
Loud works for radio, which used to drive sales.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Loud on radio comes from boxes, not from a disc.

If you have unremastered CDs of the top 100 selling albums of all time that
were built before CDs, they have a lot of air in 'em. "Goodbye Yellow Brick
Road", "Hotel California" and the Led Zep catalog all show this.

There's just no good reason to overmodulate a CD. You have a volume control;
use it.

------
beloch
In the nineties, there was a great local record shop that was set up in a
former bank that had been built in 1930. Marble floors and walls. Wrought iron
railing with a loft above the main floor, which had a huge vaulted ceiling.
There were listening stations where you could sample music and several floors
above, all full of music in various genres. It wasn't quite a large as Tower
Records, but it was a much nicer building and was just a 15-minute walk from
my high-school. I blew _far_ too much money there. In terms of the sheer
percentage of my disposable income it gobbled up, no other format has ever
come close to CD's.

As great as this store was, it was still sometimes hard to find specific
albums. Imagine special ordering physical media these days! I forget if you
had to pay in advance or just put down a deposit, but sometimes it took months
to get some albums in. Today, even if you still have to have physical media,
you can get the most obscure releases off of amazon (heck, even amazon japan)
in less time.

In every measurable way, online distribution of physical media is superior to
the old mega-stores, and digital media is more convenient still. However,
there was something special about walking into a big space that was packed
with tens of thousands of different albums and being able to wander down the
aisles browsing album art. One of my big hopes for virtual reality is to bring
this kind of experience back to life, only with all the advantages of digital
media. Imagine shopping in a virtual record shop, being able to walk down the
aisles, pick a random album off the shelf and, just by looking at it, be able
to listen to the tracks. Maybe there will even be a way to chat up other
people browsing the same genre!

------
nemo44x
I'll never forget when Apple introduced iTunes (before the iPod) with the
tagline "Rip, Mix and Burn". Classic Steve Jobs direct assault at an industry
his company was about to take over. Looking back, seeing how the iPod was
under development at this time puts the entire strategy together.

Apple wasn't the first company to let you rip music, share it and burn CD's,
etc but they were the one's who made it accessible to everyone with a
seamless, fully integrated user experience. Users ripped all of their and
their friends music, got used to the MP3 format and then the ease of buying
MP3's from Apples store with iPod integration.

~~~
soperj
Everyone? it took almost 3 years for them to release a windows version. Hell
it didn't even run on OSX for nearly a year.

~~~
stephengillie
Harvard Business case studies cite the delayed Windows version as a marketing
tactic. "Everyone loved" the iPod, and apparently quite a few people bought a
prerequisite Mac in order to use the iPod.

~~~
nemo44x
Indeed. I looked weird on my college campus with a Mac. However, after the
iPod the idea of using a Mac became more acceptable I saw a lot more of them.
Now they are ubiquitous - something I would not have imagined 15 years ago.

------
makeitsuckless
I immediately stopped buying CD's forever when I encountered the first
"copyright protected" CD I couldn't play in my computer.

That was years before the first music downloads were legally available (at
least where I live), so you can guess what happened to my music consumption
from that point on.

~~~
maxerickson
The copy protected discs were not compliant CDs. Which doesn't mean a whole
lot, except that a disc carrying the CD-DA logo won't have any copy
protection.

~~~
stephengillie
It's almost surreal when you know this, and you search far and wide, but every
CD you're interested in buying has that logo missing.

------
happycube
Semi-related: MCA (Yes, Universal) invented the Laserdisc, their bean counters
made the disks crappy (by underspeccing the factory), Phillips made unreliable
crappy players that couldn't play said crappy disks... and Pioneer made it all
actually work.

