Will a new physical music format appear? - Progressive Rock Music Forum

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Gerinski

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Topic: Will a new physical music format appear?
Posted: July 20 2014 at 16:07

Despite the undisputable raise of computer-delivered music, many people still like to stick to some physical format (vinyl or CD) for different reasons, artwork, sentimental, need to feel that you "own the thing" or whatever.

But CD is already rather old and it has some drawbacks, players are mechanical and not so robust against shocks, CD's are not too big but still a sizable collection of > 1000 albums takes considerable space, I am not certain about their long-term longevity (recorded CD-R's definitely get screwed up with time) etc.

Do you think that some new physical format will appear (i.e. just for example some thin and lightweight nice artwork accompanied by some sort of SD memory card)? Or is the age of physical formats really over, CD is the last we will ever see and from now on it's just up to intangible downloadable music?

Dean

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Posted: July 20 2014 at 18:18

Never say never, but predicting the future is always prone to wild speculation that misses the mark by a wide margin. This of course includes my own speculations here.

My wildly speculative prediction for the next digital format - none - downloads will disappear and it will all be streamed.

SD cards and memory sticks have been tried and failed and they are far more reliable than CD and CDR since there are no moving parts. Being better does not guarantee success and producing a better format than CD will require more than just a clever idea.

In the future there is the tantalising possibility of atomic, quantum and genetic storage media offering exabytes of storage (one exabyte is one million terabytes). Even with lossless digital formats the average consumer will never be able to use that much storage in a lifetime and even while 15 years ago most technologists would not have predicted PCs with a terabyte of storage at least they could have done the calculation of how may CDs a terabyte would hold (~1500) and made an educated guess - but who here has enough CDs to fill an exabyte drive? [that's 190,000 years of continuous music playback in case you're wondering]. These kinds of technology will not see application in domestic market for music storage - they are destined for the cloud (oooooooo-eeeee-oooooh), but more on this in a later paragraph...

Of all the digital formats past and present CD was neither the best nor was it the most convenient - it dominates because the two main hardware developers, Sony and Philips, owned the major record-labels - this is a lesson they learnt when Betamax and V2000 failed. Sony did this with Blu-ray too. Simply put: when you own the software (and by this I mean all recorded content, whether that is music, film or computer program) you control the entire hardware market. EMI and RCA understood this in the days of vinyl when there were more juke-boxes than personal record players.

If those that control the music and its distribution decide on a different format there will be little that we as consumers can do to prevent it happening. I do not for one minute believe that the current resurgence in the popularity of vinyl is entirely consumer-driven - it's a niche market to be exploited and that's what is happening - who do you think presses these new vinyls and who owns the music that's being transferred back to vinyl? [sorry to disappoint but Progressive Rock is not the market leader in vinyl sales]

The current move by those who own the software is for there to be no consumer owned media at all - at present we are permitted to download content, soon that will be replaced with live streaming only - the consumer will not own a copy of any piece of music or film, it will all be pay-per-listen or you will buy a licence to unlimited streams of a single album - there will be no hard copy and no means to transfer it to a personally owned storage medium. As I have said before, the Cloud is a con and we are merrily buying into it, not only that we stupidly hand over wadges of cash each month for the increased bandwidth to download something we already thought we owned. Ever since the invention of the Personal Computer the data bottle-neck has not been the size of the storage medium but the speed with which we can access it.

Why is it that mp3 players have become stuck on having such small storage capacity? Solid state memory of 128Gb and above is the state of the art, yet media-players, phones and tablets seldom get above 16Gb - a design limitation or limited by design? The situation as it is today is that media players are incapable of holding our entire album collections - this will not change, we are not seeing terabyte media players so dreams of exabytes fly out the window. No surprise now that the people who dominate the media player market also control the distribution and downloading system - if Apple want to produce a large capacity iPod, iPad or iPhone they can, the technology is already here, they simply don't want to.

[If you do not believe this will happen then please post a photograph of your Windows 8, iOS or OS-X installation discs - remember you do not own any of the books on your Kindle that you've "purchased" from Amazon, you have only bought a licence to read them.]

I have no real prediction for analogue media - it has been a stagnant "market" for over 50 years and I don't see that changing.

No one seems to be interested in developing a better form of purely analogue media - the vinyl LP is far from perfect and has had absolutely zero product development and/or improvement in over 50 years. We have the technology and improved material science to produce a better plastic that is more accurate and more resilient than the crude PVCs that records have been pressed from since they were first invented - all that's happened of late is they've gone back to the heavier (ie thicker) blanks of old, we have the ability to make them using better technology than simple hot pressing but these improved manufacturing techniques and technologies are not being explored. Technology in general has made huge leaps forward since Edison first recorded sound onto a wax cylinder but the basic electromechanical method of sound reproduction has remained locked in the 19th century.

Similarly the developments in tape technology we witnessed during the 60s and 70s actually produced progressively worse playback but succeeded because the compact formats were more usable. Technological advances of the past 30 years has given us the capability to far exceed the best fidelity of existing and historic analogue magnetic media but the demand simply isn't there.

We currently have the technology to produce far better analogue recording media today but there is neither the will nor the desire to develop it for the audio market - all the development in new technology such as graphene is going into battery technology and secure digital storage. We certainly cannot look to audiophilists as a receptive market for any emergent analogue media, their investment in vinyl and vintage tape technology is too entrenched in its insular little word and too distrusting of modern science and technology to even countenance a new analogue media that would be better than their beloved vinyl and ¼" reel-to-reel tape decks. Its been shown before that audiophilists don't want better, when presented with true high fidelity they don't like it, they want something that sounds warm like an old valve amp playing an old vinyl recording - warm is not better, it's just warmer. For all the promise that the analogue domain holds I fear it is the one market sector where the recalcitrant consumer controls the market and that will continue to stifle any new developments.

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Slartibartfast View Drop Down

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Posted: July 20 2014 at 18:22

Spot on, Dean. Nothing I could add or take away from what you wrote.

If there were to be a new form of "hard" copy format, it would need to include holographic album art and/or lyrics and of course encompass surround sound... Big smile

For me, I grew up in the age where 45s and 33 1/3s ruled. 8 tracks were really lousy even if they had better sound quality than cassettes. I taped my LPs to cassette using dbx, which made a perfect copy unlike dolby, but the copy was only good if you had a dbx deck to play it back on.

When CDs came along, I totally embraced the new format despite so many crappy releases being spewed out that weren't remastered for the new format.

Edited by Slartibartfast - July 20 2014 at 18:28

Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened...

Slartibartfast View Drop Down

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Posted: July 20 2014 at 18:31

Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened...

dr wu23

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Posted: July 20 2014 at 22:21

I hope not.....I like cd's.

One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
Haquin

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Posted: July 20 2014 at 22:46

The only thing I might add to Dean's (spectacular) post is from an artist's point of view. Would you, an unknown artist, rather release your music digitally (independently) and have total control, or jump through hoops to maybe get signed and have a physical release. CDs and LPs are largely (as Dean stated) a product of record businesses and as we see the decline of the business, we also see the decline of physical music. Will some collectors such as myself miss the physical medium? For sure. Will they continue to buy digital music once there is no choice? Absolutely.

Tom Ozric

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 00:59

Perhaps 'micro discs' ??? But LP's will live on......

Gerinski

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 04:28

Thanks Dean for the excellent post. Probably you are right, although for people like me it will take some adjustment of mind to switch to cloud music.

What I don't see so clear is your statement that "there will be no hard copy and no means to transfer it to a personally owned storage medium". I guess it will always be possible to record what is being sent to the speakers.

Dean

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 05:08

Gerinski wrote:

Thanks Dean for the excellent post. Probably you are right, although for people like me it will take some adjustment of mind to switch to cloud music.

Of course there will always be ways around any restrictions for those who are determined enough but for the majority of consumers this would not be a requirement.

No one cried when VHS disappeared, only a few people have recordable DVD players attached to their media centres and trying to find a stand-alone HDD video recorder is nigh on impossible - most users it seems are happy with buying pre-recorded DVDs and using On Demand streaming for their video entertainment. I have boxes of old VHS tapes in my attic with nothing to play them on.

I don't think any one would have predicted that the general public would so readily adopt hardware that lacked keyboard, mouse, large storage capability, CD/DVD drives or any means of attaching external storage devices, yet we have and the trend continues unabated. Desk-top PCs are being replaced with lap-tops, lap-tops are being replaced with tablets, it is not too wild a speculation to envisage a time in the near future where the hardware to make personal copies is simply unavailable.

Few of us have PC hardware to read floppy discs any more - I have a USB 3½" drive but nothing to read 5" or 8¼" discs, mechanical hard-drives are fast becoming obsolete, some motherboards do not support parallel ATA devices, USB is replacing SATA, and even USB can be phased out any time (look at Apple). Recently I re-discovered a box of over 50 miniDiscs in my spare room - fortunately I still have the hardware to play them on, but that will only be usable as long as I can obtain the special Li-ion batteries it uses. My DAW studio hardware, which was state of the art back in 1999, uses a device specific (ie non-standard) SCSI interface for backup and my only SCSI DVD drive is currently broken - try buying one of those these days - the only way I can get data off that DAW now is via the optical link. Who here still has DAT, ZIP or Bernoulli drives attached to their PCs?

As consumers we have no control over obsolescence.

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chopper

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 07:42

Dean wrote:

My wildly speculative prediction for the next digital format - none - downloads will disappear and it will all be streamed.

Yes,you're probably right as streaming is really taking off now but obviously that depends on an Internet connection. I can't stream on my tube journey home so there's a flaw there until we get some sort of univerasal always-on internet connectivity.

Gerinski

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 08:30

chopper wrote:

Dean wrote:

My wildly speculative prediction for the next digital format - none - downloads will disappear and it will all be streamed.

Oh that will certainly come, in the tube and in Alaska and around Earth's orbit.

ExittheLemming View Drop Down

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 08:35

Dean wrote:

Its been shown before that audiophilists don't want better, when presented with true high fidelity they don't like it, they want something that sounds warm like an old valve amp playing an old vinyl recording - warm is not better, it's just warmer. For all the promise that the analogue domain holds I fear it is the one market sector where the recalcitrant consumer controls the market and that will continue to stifle any new developments.

Excellent post (albeit a unnerving one that reveals the delusion of consumer sovereignty in a 'republic' ruled by format owners) The emboldened part cuts right to the heart of the simplistic and spurious analogue (read warm) v digital (read cold) debate where Dean correctly points out that many analogue snobs only want a mirror if that mirror is a flattering one - not necessarily a truthful or accurate one. Wish I'd thought of that when flailing on the ropes while being harangued by some callow EDM hipster who posits 'all digital technology sucks' yadda dikkity yak Dead

)

Edited by ExittheLemming - July 21 2014 at 08:35

Gerinski

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 08:58

But, will we still have CDs for many years to come? or should we start thinking of starting to stop purchasing CDs altogether? I like having my CDs, scrolling around them visually and with my fingers on my shelves to think what I'm going to listen to, don't take that away from me ! Angry

I guess that another serious problem is that with the ever increasing quantity of music ever released and the increasing number of people who are happy enough with just the downloadable or streaming versions, manufacturing physical copies will quickly become simply too expensive (or better said, just not profitable enough), simply because the demand quantity for any particular album in physical format will be far too small to make it an attractive business, even if manufacturing CDs must be quite cheap (I think I have read something in the order of < 1 euro). But how many CD copies must be sold per year, even worldwide, of albums such as say, Pat Metheny's Zero Tolerance For Silence? if they just produce 100 copies I'm afraid they have stock for over 20 years Shocked

Gerinski

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 09:02

Dean wrote:

I don't think any one would have predicted that the general public would so readily adopt hardware that lacked keyboard, mouse, large storage capability, CD/DVD drives or any means of attaching external storage devices, yet we have and the trend continues unabated.

I have to admit I do not have a smartphone nor a tablet yet Embarrassed

but I think that's not gonna last much longer, they make you feel like a freak of nature if you don't have one of those these days.

Finnforest View Drop Down

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 10:37

What a disturbing thread LOL

If I may ask some silly questions of you guys, who are far more techno savvy than myself.

I will never give up my CD/DVD collection. Do you think there will always be a few small manufacturers making home CD/DVD players for us oldster in the future? Would I be best to buy an extra player or two now and sit on them?

I'm not against streaming per se, I use Bandcamp often, but how would you get that music through a home stereo system if streaming were the singular format? I have not purchased a receiver/amp in a long time. Do they now have inputs that allow a computer to plug into them? There needs to be a way to listen to streaming music through one's large floor speakers....otherwise there's no reason to do it. I'm certainly not interested in ear buds or tiny pc speakers.

How long will a behemoth like Amazon be selling CDs? I've been hearing about the demise of CDs for many years now but it hasn't happened. Are we talking next year? 10 years?

Last, I love desk top pcs. I will not spend time surfing on a tablet because i'm physically more comfortable sitting at a desk looking forward, not down. I also hate touch screen typing with a passion. I write for a hobby. I can't imagine not having a traditional keyboard for long typing sessions. If they stop making traditional pcs, will there be some way to employ a comfortable old style keyboard with a tablet? Will you be able to plug one in, and then place your tablet on a vertical holder to simulate a desk-pc experience?

Thanks for the informative thread....I"m going to need a drink now Tongue

Dean

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 11:41

Gerinski wrote:

But, will we still have CDs for many years to come? or should we start thinking of starting to stop purchasing CDs altogether? I like having my CDs, scrolling around them visually and with my fingers on my shelves to think what I'm going to listen to, don't take that away from me ! Angry

Hard to say, I think CDs will be phased out just as LPs and VHS were. We may see a niche market for them but I can't think what the impetus for that market to appear would be - the resurgence in vinyl LP came from the persistence of the 12" dance single that kept going through the 90s and early 2000s - that market sector kept the vinyl pressing plants in business. Without a "champion" cause it is difficult to see what would keep glass-mastered CD plants in business - it could be the dance market again that keeps it going but it could be something like the Classical Music market (who readily adopted CDs over vinyl to begin with due to the play-length of the format) that sustains CD manufacturing. It certainly won't be mainstream artists or fringe genres like Prog or Indie Rock.

Without searching the interweb I can only give figures for ten years ago, but the price-break point between glass-mastered and CDR was around 500 units, below 500 and CDR was cheaper, above 500 and glass-mastering was cheaper. I recall that price break was around £1.20 per disc to manufacture - obviously if you're pressing 1000s of CD then that price drops like a stone. Whether that is worthwhile ultimately depends upon what the consumer is willing to pay. At the moment Anathema's Distant Satellites is £17.99 for the double vinyl, £9.99 for the CD and £7.99 for the download - it seems we are only willing to pay a couple of quid more for the CD but over double for the vinyl - if CDs become niche (which I doubt) then expect to pay much more for the privilege, I wouldn't be surprised to see CDs costing more than vinyl because the demand could be considerably less. One thing you can guarantee is the cost of downloads will not get any cheaper but streaming will appear to be more cost-effective in the short term for the average consumer.

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Dean

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 12:16

Finnforest wrote:

What a disturbing thread LOL

The problem with CD players (as we all have probably experienced) is the mechanical transport wears out. Even those that are kept boxed in storage suffer from the bearings drying out. Regardless of how much you pay for a system the transport is made to a price and that is as cheap as possible (nylon bearings etc). At one point all the transports in every CD player was either made by Philips or Sony regardless of the maker's badge on the front of the unit, now that China is involved in most of the manufacture of consumer electronics frankly all bets are off.

Finnforest wrote:

I'm not against streaming per se, I use Bandcamp often, but how would you get that music through a home stereo system if streaming were the singular format? I have not purchased a receiver/amp in a long time. Do they now have inputs that allow a computer to plug into them? There needs to be a way to listen to streaming music through one's large floor speakers....otherwise there's no reason to do it. I'm certainly not interested in ear buds or tiny pc speakers.

Streaming to HiFi and media centres is a reality now, it is only a matter of time before it is commonplace. There are a number of ways of doing it at present using LAN, WiFi or Bluetooth. Using the iPad I can control my Rasberry Pi media player and stream music from my 1Tb networked NAS discdrive to one of my Hifi systems and out through its Mission speakers. I can even stream music to my bedside alarm clock via Bluetooth and the sound quality is astonishingly good.

Finnforest wrote:

How long will a behemoth like Amazon be selling CDs? I've been hearing about the demise of CDs for many years now but it hasn't happened. Are we talking next year? 10 years?

I can't predict when the phasing out of CDs will happen, it will probably happen before we know it has happened and we won't get a great deal of warning beforehand. Amazon are only a retailer and they cannot dictate to the manufacturers, so when sales of downloads exceed sales of CDs by an appreciable margin the record companies will simple stop making them.

Finnforest wrote:

Last, I love desk top pcs. I will not spend time surfing on a tablet because i'm physically more comfortable sitting at a desk looking forward, not down. I also hate touch screen typing with a passion. I write for a hobby. I can't imagine not having a traditional keyboard for long typing sessions. If they stop making traditional pcs, will there be some way to employ a comfortable old style keyboard with a tablet? Will you be able to plug one in, and then place your tablet on a vertical holder to simulate a desk-pc experience?

I have a Bluetooth keyboard for my iPad - it's okay for casual use but I wouldn't want to write a book using it. As someone who writes a lot I prefer a full-travel keyboard over a laptop keyboard anyway but there is no technical reason why Bluetooth keyboards cannot have full-travel keys.

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Finnforest View Drop Down

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 12:37

Thanks Dean....could you expand a bit more (in simplest language) how the streaming gets pumped through to your floor speakers? The receiver/amp is still driving them? How can the stream be amplified...do you have to purchase a new receiver to do this?

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 13:08

Finnforest wrote:

What a disturbing thread LOL

If I may ask some silly questions of you guys, who are far more techno savvy than myself.I will never give up my CD/DVD collection. Do you think there will always be a few small manufacturers making home CD/DVD players for us oldster in the future? Would I be best to buy an extra player or two now and sit on them?I'm not against streaming per se, I use Bandcamp often, but how would you get that music through a home stereo system if streaming were the singular format? I have not purchased a receiver/amp in a long time. Do they now have inputs that allow a computer to plug into them? There needs to be a way to listen to streaming music through one's large floor speakers....otherwise there's no reason to do it. I'm certainly not interested in ear buds or tiny pc speakers. How long will a behemoth like Amazon be selling CDs? I've been hearing about the demise of CDs for many years now but it hasn't happened. Are we talking next year? 10 years?Last, I love desk top pcs. I will not spend time surfing on a tablet because i'm physically more comfortable sitting at a desk looking forward, not down. I also hate touch screen typing with a passion. I write for a hobby. I can't imagine not having a traditional keyboard for long typing sessions. If they stop making traditional pcs, will there be some way to employ a comfortable old style keyboard with a tablet? Will you be able to plug one in, and then place your tablet on a vertical holder to simulate a desk-pc experience? Thanks for the informative thread....I"m going to need a drink now Tongue

Here is a simple solution for streaming from the internet, Spotify Connect, Apple airplay and traditional wifi. LAN/USB input as well as computer input, plus 4 digital inputs.

Very nice integrated digital amp with 50wpc, can probably drive your floor speakers nicely.

http://nadelectronics.com/products/digital-music/D-7050-Direct-Digital-Network-Amplifier

There are many solutions to get music from the internet/laptop/desktop to your home system rather than thru tiny earbuds.

Edited by Catcher10 - July 21 2014 at 13:09

Dean

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Posted: July 21 2014 at 13:31

Finnforest wrote:

Thanks Dean....could you expand a bit more (in simplest language) how the streaming gets pumped through to your floor speakers? The receiver/amp is still driving them? How can the stream be amplified...do you have to purchase a new receiver to do this?

By far the simplest way is to connect your phone or tablet to your HiFi Amp with just a 3.5mm stereo Jack to RCA phono cable. Of course that's not wireless but it does allow you to connect to online streaming and pump it out through your hifi. However, it is cheap and very reliable (if you're not interested in OFC Monster type cables you can pick up a suitable cable from Amazon for less than ten bucks - I have one in my office that's 5 metres long and cost me £7.99 to connect my PC to my modest office sound system [CD player, turntable, 4 channel stereo mixer and a small 15W tube amp] - it's only there for ambience while I work really so I'm not after stunning sound quality or wall-paper stripping volume, but I digress).

The next level is a direct wireless link from your phone or tablet using a stand-alone Bluetooth receiver that plugs into your HiFi amp using RCA phono cables, well-known manufactures such as QED and Arcam make such units but I'm not an expert on them by any means and could never recommend any single brand or product. Essentially this is the same as option 1 except you are no longer tied to the HiFi by a length of cable, prices start from $50 and go steadily upwards, I think the Arcam rBlink is around $250.

As José has already posted, you can get dedicated amplified solution that connects directly to the internet, but now we're talking $1000.

Then there are dedicated audio networks such as the Sonos system and I know nothing of those - I'm sure your friendly local audio retailer can fill you in but they are pricey because you need a bridge to connect to your network and receivers to connect to your audio system and other devices. But if you wanted to pipe music all over your house and even out into the garden this is probably the ideal kind of set up to do it.

My system is scratch-built and I wouldn't recommend that approach at all unless you are familiar with Linux, Samba and home networking. That uses a Linux based Raspberry Pi single board computer that attaches to my home network using WiFi. It runs a piece of server software called RuneAudio that streams music from various shared drives and PCs on my network out to the audio port. However, rather than use the inbuilt audio port of the Pi I use a Behringer UCA222 USB sound card and connect that to my HiFi amp using the (now obsolete) Tape input with RCA phono cables. The advantage of using the Pi running RuneAudio is that I don't need to connect a mouse, keyboard and monitor to it, I can control it remotely using a PC, tablet or smarmy 'phone. I haven't set this up for streaming online content because it does not interest me but it should be possible, you can certainly do that with XBMC on the Pi. The whole set up cost me less than £100.

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