I keep reading blogs with people talking about the death of the album. In fact on slashdot they have a story HERE from the Washington Post about the death of CD’s. The idea is that we can all make our plastic (cd’s , dvd, tapes) and we will no longer buy them. For some reason this just not sit well with me.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not see us continuing the trend of purchasing a cd for 15 bucks at the store, but I also don’t see the CD (or dvd) going away. What I have found over the course of time is people like tangible things. This is not always true, the younger age group (me included) are readily happy to spend a few bucks on some iTune songs or net flixs. But the majority of people still like to hold their purchases and get that warm fuzzy feeling of their new item. So I don’t buy the idea that the CD / DVD store will go away. I think it will just evolve.
What if you went into a future record store and brought your USB thumb drive (or mobile device) and said I want these 5 songs. The record store would give you the Album covers (or art- what ever it will be called in the future) and then create the media of your choice right there. Maybe they upload the songs to your USB drive, or burn your a custom cd with the artwork on it, or maybe they give you a DVD.
It is not that I am against not having cd stores or media to purchase, it is just I don’t see it happening. As I have seen in other blogs, there may no longer be full albums, but what is wrong with a collection of songs or movies of related topics. I feel strange arguing against the new culture, especially since I can remember burning all my CD’s (184 of them) to mp3’s in 2000. My wife thought I was crazy, my friends thought I was insane. I then sold all my cd’s in a garage sale and made enough money to purchase a portable MP3 / CD player to then listen to them. Now as we come into the Ipod revolution, I have had my music collection in digital format for a few years and can now laugh when people say they are spending a few hours / days converting their cd’s.
And in closing, I guess I can say do you really think the album is dead. Come on, people still buy vinyl records. Not to mention, do you really own that song you purchased from itunes? I think we are in for a change, but it may take a while. Not everyone owns an ipod. I for one have been holding out, I like my ipaq solution. But give me time, I will have something similar.