The CD died with Michael Jackson

Photo by mightyohm

In 1985 the first CD ever was sold, it was an album by Dire Straits and later on Michael Jackson’s Thriller became the most sold CD (or LP) ever. Now when he is dead he will sell even more but that is also the death of the CD. For me it has been a dying media for a long time but now I think it is time to berry it for ever and don’t try to replace it with some other disc system. The media industry has invested in technology for producing CD’s and also in channels for distributing them. Of course they will try to keep the CD alive but that is in vain. Who want a CD these days? I don’t want to buy 10 songs just because I happen to like 1 or 2 of them. I want to compose my own package. As we all know, the Internet is the tool for this. Here we can get the songs that we like and nothing else. When we buy a CD we also pay for the CD production technology and distribution costs as well as for the chain of middlemen. When I download or listen from the Internet I don’t want to and shouldn’t pay for these things. It should be much cheaper. So far it is not. Create good deals and the illegal downlods will be history! (See Media moguls, embrace the new opportunities!)

We have already many Internet radio stations and sites such as last.fm that delivers music to us. More or less as the traditional radio. I think it is time to find new ways to deliver and distribute music. Buy a song, rent a song, get a song with ad and subscribe to songs to start with. Some of the above apply also to the film industry but here we have a different situation. The production of a movie is by far more expensive than producing a music album. Another difference is the broadband capacity. A song can be downloaded as easy as it can be streamed. A movie is much better streamed for the time being compared to downloading. But in my opinion movies are still best experienced in the theater!

Related posts:

1. Voddler will (and must) get better   I have used Voddler beta for a few weeks now and there are many things still missing before it is ready for a wider public.For you who are...
2. Why doesn’t smartphones have a voice interface? I mean the command interface. What devices are the most natural to start having a voice interface? Mobiles of course! We talk in them already. A voice interface to the...