Another article re CD sales

Thanks for posting an interesting article

how depressing!

I just had this discussion with my son last night. He's 11 and has had an iPod for a few months. Up to now, he's just ripped CDs that I have. But now he's ready to start buying music from iTunes.

I'm trying to sell him on the idea of buying CDs instead: better sound quality, more flexible (can play in our stereo and cars as well as on iPod), and if you shop around (used, Amazon, BMG, etc.), you can certainly get good music for $10 per CD.

His response -- yes, you can buy CDs for $10, but can you buy individual songs on CD for $1? In other words, nothing against CDs, but I want to buy songs, not albums.

If you want to cherry-pick (which he definitely wants to do), it's pretty hard to argue with digital downloads.

So I fear the article is correct.

- Eric

what concerns me is that, as CDs sales increasingly give way to downloaded music, the ability to get audiophile-quality recordings of new music is disappearing. i have not found a source for downloading uncompressed/lossless mainstream music (new or old), and i have no desire to play a compressed/lossly files on quality audio equipment.
i am not sure what it will take to get itunes/napster/etc (who have rights to sell major label music) to offer this. Even my Bay City Rollers 45s sound better than an itunes download.

I remember buying ablums at 14 and sometimes being very disappointed that the only good song on it was the one I knew that prompted the buy, yet there was special magic in buying an album and finding great music on it that I had never heard before sometimes even better than the song that prompted the purchase. Album and CD sets give the artist a chance to experiment with songs less likely to be immediately marketable. Like most creative endeavors, home runs are few but worth the wait. The flip of this is that now there are powerful ways for new artists to be heard, such as the site www.rippyfest.com without relying on a major recording contract or top 40 play.