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MP3 Downloads not guilty of Killing CDs
Sales of DVDs and CDs are still strong despite the threat of music downloads from the Internet, whether legal, or illegal.
Latest figures show that over 375 million DVDs, CDs and Blu-ray discs were sold last year. That’s an incredible figure, given that the download was meant to signal a swift end to the shiny discs.
So why has the physical disc not only survived, but still remains quite resilient to the changes.
Firstly, there is still that idea of owning, touching and using a physical entity. A disc has a perceived value, unlike an electronic file. And it’s this almost tactile nature of the disc which is proving so hard to beat. It might also be a generational thing, with many older users, especially those born before the widespread introduction of the desktop computer, preferring a physical product. And this baby boom generation has a great deal of buying power out in the marketplace.
Couple that with the large number of companies that make the process of physically renting movies and games so much easier (discs going back and forth in the post), then the disc is by no means dead and buried.
And there is also becoming a marked usage pattern when it comes to the physical disc as opposed to the download. Currently, most people still listen to music, or watch movies at home and the home is primarily geared towards machines that use physical discs. Download devices tend to be popular for outside the home, such as when commuting and driving. This is backed up when you look at consumer entertainment equipment sales. Portable CDs players hardly sell anymore and DVD portable players are popular only really in the car. Yet portable MPS players have sold in incredible numbers, whereas download devices for the home have yet to take off.
It’s come down to an in-home, or outside-home market, with DVDs and CDs popular inside, and download devices popular outside.
Now, of course, as multimedia devices become in greater use and more and more people become used to their ways, then arguably this will change over the coming decades.
And this will have to be supported by more user-friendly technology, with MP3 players needing to adopt a more user-friendly interface.
It is still easier to take a disc from a cover, open the tray of the player, pop it in, press the play button and sit back and enjoy. You don’t need a desktop computer, laptop, smartphone, or PDA. And of course, all those bits of kit just mentioned are not as simple to operate as a DVD player.
They are all temperamental to some extent and have numerous different platforms and interfaces, and many have compatibility problems.
There are also various rights issues with digital music and there have been many horror stories of people losing comprehensive (and expensive) digital music libraries when their computer crashes, or indeed, even when they have upgraded equipment.
And let’s not forget that music downloads can often be of an inferior quality to that of discs.
Price is also a factor, but not maybe in the way we all think. Downloading a single music track is seemingly inexpensive, but when you buy a large number of tracks, or indeed an album, then
you could end up paying nearly the same say for a download as the physical version on a disc.
Plus, internet providers are quick to slap on excess data charges if they think you’re downloading too many bits. So high definition movie and music files could be an expensive option.
And back to the question of technology. The latest generation discs such as Blu-ray hold an incredible amount of data and can adequately support the hardware manufacturers thirst for ever better quality pictures and sound. Yet getting the equivalent quality via a download could be a nightmare. In an ideal world with a mega-fast link to an internet which does not chug and a computer which seamlessly brings down the data, there’s no problem
So there we have it, DVDs and CDs still have a purpose. But let’s not kid ourselves; it’s merely a stay of execution. In decades to come, they will go the same way as good old vinyl. As more download devices become user-friendly and more people accept digital files sent across the internet as the norm, then the shiny discs will start to retreat. It’s only a matter of time.
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