The future of music storage

[sdtom]

Moderator's Note: This discussion has been split from an earlier thread, which can be found here.

You can always play your CDs on a DVD player...

I fear that the DVD is headed the same way as the CD. We'll be in a world of downloads.
Tom

[Santo Neuenwelt]

The Doblinger to which I referred is the retail outlet, i.e. shop, on Dorotheagasse in Vienna of the publishing firm by the same name. They have existed since the 19th century and started publishing music then. The firm of Ludwig Doblinger has been sold a number of times. Since WWII it has been the largest retail music shop in Vienna. In addition they had one of the best antiquarian departments in Europe. Wives of Viennese musicians regularly would bring their deceased husbands voluminous music collections in to Doblinger who then stored them, but did not sort them, deep under ground in a dimly lit catacomb, where one, if you knew the manager, would be allowed to go and rummage through the music and where amazing gems from the past, long out of print, could be found. Now, sadly, it is gone.

Up until around 2000, it was impossible to browse their retail collection unless you were on a "Du" basis with the manager. Rather, you had to know what you wanted and a clerk would go in the back and bring it out. This was the case in most shops in Vienna, e.g. clothing shops, toy shops etc. Browsing was not a Viennese thing. Most people only entered a shop if they had an item in mind. Like much else, this has changed. Now, at Doblingers, everything is on display and in drawers that can be examined by the public. But sadly, their stock, though still better than anything you can find in the US is less copious than before. There was a time when if Doblingers did not have it, it was unavailable. Those times are gone. There are better shops in Germany, Bauer & Hieber to name just one.

[MartinH]

Yes, you can play CDs on a DVD player - but there aren't many DVD players that have the high-end audio quality that some of us demand. When Linn came out and said the CD is dead it really came as a shock - and that was seven years ago!

[sdtom]

It is going to be a very slow process Martin but in my opinion it will go the way of the VHS tape. These tapes are still around and people will buy them because of the price ($.25) but the players are wearing out which I still get but 4 out of 5 are now broken. The person who has an interest is very low income and would be unwilling to pay a charge of up to a $100 to repair them. They're looking for a used unit that works for under $10.00. The same process is beginning to happen with the CD's which are now selling at $1.00 and a good quality CD player is around $20.00. Many of them are beginning to wear out and the modular CD mechanism is not repairable. This will take time but if we revisit this topic in 10 years you'll see how much closer I am.

To see how the market is going we can use my 34 year old daughter who has never owned a CD. She is all downloads for music as well as movies.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Downloads are, almost certainly, the future - I suspect.

[jdperdrix]

I, personally, have stopped buying CD's and DVD's. I mostly download: no need to browse and order the disk and wait for days or weeks before being told that it is out of catalogue.
But it seems to me that the future is not even download but streaming... And this future is now. So we should struggle for better streaming companies...

[sdtom]

There will be some who will hang on until the end (many don't own computers) but still have these small boom boxes that will play cassettes and CD's but as those units break there options will be fewer and fewer. I know that this topic is way off topic but it is one that will have an impact on what we do and deserves a small measure of attention. I can say without reservation that if you wish to continue with the CD's the Marantz CD5004 has a modest price of $400.00 and I've put thousands of hours on it.

[Alan Howe]

I have an excellent TEAC - cost: around £150.

[Richard Moss]

Pardon my soap box, but as a retired senior IT manager, my thoughts stray to these topics like a moth to the flame!

As with all 'IT' environments, planning for backup and recovery costs and functionality is just as important as initial costs and user convenience.  Ever thought what you'd do if your cloud evaporated overnight or your 1,000-5,000 disc music storage centre was lost in a fire or malfunctioned and was not repairable>?? 

Also, I wonder what is the legal position if your cloud supplier ceases trading or goes into administration - is it your 'data' (whether it be music, images, video etc doesn't matter legally) or the cloud hosting service's??

Also, as everyone is jumping on the cloud hosting bandwagon for their product only, I would want all my music in one place to one standard, not some on e-music, some on i-tunes, some on amazon etc. all held in different ways.

By all means let us embrace the advantages that modern technology can offer, if that is your thing, but let us do so with open eyes as well as open minds.

just another 'thought for the day'

Cheers

Richard

[MartinH]

Well you've scared me. I have three players, a Sony, Marantz, and Denon, and they've been trouble free for 10-12 years. So I think I'll start buying replacement units and storing them away until needed. If I can get 30 more years out of my collection, that's enough. Then the question will be, what to do with the huge collection of disks? Who's going to want them? Maybe open a retro-retail store!

[sdtom]

As long as I continue working at the thrift store I'll be able to help fellow forum members with used units. I had my collection of CD's moved from San Diego Ca. to Minneapolis Mn. and the shipping cost was $1500 three years ago. I have roughly 3000 CD's. In 10 or 20 years no one will likely want them so they will become recycled plastic, yikes. My 90 year old father has the same situation with over 1000 VHS tapes. No one even wants them as a donation! It is all material that is available on DVD or streaming.

[Herbert Pauls]

On the other hand, it is too bad that so many have dispensed with (factory printed) CDs because as an archival medium they are far better than a hard drive. The CDs I bought in the late 1980s all seem to still work, and that is going on 30 years of worry-free storage. The same is not the case with the hard drive. I started ripping my  collection to the computer a while back but gave up because it was so time consuming. I mentally calculated how much storage it would take if I backed everything up 3 times (a good policy) and renewed those backups every 4 or 5 years. After 30 years would add up to a lot of hard drives! Not so cheap, nor as worry free as CDs sitting on a shelf. I'm afraid that we are descending into what someone called the digital dark ages, where unless we frantically continue to back things up on a regular basis, we are in serious danger of losing valuable information. A CD one buys as a download is an expensive hassle if you want to keep it for 50 years!

[MartinH]

CD-ROMs certainly have a limited shelf-life. I've burned some cds from LPs and some of them are becoming unplayable. They are 15-20 years old. But then I have some ASV cds that have long gone bad. And my Raff 5th with Herrmann on Unicorn is bronzed beyond salvation. Thankfully copied to cd-rom.

[Herbert Pauls]

American Record Guide used to publish lists of CDs that went bad. Turned out that the corroded ones could often be traced to certain batches at certain factories. I have had the odd one as well, but all told very few out of 10 000 or so. Am very pleased with that.

[JimL]

My old Danacord CD of Marshev playing the Rubinstein 3rd and 4th concertos had incredibly bad distortion starting very late in the finale of the 3rd concerto, where it was almost imperceptible, and getting so bad during the 4th that it rendered it unlistenable partway through the first movement.  It quite literally sounded like a warped LP.