subject: The Demise Of Cds [print this page] When record players and the records they played became obsolete it changes a lot of things for a lot of people. Entire record collections, lovingly organised and collected were discarded almost overnight and collections had to be begun anew. At roughly the same time floppy disks too went extinct as fewer and fewer computers including floppy disk drives in their design. Not long after VHS too stepped aside and then even game cartridges.
Following the great cross over, almost every type of data came on a CD of some sort; CD albums, CD ROMS and DVDs. They were faster, larger and shinier than their predecessors and for a while they reigned supreme. Several other formats would challenge them for dominance zip disks and HD DVD among them (the inclusion of quotation marks betraying their failure to go mainstream). Today blu ray (though still a CD) is doing an admirable effort in competing with the DVD format.
The time of the CD is coming to an end, but its not another form of storage thats going to usurp it; its a lack of storage. Whats rapidly overtaking CDs, DVDs, Blu Ray and every other form of storage is cross platform files that can be downloaded and shared across devices, edited on the fly and stored on memory cards or SanDisk compact flash memory sticks. As technology moves on, internet speeds improve and memory cards get larger, theres really no need to have bulky CDs taking up space and limiting how the user views or listens to their files.
Producers and studios are trying to fight this trend, seeing it as a threat to their respective industries. If people can share whole films on their Sd memory cards, why would they buy the DVDs at all? Futile attempts to limit the use of files are being enforced by companies such as Apple though such restrictions are bound to be the companys undoing in the long run (and savvy users can easily remove such restrictions anyway).
Attempts to police this kind of free transfer of data are futile and will be resented by the users. By doing away with storage such as CDs companies can afford to sell their music and games so cheaply that users wont mind paying for them and this way reach a far larger audience. This opens up even more opportunities for advertising and changes the way well do business.
Companies however that are embracing the memory card and download era are reaping the benefits however. The new PSP Go for example allows all of its games to be downloaded on the go (hence the name), while many DVDs now come with a spare copy of the film that can be transferred to phones or laptops to watch during commutes a great incentive to once again buy the DVD. Even books, though they skipped a stage in between, are making the leap to digital format and Neil Gaiman recently had great success giving away e-book copies of American Gods for free. Those massive collections of CDs and books are starting to look rather dated in our otherwise more minimalistic modern homes
So get yourself a memory card (SanDisk Extreme currently offer 32GB of storage), a high speed internet connection, and a good PC and get ready to enjoy the age of free.
