It's gotten to the point where I am reluctant to buy a new CD any more because I'm afraid of how bad the sound is going to be crushed. It is an awful situation.
The record companies are making a lot of noise about people copying CD's with CD-recorders, or downloading mp3 files from the Internet. These two types of (not always) illegal copying is causing them a (big) loss of income.
But why should you still buy CD's?
- They sell a product at a price the market doesn't want to pay for it
- They deliver bad sound quality, despite demand from the artist and the listener
- They make CDs which are not compatible with the standards
Some remarks about the price:
- When asked why people do not buy CDs anymore, most of the time the answer is 'they're too expensive'. And most of the time, the record industry's answer is: 'CDs are too cheap, if we would ask the same price as 15 years ago, corrected with inflation, a CD would now cost €40.
This reminds me of what the IT-industry did a couple of years ago: they sold their software at at price the public didn't want to pay, everybody was copying, they added anti-copy-stuff, ... and finally they reduced their prices and made even more money than before because most people bought a copy.
Record companies: isn't it time to learn from the past?
Some remarks about the sound quality:
The music industry (not only the record companies) changed the way CD's are recorded (much louder, see the other pages on this site) because:
- The decision makers believe LOUD IS BETTER (Well, it was better in the time when everybody listened to new music on jukeboxes, those machines didn't have a volume control). When the sound engineer or mastering company explains that loud isn't good and refuses to deliver bad quality, the record companies goes to another studio or company...
- the new soundformats sound 'better' when recording this type of (heavily compressed) information. New recording media are Minidisk and (unfortunately for the record companies) mp3. Sony made louder CD's because their Minidisk will now have less data to compress, so the copy sounds more alike the original... Can you imagine this, decreasing the sound quality of one medium to give the idea another one isn't that bad?
- The weak point of a copy (mp3 or CD-R) is that the depth and detail of the sound disappear or at least get weaker. So if you have a good original, you can hear a difference. But these days there are no 'good' originals anymore...
And now, the ones who started this 'more quantity, less quality' thing, are blaming the consumer that he doesn't want to pay a lot for intentionally low sound quality.
About CDs not compatible with the standards:
- During the last months the record companies started using copy-protection mechanisms... . I'm sure you heard about all the problems related to this (can't play them in your car-cd or DVD-player).
- And to make it worse, they even start adding errors to the sound data, in the hope that only computerdrives will produce clicks and other irritating sounds
This page was created on 24 march 1999. This is build 2. (29 May 2002)