When’s the last time you played music with from a CD? I don’t remember the last time, to be honest. I play music from my computer almost 24/7, and when I’m out and about, I’ve either had my iPod or my Zen Touch. The concept of a disc that only holds 20 songs seems so foreign to me now! And even if I have used a CD more recently than I can remember (perhaps in a friend’s car), I know for certain the last time I bought a CD for myself was eons ago. Any music I have bought recently has been purchased online.
I don’t think I am alone. There’s probably tons of other people who also never buy CDs anymore. Digital is the way to go, and so we are, but there are many problems that still exist. Mark Cuban has written an excellent piece on the topic, and offers advice on what the music industry needs to do:
MP3 players are changing peoples listening habits. We don’t carry folders filled with CDs anymore. We carry our library in our MP3 players. We don’t listen to CDs. We listen to playlists that we adjust all the time. We don’t burn CDs anymore, it’s too time consuming. We copy all our music to our MP3 players so it’s all available at our fingertips.
All of our music in a single device. Available to us wherever we are, for whenever we want it. Music how we want it, when we want it. Easy and breezy. That’s how we want to consume music.
That’s not how we are being sold music.
Makes you wonder what will happen to outlets like HMV, who sell hardly anything besides CDs. Why haven’t they done anything to move into the digital space yet? Or even WalMart or other retailers for that matter. What’s taking so long?
Read: Blog Maverick