Solong CDs

[fastlane]

Don't worry about those devious CD CP schemes, CDs are going the way of vinyl and cassettes. They can use the record stores for CD recycling centers.
:)

http://money.guardian.co.uk/businessnews/story/0,1265,-1649419,00.html

[SeanHannifin]

I still like buying physical CDs, usually through Amazon.com . . . it's not surprising that iTunes could outsell cd distributors like Borders though, as Borders likes to overprice :D Interesting article though, it will be interesting to see where this technology leads us . . .

[danpowers]

The CD I've been working on all year has finally gone to the factory and should be available to the larger universe in a couple of weeks. Has all my effort been in vain? :(

I guess I should be looking into getting my music on iTunes. Has anybody tried to do this?

[SeanHannifin]

I don't think your effort has been in vain; I'm sure there will still be many people wanting to buy a cd rather than a download. Still, selling a piece of music via downloading seems like much less (and cheaper) distribution work, so it may be an opportunity worth looking into . . . I Googled for info about getting music on iTunes, and it seems they do have an online application you have to fill out first:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/musicmarketing/

It may be worth pursuing . . . it could get an artist's music seen and heard by more people.

[cptexas]

I still like to get physical CDs. Well, that's 'cause I like to get SACD's which I don't think are downloadable. :D
Actually, that depends. Are iTunes MP3 or what format? CD's are of higher quality than MP3 and I hear a difference, not nessesairly a bad one, when I convert my CDs to MP3.

Interesting article.
-Chris

[rwayland]

I still like to get physical CDs. Well, that's 'cause I like to get SACD's which I don't think are downloadable. :D
Actually, that depends. Are iTunes MP3 or what format? CD's are of higher quality than MP3 and I hear a difference, not nessesairly a bad one, when I convert my CDs to MP3.

Interesting article.
-Chris

Probably mp3, since there are mp3 players available everywhere. Quality will be less that CD. Most untrained ears won't notice or won't care.

Richard

[rwayland]

I don't think your effort has been in vain; I'm sure there will still be many people wanting to buy a cd rather than a download. Still, selling a piece of music via downloading seems like much less (and cheaper) distribution work, so it may be an opportunity worth looking into . . . I Googled for info about getting music on iTunes, and it seems they do have an online application you have to fill out first:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/musicmarketing/

It may be worth pursuing . . . it could get an artist's music seen and heard by more people.

I followed the link, and it looks interesting. I will check it out in detail later.

Richard

[Styxx]

This is exactly what I've been looking for. Thanks for the link Sean and the post fastlane!
As far as I'm concerned, anyway you can get your music out to the masses is in your best interest! I also feel CD's will not be totally replace however I have seen a prototype car radio that plays off of flash cards / quick drives. No working mechanisms just plug and play.

[rwayland]

This is the sort of thing I have a big interest in. But I have quite strong reservations about the amount of interest in the music that I write. I still have not checked out the details.

Richard

I just checked this out, might give an idea of the trends. This is from the Sibelius site.

http://sibeliusmusic.classical.com/

[FredProgGH]

I guess I should be looking into getting my music on iTunes. Has anybody tried to do this?

Yes. It's not easy.

[Shazbot]

I guess I should be looking into getting my music on iTunes. Has anybody tried to do this?

Both of my kids' music CDs are on iTunes and many of the other digital distribution sites, and that was all done through CDBaby (http://www.cdbaby.com). I think the sign-up fee for having your CD listed on CDBaby is $35, and then they automatically set that all up and you get about $.60 per song purchased through those sites. So far, I've only sold a handful of actual CDs through CDBaby (which is fine, because I make a lot more per CD if people buy them right from my site or at a gig), but I've made about $100 in digital song sales that I wouldn't have had otherwise, and the amount I make through that each month seems to be growing.

I recently took the time to add individual song purchases to my own website using Paypal buttons and creative linking. It was kind of tedious to do that, but I wanted to give people the option to grab a song right away if they were at my site, as opposed to happening upon it on iTunes or Napster or whatever. Plus, I end up with about a nickel more per song. Those are the nickels that I throw on my bed and roll around in while yelling, "I'm rich! I'm rich!" :p

[fastlane]

Probably mp3, since there are mp3 players available everywhere. Quality will be less that CD. Most untrained ears won't notice or won't care.

Richard
My dream is that online music will give EVERYONE the chance to be heard by someone. I'm talking about a revolution in the way music is marketed and the quality of the music that is sold and listened to.

I copied this from Apple's iTunes info page about it's music format.

iTunes supports a variety of musical formats, including Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). A cutting-edge audio codec that’s perfect for the Internet, AAC encoding compresses much more efficiently than older formats such as MP3, which iTunes also supports, while delivering quality rivaling that of uncompressed CD audio. In fact, expert listeners have judged AAC audio files compressed at 128 Kbps (stereo) as virtually indistinguishable from the original uncompressed audio source. You’ll appreciate this quality whenever you purchase music from the iTunes Music Store.

[danpowers]

Thanks for your ideas. I had planned to put my CD on CDBaby, and I think I'll try to find out more about making it available for download as well.

(I'll be sure to let everyone know when it's available.) :)

[SteveMitchell]

Probably mp3, since there are mp3 players available everywhere. Quality will be less that CD. Most untrained ears won't notice or won't care.

Richard
And the sad thing is, people WON'T care, and the coniving, money-hungry bast**ds who propagate the audio quality of MP3s on us will make even more money because they can cram so much more crap on the bandwidth they save by compression. Did you know that satellite quality is even less than that of full-fledged MP3s? Last I heard it was 96kbps. That sucks.

I'm happy to report though, that there are some manufacturers of portable audio players that allow you to load them with uncompressed audio - only they will ever get my $$$$.

Stevemitchell

[jc5]

I really do find it odd that people seem so willing to pay for mp3 downloads... *shrugs*
I can't image doing so. A hard copy is necessary if the forking over of money is required on my part. ;)

And really, I've become keen on SACDs and such so going to MP3s isn't really in the cards as far as I'm concerned.. frankly I won't pay much for regular cds either at this point.