Re: [ARSCLIST] Are CDs Going The Way Of The 8-Track? I sure hope so !

[Brandon Burke <brburke@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Not to get into "volume wars" territory here but it's not uncommon for reissue LP's 
to be preferred over the original pressing if, for example, the original pressing was 
mastered at an unusually low volume. This is especially the case for hip hop DJ's 
who regularly bounce back-and-forth between records in a live setting. 

Of course, it's expected that one checks his/her levels before cutting the fader from 
one disc to the next disc, but it's sure nice to know you can switch things up at the 
last second without incurring a significant loss in volume. 

An example of this is cutting over from De La Soul's "Simply Havin'" to "Footprints" 
by A Tribe Called Quest (the song De La Soul samples on "Simply Havin'"). It's an easy 
transition to make - even I can do it - but the levels on the Quest LP are considerably 
lower, making the overall effect of the switch pretty anticlimactic if you don't first crank 
the the hell out of the Quest. Consequently, many DJ shops will say, "Vast improvement 
over the quiet OG copy," etc in their online reviews. (To be fair, original pressings of De 
La Soul's own 'De La Soul is Dead' LP are similarly infamous for being quiet.) 

Agreed about REM, though. I can't imagine spending money on a repress of that. 

Brandon 




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger Kulp" <thorenstd124@xxxxxxxxx> 
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 2:03:39 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific 
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Are CDs Going The Way Of The 8-Track? I sure hope so ! 

Posted after the Virgin story. 

I went over to tower.com,to buy the new Green Day on vinyl,nobody else had it,and the number of pages devoted to new vinyl is astounding.l stopped looking at 100 pages.I don't see why, though anybody would spend $21.99 on a nonremastered new vinyl pressing of something like REM's "Murmur",when you can get mint originals on eBay as cheap as 99¢. 

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/13/eveningnews/main5086775.shtml 































June 13, 2009 
Are CDs Going The Way Of The 8-Track? 



















































































Play CBS Video 
Video 
Facing The Music 
After 
a thirty-year run, music compact discs, (CDs) may soon go the way of 
eight track tapes. The closing of two major retail outlets may signal 
the end of an era. Anthony Mason reports. 







































Photo 

























(CBS) 




The song is over at Virgin Music Megastores. 



The shuttering this weekend of Virgin's last two stores - in 
Manhattan and Hollywood - marks the death of a once booming chain - and 
another nail in the coffin of the music CD, reports CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason. 



CD sales nationwide are down by half since 2000. So Virgin's parent 
company closed its 25 Megastores and is leasing the space to other 
businesses. 



"Everything on these racks, though I don't like to say it, is 
available on iTunes, is available on Amazon," said Simon Wright, the 
CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group. 



And that's where music sales have shifted. Apple's iTunes is now 
the nation's largest music seller - with 20 percent of the market. 
Amazon has about 8 percent. And some studies show most music is now 
downloaded for free illegally. 



"The only reason people are coming here is because they like the 
buzz of it," Wright said. "They like the sound, they like the feeling, 
they like that they can hang put, pick things up and look at it." 



Which leaves music lovers longing for that special browsing experience. 



"CDs now are catering to fans who like the object, who like high 
sound quality of a CD, but then they also want the pictures and the 
booklet, and they want to look at the liner notes and the lyrics and 
the photos," said Michael Endelman, a senior editor at Rolling Stone. 



Two years after the lights went out at the once mighty Tower 
Records chain, Virgin was the last giant standing. The void affects 
music fans, and artists. 



"The death of the CD and the sort of shrinking of record labels 
makes it a lot harder for small acts and even for mid-level acts to get 
their music out," Endelman said. 



And the big acts simply aren't selling albums like they used to. 
Back in 2000, when 'N Sync's album "No Strings Attached" debuted at 
number one on the charts - the album sold 2.6 million CDs in its first 
week. 


This year, Green Day needed to sell only 600,000 copies of its "21st Century Breakdown" to hit number one. 



"There's a huge generation gap in music," said Russ Crupnick, a 
vice president of NPD Group, a marketing research firm. "If you take a 
look at teens, for many teens the CD is to what an 8-track might be to 
me - it's an antique, it's an artifact." 



An artifact, that's getting increasingly harder to find. 










©MMIX, CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved. 







-- 
Brandon Burke 
Archivist for Recorded Sound Collections 
Hoover Institution Archives 
Stanford University 
Stanford, CA 94305-6010 
vox: 650.724.9711 
fax: 650.725.3445 
email: brburke@xxxxxxxxxxxx