iPod Is this ironic, cause and effect, or just a coincidence?

[levitynyc]

In the year 2000, sales of CD's were the highest EVER.

Also in the year 2000, Napster use was the highest EVER.

Since the original Napster was shut down, CD sales have hit the tank, down almost 30%.

I used to by 5-6 CD's a month, now I just buy everything on iTunes.

Reaction?

 

[tersono]

A very good question

It looks to me like physical media is slowing dying - more and more folks are just relying on computers to provide music and it's even moving into the audiophile sector.

I recently 'retired' around 1500 CD's in favour of my 300gb iTunes library (mostly ripped in lossless format) and a Roku Soundbridge + optical output to a high-quality digital amp. I still buy the occasional CD, but only to rip it to my iTunes server (and then only if I can't get it online at a reasonable bitrate).

What I'm wondering is: how long before this applies to DVD as well?

 

[levitynyc]

DVD's are a different story. The bonus features of a DVD are a different animal. The extreme difference in size and the fact that if you rip a CD down to 128 bit rate, very few people can tell the difference in sound. If you downgrade a DVD to lower quality, everyone can tell. Plus with Blu Ray and HD DVD, almost no one has the storage capacity on their PC to handle it. You are better off having the disc. You can shrink a CD down to 30-40 megs.

More people are video philes than audio philes in the world.

 

[Xeem]

Although bonus features aren't included in this, I'll argue that DVDs downgrade quite well. If you know what you're doing, a good 2-pass of a DVD will fit it into a 700MB file with fairly little noticeable loss in video quality. It is the audio quality that suffers the most, going from DD 5.1 or equivalent to a stereo MP3/AAC track, and that doesn't matter very much to those watching over low-end computer speakers/headphones/etc.