music available in digital format only?

[miyakoji]

I like cds, I don't have a portable digital music player, so I wasn't likely to notice this, until just now--something I wanted to buy was available only in mp3.  Have you hipper tetsudo fans seen this often?  Pic (JNR/JRH 711 series, very nice, pulled from wikipedia) attached to motivate answer.

 

[Tecchan]

This will happen more and more often.

 

Optical support will disappear sooner than we think at least for music and softwares (for movies, not everyone can afford downloading a 50Gb HD movie in BluRay quality).

 

See the Apple environment: you can buy all your music on iTunes, download your iPhone/iPad softwares only from the internet and now with the Mac AppStore you can have your softwares directly on the store. There is rumors that the next version of Mac OS (Lion) will be available also on the store and maybe even not on DVD version.

 

On the MacBook Air there is already no optical reader and the instal CD is replaced by an instal USB key.

I can bet that the next generation of MacBooks won't have the DVD player either (or at least, the option not to have it).

 

Music and movies (along with softwares) will come on download only more and more often.

 

PS: nice train! ;-)

[Martijn Meerts]

Right now, the only way to get OS X Lion for developers is through the App Store, but I'm fairly certain there will also be a version on disc. It might be limited to the discs that come with new machines though.

 

As for music, I still prefer CD's, as few stores offer lossless files. I have bought some music from the iTunes store, which works really well actually, but it's not something I do often.

[Barobutt]

I don't think I've purchased any physical media (movie, game, software, music) for about 3 years.  yet at the same time I'm certainly spending more money on such things than before, so what ever they're doing it's working!

[traindork]

So far I refuse to buy digital anything. I enjoy music, though, and I'm sure one day I'll be dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age. 

To me there's just something satisfying in looking at a shelf full of CD's or books or music that you just can't do with digital downloads.

[Martijn Meerts]

Games I try to get as digital downloads as much as possible. Of course, I mainly play MMO's, which get updated frequently, so it makes no sense to buy a disc. If you want to reinstall after some months, you're better off downloading a more up-to-date client :)

 

If iTunes would offer lossless files (preferably FLAC), I would probably also stop buying cd's. Of course, lossless files aren't likely to happen anytime soon (Apple says their 192kbps AAC are indistinguishable from CD quality, which might very well be, but if I for some reason want to convert them to a different format I'll get compression of an already compressed file, which is crap. And, on a good sound system with certain types of music, you actually can hear differences) .. I know there are some store that do have lossless, but never really get into that.

 

I'm ripping all my cd's to FLAC, but it's a ton of work. I have some 600-700 of the things, and for quite a lot there's no entry in CDDB/AMG, and if there is, there's often no cover art, or low quality cover art. I think I've done about 150 cd's now.....

[Barobutt]

I've noticed a lot more people buying records lately.  No one buy's CD's anymore, so if someone does want something physical, they go for the most physical and get a record.  We just hooked an old turn-table up and are re-discovering records.  (you have to flip them and constantly get up to change them, but that's part of the fun).

 

For me now it's 100% digital unless the physical medium is some sort of novelty, like a record.

[Martijn Meerts]

Records are making sort of a return, although in most cases they're being released as special limited edition versions. I would love to get some more of them, but I'd need to get a decent turntable first, and they can get very expensive these days ;)