Walmart slashes CD prices

[nightflier]

I don't shop at Walmart and I don't condone their business practices, but this aught to send some chills down the label exec's spines:

"Is it time to kill the physical CD format? Perhaps not quite yet, though Wal-Mart feels it is time to drastically cut prices or else.... The world's largest retailer may be moving to a five-tiered pricing form where top new titles are priced at $10 while the recently popular CDs sell for $12. Those will be followed by the $9, the $7 middle range and $5 bargain discs. This would replace the current $13.88 to $9.88 format Wal-Mart generally offers at stores throughout the United States. "When you look at sales declines with physical product, and you have a category declining like it is, you have to make decisions about what the future looks like" said Wal-Mart's divisional merchandise manager for home entertainment Jeff Maas. "If you have a business that is declining and you want to turn it around, it really takes looking at it from all angles." It has been reported that top music label representatives are not happy about this lower pricing scheme, with quotes from various major record label employees saying, "I don't think this is a Wal-Mart discussion. I think this is a future-of-the-business discussion. Right now everyone is paralyzed." Other music label executives were quoted as saying "The decision might come down to: Do we give up 20 percent of our business (i.e., Wal-Mart) in order to not lose the entire business?... This sounds like the Hail Mary pass, and if it doesn't work, they could be out of the music business; or maybe they reduce music down to a couple of racks" Perhaps it is time to virtually kill the physical format in favor of uncompressed and/or lossless music downloads without DRM or other limitations."

Enjoy the Music (http://www.enjoythemusic.com/news/0308/)

[kexodusc]

Wonder how much this has to do with iTunes recent about sales volume?

This is product evolution. The labels don't like it? Too bad. Make a better product. Most pop music albums that generate significant sales have just a handful of decent songs on them, sometimes just 2 or 3. There's no value in paying $14 when you can download the stuff you want and lose the filler for a fraction of the cost.

I like the approach Nine Inch Nails took on their latest album, Ghosts. (which by the way Trent Reznor claims has made him more money in the first week of sales than he made off any other album, and is pretty good!)
I bought the album, pre-ordered, with a complimentary lossless download (FLAC) with artwork to let me enjoy until the tangible copy arrived. This only works well for established artists, but it I hope more jump on the bandwagon and cut out the middle man!

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080313-reznor-says-radiohead-offering-insincere-industry-inept.html

[blackraven]

Music ain't what it used to be, especially for Rock and Pop. Your right, albums today usually have 1-3 good songs on them. In years past most artists had maybe 1-3 bad songs on an album. Heck, just look at Fleetwood Mac, the Rumors album had no bad songs on it as did most of their albums.

Now, I only buy CD's after auditioning them on line or at one of my local stores where you can listen to any CD you want by scanning a bar code.

[filecat13]

It's not just the price and the music, it's also about the hassle and the business model.

Occasionally I'll look at the music section when I'm in Borders or Barnes and Noble. I might buy something from the dance or electronics section if I listen to it and it strikes my fancy, but I don' go there for the music.

I don't go to Wal-Mart, BB, or CC at all, nor do I go to Target much any more, and certainly not for music. The last CD I actually bought came off ebay.

Over 80% of my music comes off eMusic, 10% off iTunes, and the rest off independent download sites.(NO, not torrent sites.) Except for multichannel discs, physical music media is dead to me.

Hopefully, the music conglomerates will die soon, too. It appears that the long, slow poison of greed will eventually allow them to commit suicide--death by their own incompetent hands.

[Mr Peabody]

I feel like a dinosaur. I have never down loaded music and don't intend to. If CD's go out of stores I guess it will be the end of my addiction and I will have to utilize the collection I have now even more. I currently buy most of my discs off Amazon and some from a friend who owns a music store who I've done business with for years. Wal-mart will make things tough on guys like him. He has to charge an average of $15.00 for a disc. The nitch he has is stocking things you don't normally see at Wal-mart. Although one of the Wal-mart stores I was recently in impressed me with the selection it had. It was better than the average Wal-mart. They had stuff like Black Label Society and some Alternative you don't normally see in department stores. When I saw BLS I wondered if WM still sensor all their CD's. It would seem like there would have to be some medium to sell music to people like me and those without a computer. Maybe we are such a minority no one cares. I'll have to go to the library and try to borrow new titles. Or, maybe the store will just look like a small booth where we will pay our money, pick out format and a machine will download it and burn it and it will shoot out a slot like a vending machine.

I do think a lot of it is what has been mentioned though, the pure lack of talent, or more accurate the abundance of no talent clowns the industry try to mold into whatever the company thinks is hot and tries to package for consumption. In the car I channel surf and I just don't find anything on the radio new that catches my ear. Top 40 is so bad it's humorous, it's to the point of becoming a parity. Same with Country, it's so cliche' I'd be embarrassed to listen to it even if I could stand it.

[pixelthis]

The only radio I listen to on a regular basis is the late nite jazz on public radio, and the fourty channels on music choice.
I get new prospects to buy, and a local independent can order it or I can get it off of Amazon.
I recently got two Emily remler and a shelby lynn for 30 bucks with free shiping.
Cant beat that.
I PREFER cd, you know what kind of q you're getting, and you have a ready backup
(I burn all of my CD'S to HD)
It costs two bucks to make a CD, maybe even less today, I and others are sick and tired
of paying good money so the industry can live like drunken sailors.
In the nineties I read about Japanese kiosks where you could pick out songs
and have all of them put on a cassette.
And when "mixed " CD and tape started to come out you could see the handwriring on the wall.
But it is sad in a way, some of my favorite albums I bought because of one song,
I never would have bought the album or heard the rest of the material on it, some of which is better than the "hit", if I hadnt bought the CD.
But it looks like the days of CD are numbered.
End of an era, not just of CD but of hard copy media.
I have downloaded entire CD'S in lossless codecs, complete with winwar files of cover art that I could print out, and with lightscribe could even put a lable on it.
Why truck a hard copy across the continent if you can download a file instantly off of the net, sometimes for free or next to nothing?:1:

[IBSTORMIN]

I feel like a dinosaur. I have never down loaded music and don't intend to. If CD's go out of stores I guess it will be the end of my addiction and I will have to utilize the collection I have now even more. I currently buy most of my discs off Amazon and some from a friend who owns a music store who I've done business with for years. Wal-mart will make things tough on guys like him. He has to charge an average of $15.00 for a disc. The nitch he has is stocking things you don't normally see at Wal-mart.


I AM a dinosaur. I find alot of CD's, new and old, in garage sales for $1 because people have burned them to their computer and don't want them anymore. I don't think the downloads or burned CD's sound as good so I like snatching them up. I have bought many I had never heard of and because it's new to me, it gives me a music fix for $1. This has to hurt the music stores also.

[Mr Peabody]

Yeah, I should have been clearer, my only purchasing isn't at stores. I definitely hit the yard sales for discs and LP's, I also hit pawn shops for CD's. The pawn shops seem to be getting out of CD's though, I guess they are so common now there's no money in it.

[Brett A]

Its my understanding that Wal Mart sells only CDs that pass their moral values judgment. There was some buzz in the news 10 years ago or-so about how this would affect artists' (if that what you want to call them) content. So I think it is a good idea to consider what you are buying if you decide to do business with Wal Mart at all, because you might get some watered-down version of an album you could get elsewhere as it was intended to be heard.

I feel like a dinosaur. I have never down loaded music and don't intend to.
Same here. I don't have single mp3 file either.

I do think a lot of it is what has been mentioned though, the pure lack of talent, or more accurate the abundance of no talent clowns the industry try to mold into whatever the company thinks is hot and tries to package for consumption.
Thats why you've got to look toward small labels. There's sooo much good music being made today, it just takes a lot of time and luck finding it. I have never discovered new music by listening to the radio. (With the exception of the occasional college station)

[IBSTORMIN]

I wish they would record everything in high quality DVD-AUDIO at 192, at least 96. (sigh)

[pixelthis]

Its my understanding that Wal Mart sells only CDs that pass their moral values judgment. There was some buzz in the news 10 years ago or-so about how this would affect artists' (if that what you want to call them) content. So I think it is a good idea to consider what you are buying if you decide to do business with Wal Mart at all, because you might get some watered-down version of an album you could get elsewhere as it was intended to be heard.

Same here. I don't have single mp3 file either.

Thats why you've got to look toward small labels. There's sooo much good music being made today, it just takes a lot of time and luck finding it. I have never discovered new music by listening to the radio. (With the exception of the occasional college station)

I don't have a single "MP3 " either (well, a few)
I do have thousands of flac and ape files.
Some were downloaded, some are my own creation, burned from my CD collection

[braxus]

I'm old school. I will never download music as the main source to listen to. I want that hard copy that can be taken anywhere and played on any machine. First off the computer is hardly an audiophile piece of equipment to play your music through. Secondly CD-Rs and hard drives fail- then what? Or you could get a virus that toasts all your files. Even if you could redownload your file years after ordering it, it is uncertain how long that site will be active say 10 to 20 years from now. I still have my CDs from 20 years ago. Forget it. I will stay with hard copies.

As per CDs- I could care a less if it dies as long as I can still have SACD discs, and vinyl. Or even better- bring back reel to reel tape for the source and I'd be a happy camper.

[pixelthis]

I'm old school. I will never download music as the main source to listen to. I want that hard copy that can be taken anywhere and played on any machine. First off the computer is hardly an audiophile piece of equipment to play your music through. Secondly CD-Rs and hard drives fail- then what? Or you could get a virus that toasts all your files. Even if you could redownload your file years after ordering it, it is uncertain how long that site will be active say 10 to 20 years from now. I still have my CDs from 20 years ago. Forget it. I will stay with hard copies.

As per CDs- I could care a less if it dies as long as I can still have SACD discs, and vinyl. Or even better- bring back reel to reel tape for the source and I'd be a happy camper.

Downloading might be the only way to do so.
I was hoping SACD catches on, that would be far superiour to CD.
And remember a few years ago, proplr got a virus from a CD?
Sony put a vicious virus on some of their CD's.
And a COMPUTER IS QUITE CAPABLE of high end sound.
But I hope all are right about CD, because I like CD also.
Bought three the other day, as a matter of fact.
The next year or two will tell.:1:

[braxus]

[QUOTE=pixelthis]And a COMPUTER IS QUITE CAPABLE of high end sound.
QUOTE]

Not with what most people are running for sound cards, etc. Its no where the league of high end like the works of McIntosh, etc.

[pixelthis]

[QUOTE=pixelthis]And a COMPUTER IS QUITE CAPABLE of high end sound.
QUOTE]

Not with what most people are running for sound cards, etc. Its no where the league of high end like the works of McIntosh, etc.

NOTHING is in league with Macs.
but with a USB dac, or even a cheap external sound card the sound from computers is quite amazing.
This is a journey you have to take by yourself, I also was quite skeptical, now I listen
to computer audio all of the time :1:

[GMichael]

Downloading might be the only way to do so.
I was hoping SACD catches on, that would be far superiour to CD.


Wouldn't SACD's suck up a lot of bits? Do you think the current system could support that?

[pixelthis]

Wouldn't SACD's suck up a lot of bits? Do you think the current system could support that?

NO PROBLEM.
The question is will people buy it?
And the thing that killed SACD (well, almost) and did kill DVDAUDIO
is a paranoid fear of copying by record companies.
NOBODY ubderstood the six channel input deal, finally SACD allows for a digital stream, on HDMI, too little too late.
Not to mention a high end audio format when the world can't get enough of cheap 128 mb per sec MP3.
I also blame the audio "elites" who just didnt support this format.
It adressed all of their concerns about redbook, and was truley an advance in audio, without the gimmicks of DVDaudio.
seems like nobody wanted a high res audio format, THE record companies were afraid of
pirating, the great unwashed were afraid of paying for something,
the "audio elite" were afraid of entering the 21st century.
Hugging their turntables they stayed away from SACD in droves.
At least Sony has stuck by the format, while on life support it does have a pulse.
Barely:1:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/105-2170186-3236423?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=SACD&x=14&y=15

[noddin0ff]

Sony is making sure that there are no software-based SACD decoders. It's all black-box chip based for extracting sound from SACD. SACD downloads would be cool, but you'd need hardware. Maybe there's a future product for them. External SACD DACs?

...however, I don't think they let you have access to the bit stream either.

[Mr Peabody]

I believe you are correct that the SACD via HDMI is PCM.

[mbbuchanan]

I'm always late to the party here, but I will be very sad when physical media goes the way of the dodo. the only thing that will help a little is that if you can get a high-res download you can at least burn you're own copy for back-up. I have faith though, that if cd poops out then at least the hi-fiers out there will make sound cards and usb dac's and what not that will still enable us to have modern digital hi-fi, like the people who make reissues of vinyl. I only hope it will be more readiely availible and wallett friendly. Oh, and also SACD is the best thing to happen to hi-fi in 50 years, and we crapped it away, what a damn shame.

[pixelthis]

I believe you are correct that the SACD via HDMI is PCM.


I may be wrong, but I think the main thing about SACD is that it isnt PCM.
Uses 1's and 0's to make a waveform.
Its main selling point is that it isnt PCM.
Maybe someone in the know can shed some light


And it may seem preposterous to think that physical means to deal with media might go by the boards, but theres a lot of incentive to make this happen.
Sure there will always be some "hard copy" but it requires a hugh amount of oil to make these silver discs.
Dont use that oil, you dont need to dig it up.
One of the many reasons for SACD and DVDAUDIO is that they are inherently difficult to copy and download.
But it looks like downloading is a juggernaut that is gaining steam every day:1:

[Mr Peabody]

It's the 1's & 0's that SACD won't allow to pass from the player, you can receive multichannel via the MC analog or PCM via HDMI. In order to take advantage of the HDMI your receiver or processor has to be capable of accepting PCM.

[pixelthis]

It's the 1's & 0's that SACD won't allow to pass from the player, you can receive multichannel via the MC analog or PCM via HDMI. In order to take advantage of the HDMI your receiver or processor has to be capable of accepting PCM.

Thanks:1: