The Death of CD and Remembering the Days of Vinyl

So I'm reading online today that the days of CD are almost over.

http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/25/the-end-of-music-cds/

I'm not really surprised by this. I remember a couple of years ago when I came back from Taiwan over the holidays to visit my family, I stopped at the local Tower Records, only to find it going out of business, and selling everything off at heavily discounted prices.

Downloadable music/MP3's has pretty much put most music stores out of business. I occasionally go to a store called "FYE" (For Your Entertainment) which used to be called "The Wherehouse." When I see that they're still charging upwards of 20 bucks for a music CD, I know that their days are numbered. I only go there nowadays to sell stuff, rarely to buy.

As a child of the 70's and 80's, I still remember the good ol' days of vinyl, 8-track tape, and cassette. Actually, I never really liked cassette or 8 track. If you played them a lot, the tape would warp and it would be ruined. I warped my brothers copy of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" on 8 track tape. And with 8-track, they often cut off a song halfway through. I remember my brother had the debut album by Foreigner on 8 track. The song "Cold as Ice" was broken up into "Part 1" and "Part 2", with part one fading out, then fading back in. Pretty ridiculous. I can see why that format died out fast.

I always liked vinyl, and I stuck with it until about 1989. I enjoyed looking at the artwork, reading the liner notes and lyrics, and becoming totally immersed in the music. I owned a lot of great albums on vinyl, and it really shaped my appreciation of music at a young age.

I feel a little sorry for future generations who will never have the experience that I had. Nowadays people listen to music on their computers (including me) in MP3 files, or on iPods. The artwork (if you even have it) is now just a small square at the bottom of your screen. If you want l yrics, you have to search google to find it. It's not quite the same as the old days.

Apparantley the new format for music is going to be these micro SD cards that are about the size of a fingernail. I can't really see this catching on. It seems to me it would be very easy to lose or misplace. I've been searching for the remote control for our TV for weeks, and still can't find it. I don't want my music on a tiny little card. I can see it now...

"Have you seen the new Pearl Jam record?"

"Uh..it accidentally got sucked up in the vacuum cleaner."

(Pictures: 1. The new SD "Micro Card" 2. The vinyl version of Led Zeppelin III 3. The vinyl version of Pink Floyd's "The Wall")