Blu-ray is no longer Fony's key to winning the format war

[orsetto]

Responding to the "downloads dominating the future as physical media falls by the wayside" angle, fulcilives actually brought up a really good point I seldom see posted: very often, the "download" business model is downright idiotic from the consumer's end, but consumers simply don't care and are flocking to it anyway. Why on earth anyone would pay Apple $11.99 to download an album they can own on CD for about the same price is beyond me. Same with the loons who download movies and TV from Amazon Unbox and Netflix. Whatever floats your boat.

Unfortunately this really does seem to be a generational thing. If you grew up with LPs and VHS and migrated to CD and DVD, you understand a certain enjoyment that stems from owning the physical carrier. You like the liner notes, the artwork, the disc itself: its part of the whole home entertainment experience for you. But the iPod completely destroyed and contaminated that experience: most of those under 30 could care less about anything but getting the tune on their iPod asap and watching a badly encoded video on demand on their laptop. A television is merely an adjunct to their three or four gaming systems.

This past weekend, Lou Christie made the rounds of FM radio rock stations promoting his new tour. He tried expressing his regret about the disappearance of record (CD) stores and the rise of downloading, and got completely lost trying to explain a generation that just shuffles invisible files between multiple devices, never getting attached to performers or browsing in a huge record emporium to discover artists they wouldn't have found otherwise. The internet has replaced a lot of this activity, but it doesn't have the same richness. Looking at thumbnail album covers on a webpage is not the same as handling it for real. Sampling the actual music online is a double-edged sword: for every new band or old relic that gets a boost, I suspect three more get rejected. Problem is, you often can't really tell if you're going to like something by listening to a couple minutes of it: there's a long list of music I didn't like when I first took a chance, but on the third or fourth playing over several weeks got totally into and enjoyed. I understand the social and business forces at work here, intellectually I "get it" but the whole transformation out of physical media just seems so damned botched and hollow. It sucks to be the in the aging CBS demographic sometimes: we remember too much.

[edDV]

It sucks to be the in the aging CBS demographic sometimes: we remember too much.

I'm in that demographic and recall the economic decision to buy an LP or CD. Usually radio drove the purchase with a single. First you hear the single then opt for the LP that too often offered little more than just buying the 45. I have a bookcase of LP's and CD's many of which were a disappointment and played once. Once you find an artist that satisfies (e.g Paul Simon, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles?...) you get in line for the next release.

Online lets you sample the full product before buying the collection. I enjoy sampling with Netflix downloads. This guides both my DVD rental orders and store purchases.

I've learned my lesson with physical purchases. Much of my shelf should be sent to the dumpster or replaced with higher quality releases. My core favorites have been repurchased in "best of's" Laserdisc, DVD video and/or SACD.

I see the internet downloads as a sorting/sampling process. Then I buy what I like for the collection.

[RabidDog]

Yeah I think you're getting a bot too misty eyed about rummaging thru records in vast record emporiums. The only thing they were good for was sticking two Albums in one sleeve.. an early form of BOGOF
Some album art & covers were a wonder too behold tho ..... ahhh back when I was young....mumble...mumble.. biscuits....mumble...pork chops...mumble...rant....

[orsetto]

Its true I may be "misty eyed" (hell, I'll cop to being blind as a bat), but in the rush to embrace the new I still don't think its necessarily the greatest idea to trash everything that came before. I mean, we're on the verge of having NO "record" stores at all! Whether its vinyl, CDs, or microchips: losing the store browsing experience stinks. I live in NYC, and even here they're all gone: the last one about to exit is the Virgin Megastore, a place so soul-less I can't believe I'm mourning its passing, but its the last huge browsing place left. When its gone, there will be NO significant media stores left in all of New York City. All that will be left is the Top 100 racks at Circuit City and Best Buy, and at the rate their stocks are sinking lately I'm guessing they won't be around much longer either.

Its easy to bitch and moan how we all used to get screwed paying $14 for just one good song, how we have hundreds of CDs sitting on shelves that we never play, etc. But just as often we found gold as well as crap browsing those stores, and the stuff I totally got off on more than made up for the losers I got suckered by. "Sampling" to me is next to useless, I need to take the goddamned thing home and live with it for a couple weeks before I really make up my mind. And if it ends up sitting on a shelf, so be it: at least after paying my money once, I own something physical. What everyone forgets is this "free download lunch" will eventually end: from TV connections to the web, content producers are slowly but surely circling the wagons until they reach their goal of a digital fingerprint. When they do, you'll pay just as much for a download as you do for a CD, but won't have the CD to show for it. They'll have higher margins, and you'll have a file crudded up with compression and DRM. Yuck. Then again, I suppose those stores and formats only make sense when the content has some staying power and catalog sales value. I forget we live in an era dominated by transient hip-hop and rap which has a marketable shelf life of twenty minutes. Amazing that Jay-Z earns more money in a week than Marvin Gaye made in his life, yet ten years from now there won't be any "retro rap" stations playing anything he recorded. But right now, he's 'the sh*t' and thats all that really matters. Guess us "geezers" better keep our minds sharp enough to keep up with internet advancements: it'll be the only resource for any other types of music.

As for BluRay, don't worry about Sony. It may go down in flames as a video format, but all they need are a few more killer games to tip the trend towards profitability. Short term they're suffering because it isn't the hit DVD replacement they were hoping for, but they'll make out in the long run.

[MJPollard]

Your mentioning the loss of the record store experience reminds me of the melancholy felt by those of us in the Metro Detroit area when the long-standing Harmony House chain went out of business. Big box stores like Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart crushed it out of existence; it went from a chain of about 30 stores to a single one almost overnight, and that one was turned into an F.Y.E. not too long ago. I spent a lot of time browsing HH in my youth, and remember it fondly. Sure, I can now get just about anything at Amazon.com, but it's just not the same.

[thomseye]

Your mentioning the loss of the record store experience reminds me of the melancholy felt by those of us in the Metro Detroit area when the long-standing Harmony House chain went out of business. Big box stores like Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart crushed it out of existence; it went from a chain of about 30 stores to a single one almost overnight, and that one was turned into an F.Y.E. not too long ago. I spent a lot of time browsing HH in my youth, and remember it fondly. Sure, I can now get just about anything at Amazon.com, but it's just not the same.

I agree... and being from the Metro Detroit area myself, I always scheduled one of my two days off to be a "record/cd store browsing day". Sometimes I wouldn't buy a thing, but had spent 5 hours traveling between the many "shops" in the area with only a MetroTimes to take home.

I moved a bit north in 1996... but some of the record stores in the area I visited were Dearborn Music (before and after they moved their store into that huge building on Michigan Ave.), Desirable Discs (both in Garden City and Dearborn). Remember when Desirable Discs was in that little store about the size of a large bedroom in Dearborn (and GC for that matter)? Also, Rock of Ages on Ford Road in Garden City was one of the best in all of SE Mich (if not still). Then of course we had Royal Oak and their 2 or 3 great record stores downtown. Repeat the Beat was also a great store on Telegraph in Dearborn. Sams Jams in Ferndale and (i forget the name) but an awesome shop was off of 15 mile just west of I-75 (I believe).

Dang I miss those simple pleasures. Are these stores (or any) still around? I'm moving back down to the Detroit area in a few months and it will be so disheartening to no longer have all those great music stores.

[MJPollard]

I never visited most of those stores, but I'm pretty sure that the record shops in Royal Oak are gone (I live there). There was one in particular, on Main and Fifth, that a friend of mine and I used to frequent, but that one disappeared quite a while back. AFAIK, Sam's Jams in Ferndale is gone, too (I used to go there as well). However, Car City Records in St. Clair Shores, on Harper between 8 and 9 Mile, is still there, though it's now half the size (and the other half still has a "For Lease" sign in the window, of course).

Overall, though, I think you'll be disappointed. The mom-and-pop record stores have pretty much gone the way of Harmony House, thanks to the big box stores and Amazon.com. You might still be able to scare up a few, but they're harder to find all the time, and they're struggling to survive. I've resigned myself to it, knowing that all things change over time, but it's still a sad thing to see.

[TBoneit]

OK, Thanks for the explanation.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

yeah, as in the loser is still living with his parents.

[yoda313]

Hey howdy fellow metro detroiters mjpollard and thomseye!! GO WINGS!!!