I made this post recently about the Evolution of Storage that gently touched on the category of music. The music industry has dramatically changed in the last number of years. Depending on how old you are as you read this, the idea of a cassette may be completely foreign to you.
Napster (the original, not the current iteration) was probably the first site to change the music game quickly followed by other similar sites such as Kazaa. But when iTunes came onto the scene in 2001, the boom came with it.
Can you remember the last time you saw a music store? And no, that three-row section of Best Buy with two rows of This Is Music Volume XX CD’s doesn’t count.
Check out the infographic below to see how the music industry has been “rocked” by the Internet. Thanks to Total Bankruptcy for creating this graphic.
As an “old timer” I remember and appreciate the older media, ok good riddance to the cassette, but the picture 7 and 12″ singles were cool, though not very practical, but certainly collectable, the CD was great, much more durable and as the name suggested, compact. But ultimately limited and not that compact by today’s standards.
In the end, why have shelves full of CD’s collecting dust that you have to hunt through when you can have all of your music on a (micro)SD card or three and pop it in your phone and take it anywhere you like, not an iPhone though, like CD’s, they are limited and unexpandable .
Even better, have a home NAS and an app for your phone, oops I guess that’s pretty much the end of stand alone MP3 players too! Eh that’s another good riddance 🙂
Just don’t forget to back up all your music or one day you may have a nasty shock.
I might be an old timer, but you just have to love the modern day technology and it’s convenience.
In the end any industry that fails to innovate will just become a big pile of dust.
On that note, RB must have seen this coming and Sold Virgin mega stores while they were still worth something.
He always seems a step or three ahead.
Growing up, the LP was a standard and the stereo equipment varied but to the true audiophile, it meant having a true 20 – 20K +/- 3 dB reproduction – if not better. The artwork on LP’s was also something to be appreciated. While CDs could reproduce 20-20K, the artwork was smaller and less significant. Now with MP3 players and all the digital reproduction, the music is all that there is and the artwork seems to be forgotten as well as the science in having high end audio equipment. I can appreciate being able to store 1000’s of audio tracks in a small space, but I would miss the art of the collection. What I can appreciate is being able to have numerous TV series from the 60s, 70’s forward that was not possible to have back in the day. I still have my Beta VCR’s but my collection is being converted to DVD for those shows that will never be on DVD. So I was raised old school, but can appreciate new school, and will never lose the appreciation for where it all started.
This made me incredibly sad. I can still remember the pink and yellow Memorex tape with a recording of “Cool It Now” . . . Come to think of it, maybe it is a good thing no one can hear my squeaky rendition of the song.