Many, including myself, have said that the rapidly falling price of silicon-based storage will make the fight over next-generation DVD nearly moot. Why buy a disk when you can download it? The necessary supporting technology, bandwidth, is also continuing to mature. Music sold on USB flash is an interesting side note, as falling flash prices will make this method an excellent promotional tool. Any storage media for entertainment that can’t fit in your pocket is doomed anyway.
I doubt it will replace the CD anytime soon, but some record labels are experimenting with distributing music on portable USB flash drives. The latest in this occasional trend is The White Stripes, whose Icky Thump album is available in both traditional CD form as well as in a limited edition USB thumb drive format.
Now, the flash drive version sells for $57, well more than the $15 price tag of the CD. That means that only die-hard fans will likely buy the drive versions, which depict the band’s Jack White and Meg White as Russian dolls. (Those who need both Jack and Meg will have to shell out $99.)
There have been other releases, such as the recent 30th anniversary Bob Marley Exodus album. The Barenaked Ladies released a couple of albums in this format a couple of years back
Considering that you can pick up 32 MB of pocket flash for eight bucks, the prices for this kind of thing has to fall as well.
I’m sure the RIAA can sue someone for this.
8 bucks for 32 meg??? I was in meijer last night and they have 256mb sd cards on close out for 8 bucks.
2,
I wanted to quote a price I couild easily back up.
#2
A few weeks ago I was grumpy and I was being a prick at you, sorry bud.
Any storage media for entertainment that can’t fit in your pocket is doomed anyway.
Then let’s talk about the enormous success of DataPlay and those little quarter sized CDs they made…
Any media you can fit in your pocket, you can lose.
I can’t understand why we live in a time when people are so bored out of their wits and so anti-social that they need to carry portable entertainments centers with them everywhere they go.
4,
We all get hot once in a while.
5,
If the DataPlay disk had come out earlier, it may have succeeded. If CD didn’t have such an installed base it would be a perfect removable semi-disposable media. Once you get into the pocket space, the best media wins anyway. That’s why self-contained music systems with high-capacity storage are so popular.
#5
It’s not boredom, it’s the obnoxious behavior of people around you.
Flash today can be had for
I could see why the RIAA would start to push this format: DRM from the outset. Of course, what makes them the RIAA (their blood-sucking greed) will keep them from ever allowing the prices to drop to a level that will wipe out ubiquitous CDs. 700MB (or 1GB, if you prefer the rounded numbers) flash drives for routinely less than $15 is still below the horizon.
#6 – If the best media wins why do have iPods with 128 kbps MP3s on them and why are people replacing real stereo speakers with those obnoxious little Bose cubes?
No highs… No lows… Must be Bose…
10,
The best is relative and pegged to mainstream tastes. When I used to push stereo my colleagues and I used to joke with the Bose guys by talking to them with our hand in front of our face for the direct/reflecting effect.
yeah the CD isnt long for this world (thank gawd)
solid state cant be scratched, harder to break, doesnt skip… but again I laugh at ya’ll who actually BUY music. download that shit!
Considering that you can pick up 32 MB of pocket flash for eight bucks, the prices for this kind of thing has to fall as well.
Got that beat 512meg for 8 bucks from CDWG.
Microcenter:1gig flash for $9.99, 2 gigs for $15.99!
13, 14,
Just proving my point.
Soooooo…
The minimum price for flash products is gonna be about 10 bucks no matter what the capacity?
good …?
Yes, Smartalix, I tend to agree with you.
Consider that Flash memory is “merely” glorified printing. Albeit with some pretty exotic inks and conditions. Soon the art & science of this will rival the ease & cost of ink printing. Maybe.
There’s one aspect to all this I haven’t sat down to think through yet. It’s related to the principle that magazine advertisers have about 6 seconds to catch your attention or forget it. It’s related to the fact that I can have 160 GB of music given to me but not listen to any of it because I just don’t have the time to weed through it.
In today’s world, the winning technology will be something so extraordinarily easy that it must be capable of dependably being utilized within seconds. I want “My Boomerang Won’t Come Back,” and I need to be listening to it within 10 seconds, anywhere.
It needs to be a technology that is directly compatible with HD movies, so, again, we only need one technology to deal with.
“I-n–t-h-e–y-e-a-r–t-w-o–t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d….”
People will be so busy with their lives having to deal with the onslaught of 10s of thousands of messages, products, & activities that we will rely on “Exellence Filters:” People and organizations who’s job it is to provide you with what you want, because it will just be impractical for you to do the work yourself.
Like DU. Maybe like Jack-FM? Certainly like Ebert and Roeper but with the technology directly tied in. Yes the picture is getting clearer. You won’t chose the music, you will choose the service you trust and they will automatically download material in a Podcast-like way to your I-pod-like home media device containing 5 terabytes of advanced flash memory.
“I-n–t-h-e–y-e-a-r–t-w-o–t-h-o-u-s-a-a-a-a-a-n-d….”
RBG
If this technology will allow indexing it will be great. Six or eight years ago when mp2s and cd burners first became popular I was amazed I could put the complete twelve disk set YCDTOS Zappa set on one disk. But then I realized the problem finding the song I liked on set three disk two. if A good program for viewing the songs like a juke box had was included on the disk it would have been great. I am downloading to check out now but still buying CDs If I really like.
What data format are the Stripes/Marley/Ladies offering on these drives? MP3? WAV? FLAC?
(I would hope not MP3).
Thanks, Pedro. You have my vote.
That’s too bad. Hopefully as the price drops on these flash drives, the file format will go to WAV (or whatever, lossless).
Gives new meaning to the phrase, “Get on the stick.”
It never ceases to amaze me that people think mp3s are somehow inferior. When the fidelity is that high a normal person can not tell the difference between 128 kps and 256 kps UNLESS they hear them side by side, on good equipment, and in a noise free environment. Which seldom happens.
The same with JPEG picture format. It is much smaller then other formats yet produces a reproduction that is more then acceptable for the vast majority of people. Those who can tell the difference are rare and have too much time on their hands anyway.
Oh Mr Fusion. You couldn’t be more wrong.
Try listening to some Miles Davis encoded to MP3, on a decent stereo. It hurts.
I found an excellent compare-and-contrast record to be Donald Fagen’s ‘Morph The Cat’. Even on a crappy stereo, that one will convince you.
Seriously – even encoded at 320 Kbps, an MP3 can’t hold a candle to a lossless format.
I’m no audiophile, and I have thousands of MP3s, but on a decent sound system, that format comes up way short. As the capacity of portable memory increases, the need to chop off the top end frequencies of your favorite music will hopefully go the way of the 8-track tape.
#19 – Like DU. Maybe like Jack-FM? Certainly like Ebert and Roeper but with the technology directly tied in. Yes the picture is getting clearer. You won’t chose the music, you will choose the service you trust and they will automatically download material in a Podcast-like way to your I-pod-like home media device containing 5 terabytes of advanced flash memory.
Your apocalyptic vision of the future, laced with Orwellian overtones, causes my heart to sink into an ocean of despair…
I miss going to the record store are BS’ing about esoteric music with other geeks over soda and cigarettes all day…
#26 is 100% right..
And Fusion, while you are right that the average person can’t tell the difference, you have to remember that the average person has the aesthetic sensibility of a barnyard animal.
I’m a snob. Snobbery sets the standard for excellence.
I’m sticking with used vinyl and the occasional CD for purchases. Even then, you never know. Two weeks (?) ago, on the 40th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper, I listened to both the vinyl and the CD. Sure, the CD was devoid of pops and clicks, but the vinyl sounded less sterile and distant….overall much nicer to listen to. I must admit I was somewhat surprised at the phenomenon, but it happens.
Actually, for portable, most of the music I really like was put onto cassettes years ago. They still work just fine, my Sony Sports Walkman with Dolby B keeps on chugging. It is one of the very few Sony products I have had good luck with, and it just happens to have the best reception of any of the 25 or so radios of various sorts I own.
Sure, the cassettes have their limits for sound quality, but when you are bombarded with noise from buses, motorcycles, high heels, talking crosswalk signs, etc. they are just fine.
#30 – When you sport that cassette player around town, are you also wearing parachute pants? The Walkman is such an anachronism it might actually be retro-chic to carry one. You could start a trend.
TDK and Maxell will curse your name as they probably scrapped their cassette tape production equipment some time ago, and here you go starting a new retro-trend. 🙂
Dave W. – I don’t think any of the Beatles stuff has been properly remastered for CD except for the recent ‘Love’ repackage – which sounds completely amazing. Check it out; it’s like listening to the stuff for the first time.
Of course, it’s a ‘mash-up’ as the kids say; different songs are stuck together with fade in/fade outs. Kind of annoying, but still, you should hear it.
Meanwhile, I was gonna link to the ‘cassette jam’ page, but it’s 404. Cripes!
The way I understand it is signal to noise ratio on CD is better but vinyl on a good turntable has better dynamic range. The WalkTurntable (TM) is pretty big and clunky and it skips a lot when your running cross country though.