Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

A CD is Only Good for Ripping
<rant>An article I read yesterday's in /. really brought this concept home for me yesterday. When you think of it, CDs are really a poor investment for one's entertainment dollar. One CD is equivalent to 1 (and sometimes 2) movie tickets. It is also worth a significant fraction of the cost of a DVD, sometimes at or near parity. The article notes that while CDs sales are slumping badly, DVDs are exploding -- despite the fact that it is possible to download or rip DVDs as much as CDs. No matter how you slice it, DVDs provide more bang for the buck: they typically provide between 2 - 6 times as much entertainment (2 hours plus on some DVDs versus a typical 40 minutes or less with most CDs -- I've even got a couple of CDs that clock in at around 20 minutes). Then factor in the various bonuses contained on DVDs, and CDs come off looking like a highly-overpriced piece of plastic and aluminum.

I would become interested in CDs again if they contained suitable bonuses -- accompanying music videos, or even just given a "key" to download bonus material from an artists' Web site. Prices also have to drop if they are to remain in their current format -- I'm amazed after all these years that CDs are still roughly twice the price of old vinyl records at their height (even taking inflation into account). If new CDs cost about $10 or so new, I'd be buying more CDs.

I'm also cheesed off at the comment by a record company official in the story, who says that haven't bothered researching customer satisfaction with their product. That says a lot. I've bought CDs on several occasions where there have been subsequent "upgrades". The best example that comes to mind is Talking Head's soundtrack to "Stop Making Sense". I bought the original when it came out in the late 80s, where it clocked in at about 40 minutes. Recently, they re-released it: remastered, and clocking in at almost 70 minutes. I ending up buying the DVD instead for only a few dollars more than the revamped CD and considered throwing the old CD away... Could somebody perhaps offer me upgrade pricing, please?

Record companies, give me a viable alternative: let me buy single tunes in MP3 format at a decent bit-rate, and let me use them wherever I go, with no restrictions. And make it affordable (and dare I say it: cheap). In return I would be happy to establish a relationship -- get to know me, and find out what my musical tastes are, providing you with a conduit to sell me more product that I might be interested in buying. Ultimately there's an obvious cost savings to record companies over time, as better communication equates to more efficient economies, such as fewer "dud" releases, or even the cost of media if I buy MP3s direct.

I'm currently off to find a copy of David Bowie's Heathen CD -- though purely because I'd like to be a rights holder of its tunes, and because I'd like to get a better-quality rip than I currently have. It is quite possible that the CD itself will never see the inside of a regular CD player.</rant>

Creating a Database of My Music CDs
(I wrote this immediately prior to my rant). This is a project that I've been meaning to do for a long time. It was the ever-growing stack of unsorted CDs on top of the CD cabinet that finally convinced me to do it -- that and the fact that the kids don't require me to hover around them all of the time (but do like me in sight). More specifically, yesterday if meant I didn't have to watch "Lion King II" again.

The interesting thing is that I'm looking at the database as a "right's holder" database. In other words, I'm looking at it in terms of MP3-ing the lot and holding on to the originals to prove that I have the right to do that. In many cases I'll probably never play the CD again, though it would be nice to have a dedicated music server set up in the house to play selected MP3 on demand. A server with a couple 100Gig drives ought to do. Wonder if there's a non-computer interface anyone has come up with that you can add to your stereo rack to call up tunes from a host? Must investigate... Getting a new music server is not a priority right now -- its more likely that one of my older machines will one day fall into that role as I upgrade over time.

As for my cataloging, I'm currently up to "F". (The final "E" disk -- The Eurythmics' Greatest Hits) turns out to be my 164th music CD.