How Vinyl & iPods Ganged Up to Kill the Audio CD
On Music Think Tank, Tom Dennehy posts about the book, Trade-off, by Kevin Maney which states that a truly successful product provides either the richest user experience or the greatest convenience. Less successful products fall into the fidelity belly which is the no-man’s land of consumer experience. In his post, he applies the concept to how vinyl and ipods have caused the decline of the CD. Do you agree?
“Sinking into the fidelity belly is essentially the fast track to obsolescence. Staying out of the belly is never assured, because customer expectations for fidelity and convenience constantly evolve.”
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After a recent conversation at the haircutters’ with random, younger music fans who (1) professed their love of vinyl, and (2) demonstrated utter lack of knowledge of issues involved in cartridge alignment, I have to laugh at the idea that the vinyl surge is driven by considerations of audio fidelity. (To reference my own experience, I own thousands of LPs and a low-end audiophile turntable and cartridge, but I mostly listen to CDs, with MP3 for portable use.)
kind of silly. vinyl is hip, but makes up only a tiny fraction of music sales. meanwhile, half of all music sales are still via CD, so that format is obviously still extremely viable.
There is some very flawed data in this story, which I commented upon, however keep reading it because it might make you feel good. Meanwhile every major digital property is hopping back into physical as fast as they can acquire something not owned by the majors.