Comment by Robin_Message | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Robin_Message | Hacker News Reader

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Stats: First six months of 2010, 112 million CD albums sold, 42 million download albums sold, 600 million CD singles sold (~60 million album equivalent) [1] so it's about 50/50 on digital music. Physical music distribution is not it it's death throes. Also, the decline is slowing, and the market is fairly saturated.

The thing that killed film cameras is that digital cameras just work better and have at least one killer feature -- Instant review. That is a massive advantage for consumer and professional alike. Once the disadvantages were moore's lawed away -- quality for professionals and price, size and printing for consumers -- film could not stand.

There is no killer feature with download music. I can get it faster, but so what? It might grasp the fashion markets, but not everyone needs music now. It has added no killer feature and it's not even cheaper. And one thing that's not like all the others -- it's a worse product. Most people have a CD player in their house and their car. And their computer. And their friends have CD players †. And they can play their CD's everywhere, and they can rip them and put them on portable devices, and they can display them in their living rooms.

Newspapers - physicality is nice, but I can well see them disappearing, because digital news will be more convenient, cheaper and more up-to-date. The winners will be the digital newspapers that preserve or enhance the paper reading experience, which might not mean having reporters and so on, but will mean selecting and presenting information in a way people value (in particular, mirroring the reader's values. It just occurred to me that the Daily Mirror in the UK is the best (and most ironically) named newspaper ever.)

[1] http://www.prosoundnews.com/blog/30154

† iPod docks in hifis and cars are getting penetration, but are not standard yet, and certainly not ubiquitous. Fixing this will be one thing that kills physical music.

Point taken that it's too early to lay flowers at the grave of physical music - but would you invest in a shopping mall music store? I've seen a lot of them close down.

The killer feature with downloadable music is (virtually) unlimited storage, and having your entire collection with you in one device. It won't be long before cars don't have CD players (it's 10 years since they dropped cassette players, and it was about 5 years while they had both). I would say iPod docks in cars are already ubitiquous - most car reviews in magazines will mention if there is one or not, and journalists usually moan if there isn't.

I also disagree with the thought that displaying in living rooms and swapping with friends is a feature. I put all my old CDs in a box years ago. It's only music tragics that want everyone to see their collection.

The thing is, the biggest consumers of music are young people. Try and find a 17 year old with a CD player. As this demographic moves through life, CDs will shrink into niche stores just like print films.

Downloadable music will also die. Spotify, or equivalent streaming services, have the clear killer feature downloadable music is missing - access to all music on any machine with an internet connection. Carrying around your data will seem antiquated really soon.

Edit: For the US readers I'd like to clarify that I don't count any other existing services as equal to Spotify, but there will surely be copycats soon. It is the iphone of streaming music applications if you like analogies.

I'm one of the 9 million new yorkers who take the subway to work every morning and work in midtown. If I had to rely on a net connection for music, photos, etc I would be without a great deal of the day. (During transit, at 5pm, in some office buildings.)

I also don't like the idea of renting, music, property or otherwise.

How long before Subway trains start getting dedicated wi-fi?

Memory will always be cheaper than bandwidth and far more pervasive. It makes no sense to download something, then 10 minutes download it again. We already have pervasive non-downloadable streams - it's called radio. It's still popular, but has never completely displaced having your own collection.

One of the killer uses of digital music is the ability to have a miles-long playlist for long road/plane trips. Downloadable streams cannot possibly service this market cheaper than a solid-state memory device. Wherever you have a market segment that needs two devices, the one that combines both always wins. So the future is an iPod that can stream if necessary - which we already have in the iPhone.

Your comparison between CD and digital sales isn't perfect, because most of the digital music out there is pirated, not purchased. How is that eating into CD sales?

There is no killer feature with download music.

Not true. The killer feature for downloads is that you get the content immediately. The difference is that the photography industry didn't deem their loss of control illegal.

That is not a killer feature. It may be a major benefit, but nothing like the step-change that digital cameras were. Think about taking photos at say a wedding, or a fashion shoot, or a birthday party -- how do you know when you've got the perfect shot on a film camera? You don't.

Getting music in 24 minutes or 24 seconds as opposed to 24 hours is not a killer feature. I think another thread hit it with spotify though -- the killer thing will be when you can just play any piece of music on anything and not have to worry about transporting something physical at all. It'll be great, but tricky to price.

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