Not the happiest of birthdays to celebrate, the audio Compact Disc is 25 years old today, so reports the Figaro. What’s funny is that this birthday comes right on the heels of my recent posting and much fanfare about the RIAA lawsuits (against Limewire, etc. and the Santangelo saga).
What I found amusing about the story in the Figaro was that two of the three initial promises of the nascent CD business (launched by Philips) turned out to be quite hopelessly wrong:
1. CD’s can give great sound (check: yes)
2. CD’s don’t scratch (ha)
2. CD’s have the endurance to last 100 years (potentially yes, but we’ll never find out)
Anyway, there have been apparently 200 billion audio CDs sold (don’t know if that includes the Chinese rip-offs). When you consider the hefty margin (typical price was around $12USD while the pure production cost is closer to $1), that’s a pretty good business.
Unlike my rather large vinyl collection which I foolishly dropped off in the alley behind our house (tired of them amassing dust) and missed an opportunity to make back some money, I am now wondering what to do with my 1000+ CDs. They have all been downloaded into my itunes (and I have a backup on an external server). Anyone have any suggestions? Should they stay or should they go?
How about selling some of them on Ebay?
But, I’m not even sure I should let them go. What if, or rather what happens WHEN the mp3 (or aac) format I have used for the entire digital library becomes archaic?
Surely there’ll be software to transfer old format to new format and you’ll just have to keep updating.
Mind you, I’m not one to talk, I can never throw anything ‘solid’ out as I have a fear of internal digital combustion…