C D end is night, I told you so

So sales of the humble CD are down and music as we know it is about to go down below the surface for the third time. We’ve seen it before. Many doom-mongered the death of vinyl, then cassettes. I’m sure back in the days of yore a heavy-set chap in a loin cloth set in that season’s colours ‘og’d and ‘ug’d his way through a rant about the death of cave-painting before writing an editorial about it for Mojo and Q.

The problem is that this time there’s no emerging media to take its place. That’s not entirely true of course, it’s just that mp3 means you can pick and choose your favourite bits – there’s no need to listen to the entire album. Like visiting the Louvre and going straight the Mona Lisa without taking in the other works, and no one does that do they…?

It’s unlike music fans to be nostalgic, what with the entire hobby being based around capturing and listening to historically ‘significant’ moments afterall, but it’s sad to think there might never be another Dark Side of the Moon or Sgt Pepper’s. I can remember Christmas mornings spent as a child playing with newly unwrapped toys in the warm glow of the Christmas tree accompanied by the annual performance of the Dark Side of the Moon vinyl. Counting Christmas money and new trains whilst Dave Gilmore poured his socialist heart out in Money.

It really was only vinyl that compelled you to listen to the entire album of an artist. You could try your luck at placing the needle in the right place, using a speck of tip-ex if you were scientifically minded, but if you wanted the record to last the distance it was easier to listen from start to finish. But you see, it all ended there. cassettes gave you the option of fast-forwarding the slow burners, and by the time you get to CD’s most players give you the option of completely reworking the album and programming the track order yourself. So really mp3’s are just an extension of this.

So is this the end of the album? Probably, yes. People will only download tracks they know – have you ever paid for a download of a song you know nothing about, even if it is an artist you know? It’s difficult enough to get audiences to stay in concerts long enough to play them something they haven’t heard before, but curled up on the sofa in slippers with a chocolate hobnob in their hands you’ve got no chance.

The thing is it’s all going to have a much wider impact on music. With no filler tracks, record companies are only going to be interested in songs which make money, and as we all know the ‘hit’ has a very simple formula – hook, verse, drum fill and stonking singalong chorus. The world is turning Disney and there’s nothing we can do. The airwaves will be filled with clones of Barbie Girl by Aqua, and Wigfield singing about her Saturday Night.

Ask yourself a question: How many tracks on Sgt Pepper would’ve been discarded by record company execs because they wouldn’t see an adequate return if everything had to sell as an individual download? Then go out and buy a cd before everything goes Fopp.