Even Without File Trading, CD Business Model is Dead

Lossless compression for music is the way to go -- then can get rid of CDs with confidence nothing is left behind -- if want to later, can recreate the CD perfectly. But in 5 years nobody will be using CDs, except maybe nostalgic people like those that still use vinyl claiming they can hear a difference (a brief side commentary for these people: even if you can hear a difference, which you probably can't do under controlled circumstances, the difference isn't so great as to justify spending the $ you do -- you just want something to talk about at cocktail parties).


I use Monkey's Audio. Aside from the stupid name, and the proprietary nature of the format, I use this one b/c I don't care much about the proprietary nature -- it converts out to a neutral format, and from there it's GUI allows you to call any compression program against the WAV. So could convert to another lossless format when it comes time to do so. And as MP3 formats become better, it is a matter minutes to program the GUI to recompress everything.


But that's not the reason for this post. The point I wanted to make is that what little loss there may be, we're loosing it with things like iTunes, which is why I'm still buying CDs. But I really like like file trading sites b/c I can buy a used, but basically new (I only need one good rip) from Amazon or ebay. So the price per song or album still comes down dramatically. I just ordered a bunch of used CDs from Amazon.