Audio News for March 20, 2012

by | Mar 20, 2012 | Audio News

Are Compact Discs on Way Out? – There’s been predictions that by the end of this year the major labels will abandon the CD format, replacing it with download and streaming via iTunes and all the other servcies out there.  The matter is controversial and has not been substantiated by any of the labels. CD sales are way down, but they’re not that awful. Australian Hi-Fi magazine opines that CDs may not disappear entirely, and they should continue for a long time with independent labels, but that the majors might limit their physical discs to Blu-rays for music due to that format’s harder-to-break copyright security.
Of course should physical discs become obsolete, it doesn’t mean that hi-res music downloads or even surround sound will not be possible. That’s already happening with the growing number of hi-res download services. If there are no physical discs, secure backups of your paid-for music becomes a vital element—one which many users haven’t even thought of. Many are going to Cloud storage of their music files, but that can get expensive. And hard drives do not last forever.
U.S. Classical Market Dwindling – Not long ago classical accounted for about 3% of record sales in the U.S., but now it is below 2% and most of it is made up of classical crossover releases. This makes the dropping of some of the classical Grammy categories a moot point and in fact makes classical Grammies pretty much besides the point.  Just because classical isn’t selling in the U.S. doesn’t mean it’s not doing well in other parts of the world. South Korea is the leader, with 18% of all music sales being classical. France is next with 9%. Other countries with higher sales are the UK, Germany, Finland, Hungary and Austria. More and more classical artists in America are looking to build their careers in a different country.
Headphone Aficionados Heaven – Everything you might want to know about headphones will be found at the HeadWize.com site, a very detailed non-commercial resource for headphones and headphone listening. They have news, a library, directory, forums, a store, and a handy FAQ section which I highly recommend. I was just checking for details on which wires were which on a headphone stereo plug I had to solder, and was amazed at all I discovered on the site.
Lotsa Bach for a Buck – eOne Music is resurrecting the famous Bach Guild label (founded in 1948) with The Big Bach Set—over nine hours of music of J.S. Bach in celebration of his 262nd birthday. Tomorrow, Wednesday March 21st only, the entire set will be available for download at Amazon.com’s MP3 store for only 99 cents.  (We don’t know what the sampling rate is.) After that one day it will be $9.99.

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