Another nail in the CD/BluRay coffin?

Rudy

¡Que siga la fiesta!
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Sony is proposing to close the Enfield (UK) distribution center as more consumers switch to streaming:

Sony proposes closure of CD and Blu-ray UK distribution plant

Sony has already cut back operations at other distribution and manufacturing plants in the past several years.

I just hope that downloading remains an option, as not all of us want to "rent" our music. As I've said before, streaming is a valuable source for me, but unlike the typical streaming customer, I use mine to take my collection "on the road" or elsewhere, and seek out new music to listen to. (The service I use, Qobuz, also lets me buy nearly everything I would stream, so it's very convenient in that regard.)

So many mainstream users are ditching physical collections for streaming, which is a big mistake, and they are the ones driving Sony and others to cut back on CD/BluRay production and distribution.
 
I’m still buying Blu-Rays, DVD’s, CD’s and records. Here in Canada I find iTunes charges a ridiculous price for even 1 track (about $1.29 before HST), and a lot of times I can get a single disc CD for less than $9, and in most cases $5. Really I get better value and video/sound with physical than downloading.
 
The Fix Appears to be in Or so it seems to me. The moral of the story " Hold on to your physical Media".
 
It's great that most of us older members lived through the era of physical media and already HAVE most of the stuff that we really wanted. I don't really buy much in the way of new CDs anymore. Everything I do buy is usually a re-issue of something older. Carpenter RPO is the last thing I bought. Before that, a couple of Beatles reissues, Herb reissues. That kind of stuff.

Specialized older purchases in the way of really obscure stuff comes from Discogs or Ebay or Amazon third party.
 
It's great that most of us older members lived through the era of physical media and already HAVE most of the stuff that we really wanted. I don't really buy much in the way of new CDs anymore. Everything I do buy is usually a re-issue of something older. Carpenter RPO is the last thing I bought. Before that, a couple of Beatles reissues, Herb reissues. That kind of stuff.

Specialized older purchases in the way of really obscure stuff comes from Discogs or Ebay or Amazon third party.
Same story here Harry and I agree with you being over a certain age myself I was pretty fortunate to have the collection that I have especially stuff I only dreamed of having when I was younger and didn't have as much financial resources or the connections at the time
 
I sometimes feel like a curator of a small recording museum as so many of the records I have came from broadcast collections. Some were brand new and tossed out when formats changed. Some were on-air used and tossed because of a scratch on one track or side - easily fixable with today's software, but unusable back in the day.
 
I subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited because it's the only service I've found that will play continuously without me having to "move the mouse" or whatever every so often. I've discovered a lot of new music on it -- the best way to listen (I've found) is to play an artist's "station," rather than the generic Classic Rock or "decades" channels, which are mostly the same tired songs over and over. With an artist station you get a lot of deep tracks from the artist, and anything new they've done is included too....plus you hear other less popular music that is similar in style to your chosen artist. Lately I've been getting into a Canadian band called Mystery, which sounds like Pink Floyd, Yes and Rush got together. I found them by listening to the Alan Parsons Project station.
 
The main reason I embrace physical media is not only because you hold something tangible in your hands... to watch when you want and more or less where you want. Nothing beats a 12" slab o vinyl or a 5" shiny CD or DVD, especially not a stream of trons flowing throuogh a wire or from a satellite.

Think about this: If everything was ONLY available "on line" for "download," the people who control the media you wish to see or hear could decide what you want to see and hear is something that should not be seen or heard. Yes, I'm talking censorship... Big Brother...

Let's say it is decided that because Bill Cosby is a slimeball, none of his material should be available for anyone to hear ever again. Or because Kevin Spacey is a gay pedophile, no Kevin Spacey film should ever be seen again. Or if folks on the extremes of society banished those things they disagreed with. I'm not saying it will happen, but I AM saying it CAN happen and IS happening. Google/YouTube are already banning materials that they don't agree with. Blog sites are already banning personalities they disagree with. Amazon does not sell certain materials.

I'll keep my physical media, thank you very much... If they want to, they can come and take them (when they come to take my guns).

--Mr. Bill
 
Streaming is not downloading though. I don't stream video.

You own your download, store it locally, and watch it whenever. No different from a BD or DVD. It just eliminates the wasteful physical disc and packaging. I don't even have optical disc players in my music systems or attached to any of the TVs in the house. No need. It's all on one server so anyone can access it easily.
 
Streaming is not downloading though. I don't stream video.

You own your download, store it locally, and watch it whenever. No different from a BD or DVD. It just eliminates the wasteful physical disc and packaging. I don't even have optical disc players in my music systems or attached to any of the TVs in the house. No need. It's all on one server so anyone can access it easily.

I have a real problem with paying for digital video downloads. Unlike music downloads, video downloads have DRM, which limits how you can play them. For example, there is a concert video that I dearly want, but it was released on digital only, and it's an iTunes exclusive. If I buy that concert, I'd be limited to playing it through iTunes, or an Apple TV. I'll be damned if I'm going to buy an Apple TV box, just so I could watch it on my living room TV, and I really don't want to watch a two hour concert on the computer in my basement office, or my 10 inch iPad screen. The only workaround is to buy expensive software to strip the DRM. Also, with digital video, if there's a movie I want to see that hasn't been released in my country, I'm not allowed to buy it due to geoblocking. At least with DVD or BD, I could buy a disc from a foreign retailer, and watch it on my region-free player.
 
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