All Things Must Pass. Maybe.

Atari has filed for bankruptcy in the USA. The filing was not nearly as surprising as the realization that the company, a pioneer in arcade-style video games, is actually still in business in 2013.

[Image credit: Rijk-Jan Koppejan]

Atari is not alone. The downward arc of the PC technology cycle is bringing about exits by several former industry leaders.

Dell is considering going private, perhaps funded by Microsoft. Intel — whose eponymous 'Intel Inside' ad campaign created consumer demand for branded CPUs where none existed — announced it was phasing out manufacture of branded desktop motherboards. HP CEO Meg Whitman, whose company's stranglehold on the business of printing on paper did not lead to innovations in 3D printing, said in an interview, "We've ultimately got to be in the smartphone business."

 

No technology remains dominant forever. Neither does any music delivery format. Jan Koltai published an extraordinary graphic summarizing the four technology cycles in the music industry 1975-2007. (See below.)

 

 

• Vinyl record sales peaked in 1976 at $344 Million, trending down to near-zero by 1991.
• Cassettes peaked in 1988 at $450 Million, with demand bottoming out in 2004.
• CDs peaked in 2007 at $942 Million and are on a steep downward trajectory, falling another 13.5% in 2012.
• Digital downloads are still on the rise, up 9.1% to a new high in 2012, but are threatened by the growing popularity of streaming audio services.

While technologies fade, they seldom go away completely. Atari's backruptcy filing is intended to shield its US operations from the financial woes of French parent company Atari S. A., so that its assets can be sold to continue a now-profitable line of Android and iOS games. The resurgence of vinyl is well-documented, with double-digit annual sales growth in each of the last five years (though vinyl still represented only 2.4% of physical album sales in 2012). Cassette singles still have a following in the UK, while sales of pre-recorded cassettes fuel the growth of the music industry in Africa.

 

What goes around.

 

            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #50            

Artist: Old and New Dreams

Title: Playing
Genre: Jazz
Year: 1980





Jazz continuously evolves. Old and New Dreams, founded in 1977 and composed of trumpeter Don Cherry, tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, bassist Charlie Haden (a personal favorite), and drummer Ed Blackwell, made for a mighty team, performing high-quality free bop in the tradition of the Ornette Coleman Quartet (of which they were all alumni). This Austrian concert CD features the quartet stretching out on three of Ornette’s tunes, plus a song apiece from Cherry, Redman and Haden.

© 2013 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

 

How Vinyl and iPods Ganged Up to Kill the Audio CD

NPR reported that CD sales tanked in 2010, particularly among younger buyers. The trend has continued until now and suggests that vinyl and iPods are sinking the audio CD into the so-called "fidelity belly," where mediocre products go to die.

[Image: Race to Obsolesence, David Lane.]

In his book Trade-Off, journalist Kevin Maney wote that a truly successful product provides either the richest user experience (fidelity) or the greatest convenience. Less successful products fall into what he labeled the fidelity belly, "the no-man's-land of consumer experience," characterized by commercial apathy, insufficient fidelity and insufficient convenience. (See diagram below right.)

Apple succeeds in the consumer computer market by providing the richest pre-sales experience in its retail stores. Dell and HP succeed by providing an ultra-convenient pre-sales experience online. Who is in the belly? Everyone else.

Sinking into the fidelity belly is essentially the fast track to obsolescence. Staying out of the belly is never assured, because customer expectations for fidelity and convenience constantly evolve.

While it may seem that the audio CD thrived for more than 20 years because of high fidelity, what it really offered over its fraternal twin on vinyl was convenience — better robustness, more portability, multi-disc changers, in-vehicle players, random/repeat play, remote control.

In the last decade the iPod arrived to match all the conveniences of the CD, adding small (and ever smaller) player size, ubiquitous portability, invisible storage, and greater (and ever greater) capacity. Nothing can match the convenience of weightless digital audio, now available in a variety of formats at both lower and higher resolution than CD quality (choice is convenient, too).

On several online forums catering to vinyl aficianados, I posed the question, "what is it about playing an LP that appeals to you?" After all, the fundamentals of record playback haven't significantly changed in 100 years. It isn't necessarily sound quality (except among self-described audiophiles). Almost unanimously, the response came back that the real appeal of vinyl stems from interaction with an LP as a satisfying physical object — large format album art, liner notes, even having to flip sides. Respondents were quite eloquent about it.

When was the last time you ever heard anyone wax rhapsodic about interacting with a CD? Has anyone ever considered a CD collectible for its nostalgia value or status as an art object? The audience for vinyl will keep it out of the belly by uniquely defining fidelity for themselves, establishing a multi-sense standard no other physical medium is likely to meet.

Thus the CD has been forced back along the convenience axis by dematerialized digital audio, forced down along the fidelity axis by vinyl, and ultimately swallowed up in the fidelity belly. It is now or will be soon become obsolete. (What to do with obsolete CDs? Here is one idea.) At least one study concluded that less than 10%  of listeners will be buying physical media in 2-4 years; that population will likely consist almost entirely of vinyl buyers, not CD buyers.

Way out in fidelity/convenience space is Maney's "fidelity mirage," a product that can deliver both super-high convenience and super-high fidelity. It is virtually impossible to do this in the commercial marketplace. Companies that attempt to reach the mirage usually fail and sink back into the belly.

But consider a high-resolution digital transfer of an LP, taken on the owner's own equipment, calibrated to his exact specifications, and restored in software to the best possible sound quality. The dematerialized result delivers super-high convenience, the original physical object retains its super-high fidelity. Is the fidelity mirage real?


            Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #24           

Title: Social Studies

Artist: Carla Bley
Genre: Jazz
Year: 1981



Carla Bley (b. 1936) has composed and performed in a wide range of styles over her long career, including free jazz, jazz opera, political jazz with Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, and one of most beautiful Christmas records ever. But the music that resonates most with me comes from the large ensemble with the ever-shifting lineup known as The Carla Bley Band. Social Studies is a fine example of their work. But, of all my Carla Bley LPs, I really chose to highlight this one here for its cover art still life of endangered physical media.


© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.