Why the record album HAD to give way to the compact disc

It's quite simple really. Picture this, you and some member of the opposite sex wish to 'get your groove on', now music is always good to have on, the radio is not good as it will go from one song to the next by many different artists and some my just ruin the mood. This is where the record album comes in, the record album is slightly better then the radio as you can have control over which artist and songs are played while you do IckyThings^tm, but only for a short period of time then you have to listen to the *hissss*THUNK*THUNK*hisssssss*THUNK*THUNK*hisssss* when you run out of record. Also not good.

Now the compact disc comes in, and you can select just which songs off of an album you want to hear and you can repeat them in order or in a somewhat random order for as long as you want. This is great for those of us who take our time doing IckyThings^tm. As we can have music for as long as we want without fear of something to kill the mood coming on like with the radio. Vinyl sounds better, but CDs are better for handin out the sweet sweet lovin.

All nice things!

I'm not so sure the technology itself was invented so people could do icky things.

I'm more sure that the ever diminishing number of companies that publish music, and produce, recordings needed a great hit of cash--and what easier way than to transform selected titles from vinyl to CD.

After that hit, they grew, dinosaurs that they are. And they need more money. Why do you think there are sensations? Spice Girls, Back Street Boys--they make a lot of money in a short time for the dinosaurs.

And, of course, the installed infrastructure of CD Players that had to be bought. What good are years old record players to corporations that need cash now? And what about the average cost of CD's, compared to records?

One of my students tells how, when he was a child, he used thorns to ride the grooves in the original hard rubber records. And his record player was cheap.

There was a sense of solidarity that people of his generation felt around their music, and even those in the sixties--revolution!

This has been captured--our energy has been harnessed to run hyper capitalism!

Completely misguided, a medium for messages of sonic pleasure or pain does not give way to another medium due to pure technological "advancement". The points that Cd's are constantly repeatable is a positive attribute for them, however hardly makes them more useful in other situations.

Vinyl records used on turntables are by far the best form of recorded media to date for DJs to perform. They are highly tactile, very often good pressings with analogue equipment smoothing out sound versus the digital 'jaggies' or jagged edges of digital information. The manipulation from hand to sound is a much tighter process than running digital information that leaves a lot more room for error with less skill involved.

Vinyl still exists as a useful outlet for artists in the year 2000, alongside cassette tapes, MP3s, outlived 8-tracks & mini-disks, and far more pleasant than Cds that when scratched are just as irreperable as records however only 1 or 2 songs may be affected on a record while a cd is damaged completely.

Its also easier to steal CD's than a crate of records, a more involved process for people to rip music into MP3 from vinyl opposed to CDs, and there is history of fair honest pricing with vinyl, whereas with Cds you will pay out the nose everytime.

There is no 'HAD to give way', only 'HAD to become commercialized'. There is room for other technology, since not all technology becomes obsolete regardless of what Western society has taught most of us.

If you need any examples of artists in the year 2000 pressing onto Vinyl, check out the Electronic Music Artists Metanode

Regarding having to flip/change the record at inopportune times: Some players had a tall spindle in the middle that you could stack multiple records on; when one side ended, the next record in the stack came down. (Of course, this meant you could only listen to one side of each record without getting up and flipping the stack.) This is why some double-album sets used to be pressed with sides 1 and 4 on the same record, and 2 and 3 on the other one -- you stacked it so sides 1 and 2 would play without your having to get up, then you flipped the whole stack and played 3 and 4.

Also, you've ignored audio cassettes -- just about everyone in my age group (born 1973) or older had a cassette deck way before a CD player, and cassettes (especially mix tapes rather than storebought albums) can be pretty long on one side, even if you don't have one of those decks that automatically plays the other side when one side ends.

Okay, my two cents:

One issue I haven't seen mentioned here is the higher heat resistance of CDs. Sure, they will degrade when exposed to high temeperatures, but vinyl has a lower melting point, and is more likely to go soft when stored in an attic over the summer.

1. I don't know what kallen is talking about when he says that just one scratch is enough to ruin a cd. When I was in college, one of my classmates had, for some reason, a CD of Barney songs for kids. One of his suitemates nailed the CD to the door. It could still play songs. Sure, if you scratch a CD hard enough, it'll be busted. That's true for pretty much any efficient recording medium. He also claims that it's more involved to rip sounds from vinyl.
   1. Connect speaker out from turntable to mic in on computer.
   2. Record sound into .wav
   3. Convert .wav to mp3
   Still dirt simple.
2. As for the charges of commercialism, it is ludicrously easy these days to put out your own DIY CD. If you don't want to send your music to mp3.com to be pressed just in time for custom orders, you can always get your own cd burner or take it to a local house to get them burned in bulk for about 50 cents apiece. Today, you can go to a club, listen to a local, dirt-poor band, and then buy their cd for 5 bucks afterwards. How much more independant can you get?