Slipped Disc

The icy rain that fell yesterday morning rendered me to indoor activities, which meant that I did things I rarely do - like watch part of the Sunday edition of NBC's "Today" show. Toward the end of the broadcast, the show had a flippant news report about the decline and obsolescence of the compact disc. It reported that Hyundai won't be offering CD players in its 2016 models; the Korean firm has decided that most new-car buyers these days prefer to listen to music on digital downloads, hence Hyundai sound systems will have a Bluetooth-driven display that can be synchronized to Apple or Android devices and can also have third-party applications programmed to them.  

And to think I've only had a car with an in-dash CD player for a little over three years.

Downloads prove that digital sound is still popular.  The decline of compact disc sales prove that digital sound in the form of a physical, tangible record is not.  I know, I know, the kids are driving all of this technology, just as my generation drove CD technology back in the 1980s.  But I'm getting sick and tired of investing so much in a new sort of recording format to listen to my favorite music only to find I have to invest in another new format and buy recordings all over again.  You know how many vinyl records I had when the needle on my turntable arm started to wear out and I couldn't replace it because everyone was buying CDs and CD players?  Or how I eschewed getting a CD player when I bought first new car because I could always tape my CDs and listen to them on my car's cassette deck - then the audio companies stopped making cassettes, even as the cassettes I had started wearing out?  (I later had a six-magazine CD player installed in the back of that car.)

My only hope, when I buy another new car, is that Volkswagen adheres to its strict tradition of offering antiquated audio systems.  But I may be out of luck; its e-Golf has a setup not unlike Hyundai's.  Similar technology in other Golfs, despite the continued inclusion of a CD player, is already available. 

One of the more popular theories explaining the long, slow, painful decline of rock and roll (still in progress) is that an increasing reliance on promotional videos in the eighties diverted record company money away from supporting tours that are so vital to young bands - hence we got hacks like Duran Duran and missed out on real rock bands like the Del Fuegos.  There's another theory; record companies spent so much energy re-issuing LPs from veteran artists on compact disc in the eighties that this also took attention away from younger acts.  In other words, we didn't get a new Beatles because we had to re-buy the records from the old Beatles.   Both theories are part of the reason for rock's decline, and there are other factors to consider, but the problem of too much investment in technology at the expense of the music can't be ignored.  Boz Scaggs once said that the reason he didn't release a record for eight years after 1980 was that the record business was less about the records and more about the business, and, if memory serves me well, I think he cited the changeover from vinyl to CD as an example.  

Some of us still love compact discs, simply because we appreciate the joy of putting a record on a player, turning it on, and listening to a great album from start to finish.  Music critic Gerrick Kennedy of the Los Angeles Times still loves listening to Beyoncé CDs in his car, and he takes umbrage - albeit with some self-deprecating humor - at being called antiquated.  Relax, Brother Gerrick, you're not antiquated.  You at least dig Beyoncé; even if I, a fellow CD lover, were to listen to a current rock band like the Alabama Shakes on a smartphone, my musical tastes would still be obsolete.