The long-awaited death of the local record store?
News today that the Compact Disc may be on the way out. Industry insiders claim that all of the major labels plan to abandon the format for digital downloads by the end of 2012, a move that probably makes brilliant fiscal sense to them but will pretty much kill HMV among other such chains unless they can evolve very quickly into something else.
As an added advantage, the music industry won't have to worry about people "borrowing" each other's discs to make copies, or those nasty libraries loaning discs to all and sundry. DRM FTW, right guys?
Personally, I prefer to buy my music on a tangible format (such as a CD) versus a digital download - that way, even if there's a catastrophic hardware failure that destroys my hard drive and my backups aren't up-to-date I still have my music. Plus, there have been instances where DRM-protected media was no longer usable because the company went away or got out of that line of business (See what Google tried to do with their Video service earlier this year for example.)
As an added advantage, the music industry won't have to worry about people "borrowing" each other's discs to make copies, or those nasty libraries loaning discs to all and sundry. DRM FTW, right guys?
Personally, I prefer to buy my music on a tangible format (such as a CD) versus a digital download - that way, even if there's a catastrophic hardware failure that destroys my hard drive and my backups aren't up-to-date I still have my music. Plus, there have been instances where DRM-protected media was no longer usable because the company went away or got out of that line of business (See what Google tried to do with their Video service earlier this year for example.)