EMI Exec Says 'The Music CD is Dead'

Anonycat writes "Alain Levy, the chairman of EMI Music, made a speech at the London Business School declaring 'the end of the music CD as it is.' He went on to say that most CDs are simply used for ripping onto digital audio players. Levy adds that by the beginning of 2007, all EMI CDs will come with additional material to make them more attractive to the consumer. Revenue from CDs still outranks revenue from downloads by better than 6 to 1. Would it take 'additional material' to get you to keep buying CDs? What material would you like to see?"

What material would I'd like to see?

[revlayle]

$100 bills would be pretty frickin' cool

Easy Sony

[masklinn]

What material would you like to see?"

Why rootkits and virii for my computer of course!

Three letters...

[interiot]

What material would you like to see?

Anything that's not DRM'd.

I know, what are the chances of that, huh? On the other hand, what's the point in including extra fluff that's DRM'd in a package where the primarily content isn't DRM'd? "Here's the cake you ordered, sir. And to thank you for your patronage, we've included a bonus poisoned pill. It's sugary though, yum!" "Umm, thanks... I'll just eat the cake."

How could anyone ask for more?

[Dystopian Rebel]

The Musical-Idolatry Complex already controls me completely, just like Hunter S. Eisenhower predicted.

It feeds me proto-literate lyrics, expertly Photoshopped images of poseurs, titillating videos that don't make any sense, the instrumental talent of digitized samples and vocal harmonizers, and -- if I can afford it -- maybe a ticket to a lip-synched World Tour performance with a team of 30 dancers and some fireworks.

People who download music miss all of this. They aren't cool. They hurt the Artists.

That's why Mariah Carey made "Glitter", you bastards. She was hurt.

Re:Copyright profiteering is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

We would still be paying Ogg for the patent on that wheel thing

I'm pretty sure Ogg would want it to be unpatented [vorbis.com]...

Re:I'd like to see a talking goat

[Dunbal]

How about a singing goatse?

      Or a goatse-tubgirl duet, in B-fart major. Barrrrf.

Re:What Is He Smoking?

[blugu64]

Heck I can do that right now! Who is bloc party?

Re:What Is He Smoking?

[Pharmboy]

From the article:
...all EMI CDs will come with additional material to make them more attractive to the consumer.

Isn't that all was Sony was trying to do, give you some free software when you bought their CDs? ;)

Re:What Is He Smoking?

[operagost]

Not only that, but my records used to skip like a bitch when I played them in the car.

Re:What Is He Smoking?

[wuie]

Oh come on. The codec programmers don't need that kind of FLAC.

Re:What Is He Smoking?

[Jonny_eh]

You're probably being sarcastic but I'll offer this link anyways:
http://flac.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Re:What Is He Smoking?

[davecombs]

A typical album is around 45 minutes of music, let's call it about 410 MB. That's 410,000 MB
The trip is 2780.82 miles, so At 20 MPG and $2/gallon, the transfer will cost $278.08, or $100 per MB of data.

Sorry, but 410,000MB (410GB) that costs $278.08 to transfer is $0.000678/MB, or about $0.68/GB. Your $100/MB is only about a factor of 150,000 too high on the cost. Nice try, though.

Re:What Is He Smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between this and a physical CD is the protective cover containing album art. My proposal is simple- a lossless audio codec that contains the album art as a wrapper to the file. We'll it "the FLAC jacket".