Bye-bye, CDs?

Yes, pretty soon they'll be obsolete, sound-recording and music-publishing experts are saying. Not huge news, of course, since formats - records, cassettes, etc. - get replaced. What's news is that, for the first time in history, the current format won't be replaced by an object you can hold in your hands. It's being replaced by a "data file," the Washington Post reports. "Think 'Dark Side of the Moon' as an invisible cyberswirl of 1's and 0's. No CD case. No liner notes to flip through. No ... nothing," the Post emotes. Our kids know this. To them it's empowering, it spells choice. They download tunes from the Net, burn them onto CDs, upload them to MP3 players, import them into sound-editing software and mix and "enhance" at will. We're the ones who have to get used to the new focus for record companies: licensing content, not selling products. But we needn't despair: CDs will be around for a while (maybe even as long as we are). And we're pretty hip too - 22 million US adults (11% of the population) own an MP3 player, reports the Dallas Morning News. The Post adds that "CD album sales are bright, but the downloadable digital future is blinding.... During the second half of 2004, more than 91 million digital tracks - songs downloaded from the Internet - were sold, compared with 19.2 million in the same period in 2003. That's an increase of 376%."