http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19831-2005Feb12.html?nav=rss_topn\
ews

By Sean Daly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 13, 2005; Page A01

Classic-rock fan George Petersen doesn't need another copy of Pink Floyd's "Dark
Side of the Moon" or Cream's "Disraeli Gears." He has spent the past four
decades buying and re-buying his favorite music in a succession of new formats:
vinyl, 8-track, cassette, compact disc, Super Audio CD, DVD-Audio.

Enough is enough. The basement is full.

Now get ready for the day when you open your wallet and buy "Abbey Road" all
over again.

In the next decade or so, the CD will very likely be surpassed as the album
format of choice.

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.

Your preferred music star could provide a myriad of songs, bonus cuts,
commentary, videos, album art, you name it. You, however, would have ultimate
power: which songs stay, which songs are deleted, which songs go where. Surely,
if Paul McCartney offered a new, computer-based "Abbey Road" with alternate
takes, making-of-the-disc footage and other historical arcana, Beatles fans
would want it. Or some of it, anyway.

"Five years from now, absolutely there will be CDs. Ten years from now, though,
there will be fewer," compared with other digital music options, said Larry
Miller, the 47-year-old CEO of the Or Music label, a Sony Corp. offshoot that
gained notoriety this year for its biggest act, Los Lonely Boys, the Tex-Mex
trio nominated for four Grammys.

Sitting at your laptop, pressing a few buttons and cueing up Bob Dylan may not
seem very rock-and-roll. Will air-guitaring give way to air-mousing? And with
each listener compiling his own version of an album, will there even be "albums"
anymore? Are we looking at a mixed-up, mix-tape future?

The compact disc has had a great run -- developed by Philips and Sony in 1979,
introduced to the United States in the spring of 1983, 1 billion in world sales
by 1990.

"Remember," Miller said, "college kids and urban adults are buying their music
online."

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 percent.

More than 140 million digital tracks were purchased during 2004. Plus in the
last week of 2004, digital track sales hit a record 6.7 million.

So, for record stores to keep up with the times -- Tower Records filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year, citing competition from the Internet
and big-box stores -- Petersen said merchants have to modernize their approach.

"Once you've loaded 10,000 songs onto your iPod, album art is pretty much out
the window," Petersen said.

Those sighs you hear are all the people who remember getting lost in the bizarre
beauty of Elton John's "Captain Fantastic" cover design. Or the "Sgt. Pepper"
shot.


regards,


Russ Blomstedt
http://blomstedt.ssr.be
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