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In Reply to: Am I the only one who thinks cd is fading fast? posted by nightdoggy on March 18, 2007 at 18:23:47:
The cd is definitely fading fast because it holds no interest for the young. Recently I went to 15th anniversary party for the Louisiana Music Factory, a cd and record store in New Orleans that specializes in local music (but now that Virgin and rap specialists Odyssey never reopened after Katrina and Tower went bankrupt, they are the only music store in Downtown New Orleans.) The place was jammed, there was live music and beer, but there was no one under 35 to be seen. The young kids I know almost never buy cds--they'll down load what they want to hear or burn stuff for each other. The cd is like the cassette was 20 years ago; a conveniance but not a destination.As a very small time producer of creative jazz cds, I know how hard it is to sell cds. They are good vehicles for selling something at a gig, but as fewer customers will frequent brick and morter stores, all the action is either in digital transmission for the pop market or in vinyl for the very scecialized market. For me, the cd is a necessary evil, and it's demise reminds me I have to explore releasing sessions on vinyl . . .
Follow Ups:
Not only is youth disinterested in CDs. Notwithstanding MP3 players & music downloads, the trend is toward a general loss of interest in music from the teen years on. In young lives music is just background now, eclipsed by a cacaphony of AIM, text messaging, and network chatter at every level. Two dozen teen guests at my daughter's recent 16th birthday were invited to bring music. None did (no gifts either!). I turned on my big stereo and spun one of my daughter's CDs. A few songs later they just turned it off so they could talk, talk, talk. A few years back the odd teenager would show a little curiousity about the big speakers or the tube amps. No more. It's all over now, baby blue.
I think this is a real trend. I'd add the "attraction" of video/computer gaming, which seems to be followed with as much zeal as we had for music. Mainstream American kids under 30 have had very little exposure to either accoustically generated music in a real space/time or of analog recordings thereof. Most of what they have heard has been digitally synthesized and computer generated. But there is always a reaction to the mainstream trends. I have noticed in the last few years a real folk music revival on the streets of New Orleans. Where the previous generation of with-it youth were all about computer and electronic music, now I see all kinds of neo-hippies playing guitars, violins, accordians, trumpets, clarinets, and washtub basses. Part of this is a response to the ongoing New Orleans brass band tradition, but I also see it as an exploration of the limitations of the computer generated hyperworld. Is this the beginning of a new counter culture in which being off the grid and self-sufficient is the highetst goal?
A couple recent cultural reference points underline the trends you've identified.I enjoyed that in his wonderful film "Fast Food Nation," the director Richard Linklater spent some quality time with a small group of green-minded, counter-culture teens who present a ray of hope amidst the monolithic grid of rapacious capitalism symbolized by industrial-scale production of shit-in-the-meat that we eat as a society.
At the other extreme, its no secret that while teen girls represent a large movie-going audience, teen boys don't go to the movies nearly as much anymore, preferring instead their gamestations.
Thrilled by HBO's "Rome," I mistakenly visited the pitiful movie "300" & found the perfect movie for a huge audience of video game-wetted adolescent & post-adolescent boys. I kid you not, this film is scripted, photographed, and sound-tracked like one continuous hyperviolent video game. This is the style of filmmaking that Hollywood needs to pry the young male audience away from its gaming console, while spoon-feeding them with enough nonsense about the glory of combat & male comraderie to stimulate army recruitment for the surge in Iraq. The kill scenes are accompanied by a thrash-rock soundtrack to get all that blood pumping. The audience was a bizarre mix of wildly cheering youths and puzzled history buffs like myself, who probably wished they had stayed home to watch Masterpiece Theater.
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