I think that the world was better when music was all contained on cds. Let me explain why:
1. cds sound better. No question. CD's sound better than MP3's. Beyond that though, like I've found that cds played through my discman sound better than like lossless files sound through my ipod, due to the differences in the DAC.
1) Encode an MP3 at 320kpbs, high quality mode. The difference would be quite minimal.
2) If you're using a lossless compression scheme, the output will, by definition, be identical to the input. Therefore, as you said, the only difference would result from the hardware that drives the speakers, which is completely independent of the CD versus the file format.
2. While listening to the cd, you can look through the little booklet, and that contributes to the music listening experience.
Assuming the little booklet includes pictures, lyrics, or anything of value. And it's also one more physical piece of media to either keep track of, or lose. (That's my bias - I much prefer electronic formats to physical media.)
3. With CD's, you have like a rube-goldberg-like contraption spinning a disc and giving you music. It's physical.
Which is precisely why I prefer having some other format - so I don't have to have a sophisticated digital record player.
4. CD's are actually more convenient than MP3 players. MP3 players require you to constantly manage your collection and play musical chairs, deciding which songs to delete off of it to make room for something else. CD's, you just grab one album and listen to it in your car or something.
So keep less than 74 minutes of music on your MP3 player. Or put it into folders by album.
As for society,
1. CD's provided more jobs and money for creative people than today's piracy-rife digital age. You have people employed as studio techs, the musicians obviously, the people working in record stores and the people working in warehouses, and then there are more people in marketing directing music videos and placing glossy ads.
And the transition away from horses for transportation put a lot of domestic blacksmiths out of business. Markets change. It happens.
2. the creative industries offered the possibility IMO of endless employment. Like, every industry, tends to get so efficient that no one is needed anymore. Like, the first microwaves probably required a lot of highly paid people to design and manufacture them, but as time has gone on and the processes have improved, they need less and less people. Because creative industries don't have an "endpoint" like most of technology, it can be a source of endless growth and jobs. I'm willing to bet that if digital technology hadn't decimated the creative industries, unemployment in the USA would be like 1-2% lower.
There's still a limit to how much artistic content a population can consume, so "endless employment" or "endless growth" aren't accurate. And beside that, music tastes change. How many Big Band style musical numbers are on the Top 100 charts these days?
Efficiency: Ok, so the market's getting more efficient. Even CDs made it efficient. You don't need to have the band standing in front of you performing. They did their performance at a bunch of equipment, which was then used to make CDs, which were used to entertain thousands or millions of people. So even CDs represent an immense improvement in the efficiency of distributing entertainment.
Then there's the simple fact that, in most industries, improvements in efficiency lead to an improvement for society: Improvements in the standard of living.
3. Creative industries are also overwhelmingly domestic, while nowadays, most of the profit (and tax revenue) is being captured by tech giants and asian electronics manufacturers.
And if large organizations in that industry were able to find any way of offshoring their profits to avoid taxes, they would do it in an instant.
So yeah, there it is. Another thing is that I don't quite get why people get so huffy about their "fair use" rights. Seriously. Is it really a big deal if you have 2-3 copies of the same work of art?
Many people don't feel that they should need to pay for each device they want to listen with - in the car, at the computer, while out jogging...a
person purchased the music, not the device. Let the
person, the paying customer, listen to it wherever they want to.
And just on the subject of piracy: CDs were incredibly easy to rip. That it was a physical medium is merely a minor inconvenience to pirates. Then with the invention of CD burners, creating copies of the physical media became simple as well.
1. music stores: they also provide community (how many people have you met while shopping on itunes?). Amazon would be a problem, but reduced rate isn't near as big a problem as absolutely free.
The same number I've met while shopping for CDs.
3. Domestic production is creative technical work. As someone who is on a technology site, I'd think you'd appreciate a lot of the craftsmanship that audio engineers do.
And you've got more domestic artists now who are directly distributing their content over the Internet. If they had to go to the trouble of pressing CDs, or distributing cheap CD-R copies, they probably wouldn't do that at all.
You seriously think reading some dry wikipedia entry is better than looking at an album booklet?
A Wikipedia entry need not be "dry." And it can also contain a
lot more information than a booklet - or it can even contain links to the musician's site.
I was with you until this point. CDs are ungood for the car. Prior to long trips you have to agonize for days trying to decide which to bring and which to leave behind. With a <insert flavor of your choosing here> player you can take your entire music collection with you. I agree with your points on sound quality but to steal a Steven Wright quote "I drive way too fast to worry about sound quality". Add the risk of warping your CDs in the Summer heat and CDs are best left at home.
And the early/cheap car CD players had very little buffer memory, so each bump would result in a skip. If you've ever driven on a highway in Pennsylvania, the bumps would often prevent the CD player from even being able to get going again properly, and it would just get switched off. It wasn't until they started putting much larger memory buffers in there that they were really usable. (Early ones would boast perhaps 3 seconds of buffer memory. It quickly progressed to >60 seconds, as memory got cheaper.)
So one form or another may not necessarily be
inherently better. A CD is just one way of storing digital data, as is a hard drive, or flash memory. If you like physical media, ok, do that. Some people still like newspapers, books, and magazines because they like the feel of paper and turning pages. I prefer electronic formats because they take up much less physical space (less clutter), and are easier to organize and search.