So Are You Mourning the Death of the Compact Disc?

Compact discs, like cassettes and vinyls, are a thing of the past now. 

(Photo: iStock)

World Music Day spun by recently. Ironically, the next day followed the news of the replacement of Mumbai’s iconic Rhythm House by an upscale jewellery shop. Music won’t play there any more, despite widespread hopes that the 70-year-old music store would be revived – against all financiers – by its owners the Curmally family.

That’s that then. And although it’s quite uncool to lament the loss of Compact Discs (CDs), these are just not accessible any more for love or money. In fact, the outlet of a book store franchise on the city’s extra-busy Kemp’s Corner, tells the story of the death of the CD, succinctly.

A shelf of leftover CDs, mainly compilations of Bollywood hits, ghazals, mantras and vintage American-English pop and rock hits, has been shoved into a career. Slither your hips into a crevice, spend a dusty hour, and you might just find the swansong CD of the late Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker.

How did that happen? The sales attendant is non-plussed, shrugging, “We don’t stock CDs anymore. Outdated ho gaya.” A call to the seasoned music critic Parag Kamani draws the response,

After Rhythm House, you won’t find CDs anywhere except the old ones in the flea markets. Anyway, you can download stuff easily, you know.

Sure, I know. But for a traditionalist (read fuddy-duddy), pen drives, I-pods, hard disks with infinite stortage and most annoying of them all, headphones are not my scene. My ear-drums can’t take the bass overload. And I think I’m in good company here. After all, lately AR Rahman did state, without any form of an elegiac comment though, how music has moved from 78 and 45 rpm records to music cassettes, then CDs and now downloads.

If downloads and streaming are pretty similar, I haven’t figured the difference. For more solace about the extinct CD, I found kinship in the statement of one James Vincent who wrote on the American website The Verge last year.

His take was that his parents’ generation didn’t mind the pop and hiss of vinyl. But for him it was the clatter and clicks of the CDs and their cases which were thrilling.

“Maybe in 15 years’ time, we’ll be talking about the resurgence of compact discs in the same way we currently do of vinyl,” he added, “with people writing of their shining spiny-ness, to their unbreakable format and the joy of navigating 80-minute-or-so albums track by track.”

Compact discs, much in the manner of movies on laser discs, VCRs and DVDs, had to go. DVDs are still around though, but only at the few circulating libraries in the metros, which carry on with their decimated business.

On the music and movie pirated route – countless stalls continue the underhand trade especially outside railway stations and under the arches of Fort, the business district of south Mumbai. It’s downloads on pen-drives which they vend largely, besides the glut of dated leftovers (including porn-flicks) on fuzzy and often-unplayable disc formats.

In the event, what does a die-hard CD collector do? Few homes still retain their CD players as a component of their home entertainment systems. Advanced technology, however, have made them redundant.

It’s far more fashionable - or should I say logical? - to junk the five-year-old LED TV, invest in smart TV and eureka, Netflix and Amazon channels become the next best thing. Or of course, a gizmo can be attached to the antiquated five-year-old set and you can click to your choice of movies and music through the smartphone. Now what happens if the network provider or just bad connections, have made your smartphone a recalcitrant demon? Suffer in silence, or just re-re-watch-and-hear your favourites from your obsolete collection.

Netflix and chill.(Photo courtesy: Giphy)

Collectibles, aah, the album jackets of vinyl records – reproduced in a smaller format on CD cases – that’s another thing of the past.

Unlike vinyl records and vintage gramophones, there’s no romance attached to DVDs and video players. (Photo: Reuters)

No more surreal faces on In the Court of the Crimson King album, no Beatles making eye contact from their Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band and no more Ranbir Kapoor’s dishevelled mane from Rock Star. No more captivating designs, no more faces to associate with the music. These absences may sound trivial but for the hard-boiled collectors, it’s a void that can never be filled.

For the record, CD denotes digital optical disc data storage format which had been invented way back in the 1960s by James T Russell. Billy Joel’s album 52nd Street is lored to be the first CD released in Japan, followed by Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA to be released - where else but in the USA?

By 2010, the CD decline set in. “Why mourn the death of the CD?” is the title of scores of reports on the rapid changes in the music business. It’s far more progressive, it’s emphasised, to keep up with the changes and go with the era of Youtube, where the hits and likes are the popularity barometer.

An absolutely dot-on argument. However, what does a dated chump like me to keep up with the global rhythm? One answer is: junk the CDs, get those damn headphones.

The other is: just stick to the CD player till it survives and lend my ears to golden oldies ranging from Elvis Presley, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones to Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar. After all, new technology or old, no one quite compares to them.

(The writer is a film critic, filmmaker, theatre director and a weekend painter.)

(This admission season, The Quint got experts from CollegeDekho.com on board to answer all your college-related queries. Send us your questions at [e-mail])