bad news for cd - an email from hong kong

The audiophile music market has been slowly shrinking here for the last 10 years or so.

But since the outbreak of the financial tsunami, the market suddenly worsened at a much accelerated pace. Now the economy is getting better but CD sales doesn't pick up at all. People are talking about digital download will replace CD. But the problem is when you sell one download, the paid download copy will be freely distributed to friends and then friends of friends of the one who actually pays.

Who will bother to fill in his or her name and credit card no. to download when his or her friend can share a free copy which is exactly the same as any paid download one? Some audiophile labels are starting to sell 24 bit 96k wave files via the net. I believe they are in fact killing themselves. The 24 bit 96k wave file are of course better sounding thanh the commercial CD. But how can they recoup the money they spend in a brand new production? Of course there is no question of recouping the investment if it is old master. But sooner or later, download sales of old master will exhaust. If these labels invest in new recordings, they will not be able to recoup.

So much for the bad news, a few days ago, I received a test pressing of the HQCD version of Susan Wong's first CD and it sounds really beautiful, much much better than the normal CD or XRCD. I hope HQCD might bring some excitement to the CD market.

Keith Yip, Rock In Music