compact-disc

There's a new 2012 doomsday prophecy out there. The world might survive the end of the Mayan calendar, but compact discs might not be so lucky.

A report from Side-Line cites a number of anonymous music industry insiders who confirmed to the music magazine that the major labels are planning to stop pressing new CDs by the end of next year, if not sooner.

The issue, the argument goes, is that CDs cost money to create, store, and distribute and shifting to all-digital distribution will free up more resources for marketing and other parts of the business.

There is one problem with the notion of killing the CD, however. Labels are still making money off of them. … Read more

It's hard enough to keep up with a digital music collection spanning thousands of tunes over gigabytes of disk space, but what do you do if you have LP records, cassette tapes, Edison wax cylinders, and other musical media? Duck Software's Album Tracker can help music lovers get a handle on their ever-expanding libraries. It's a highly customizable music database that lets you organize your music by genre as well as title, artist, and other typical categories. It's not a music or media player and doesn't try to reorganize or convert your library; it simply … Read more

PITMAN, N.J.--In this corner of the music universe, you won't find many limousines, groupies, or people lighting guitars on fire.

While the public often associates the music business with jet-setting rock stars and lavish living, this place is marked by minivans, Phillies and Eagles fans, and, very soon, people without work.

Pitman, which has 9,365 residents and is about 17 miles southeast of Philadelphia, is home to one of Sony's two remaining U.S.-based CD-manufacturing plants--until March 31. After that, the company will shutter the facility and 300 workers will be out of jobs. … Read more

Daylight-saving time really messes with the guys of The 404. Today, we realize how old we are when compacts discs are 30 years old. Obviously, teens prefer MP3s over CDs; audiophiles die a little. Another teen creates Muziic, a program that lets you build a music library from YouTube. And finally, Walgreens starts to sell sex toys.

With music, pictures and now your documents living online, it's not going to be long before your pr0n collection moves there. Justin feels pretty compelled to write guidelines on how to do this. As a matter of fact, he's become quite the expert on how to do it in your \System32\ folder on your Windows partitioned, disguised as a temporary cache.

Congratulations to Elizabeth for winning a copy of House of the Dead: Overlord for the Nintendo Wii. Right now, "The Nerdy Dirty" is leading our contest for a 404 motto, but we're waiting to see what our community comes up with the phrase "Not found." As always, call in at 1-866-404-CNET (2638). Or send us an e-mail at the404 [at] cnet [dot] com. We've got more giveaways coming up--I know, it sounds like we're bribing you, but you gotta do what you gotta do to get those listeners.

In the '90s, when the MP3 was new, it was difficult to predict the medium's effect on the music industry and our culture. Today, the results of the MP3 revolution are starting to show, and I sometimes wonder what we won.… Read more