How CDs Have Improved Music Listening

Compact Discs have a deservedly bad rap -- their sound is often shrill and edgy resulting in listener fatigue (though this has improved over the years), their costs were high and never came down, the plastic cases take up a lot of space and aren't "green," their size limits what can be done with cover art and makes lyrics unreadable, and in some ways -- especially for people who grew up listening to LPs -- make it less likely people will actually listen to the music because it's easy to put on a CD and forget about it -- something you can't do with a vinyl record.

But there's one area CDs deserve some credit, and that is the broad variety of music that suddenly became available once this technology became the accepted mode of music transfer.

Prior to CDs, finding back-catalog records required perseverance, persistance, and a little luck. Record companies didn't release back-catalog LPs, obscure records (such as blues records) that were printed in small runs to begin with were almost impossible to find, and many, many low-selling artists (a perfect example is Judee Sill, left) were simply not available. The only place to find such rarities was to scrounge used-record stores (not that that's a bad way to spend your day) and to visit garage sales hoping to stumble across someone's collection.

But once record companies realized they could make real money by selling music they've owned for years (and so wouldn't have to spend money to create and produce) they began reissuing not just older records but entire catalogs on CD. Music that had previously been available only through used-record bins or on "greatest hits" collections suddenly became available in the original LP format -- so you could hear more than just the hits -- and there was no risk of the scratches, skips, hisses, and pops that are the bane of the used-LP buyer. Perhaps even more important, because of the CDs extended length (LPs typically ran about 18 minutes per side while CDs are more than triple that) record companies began including additional music in the form of alternate takes or "live" performances as bonus tracks. So not only could listeners find music that had been released but was no longer available, they coud hear music that had not been released, including an opportunity to hear music as it was being developed by the artist.

This first had an impact in the jazz field where Blue Note, Capital, and Mosaic Records (the best archivist label in the business) began making available LP after LP on CD (though Mosaic offers both LP and CD for those who want the LP "sound"). Eventually rock and popular music picked up on the opportunities available and soon we had career-spanning box sets complete with song demos, works in progress, alternative cuts, and "live" tracks. True, there were box sets before the CD, but the extent of the box set content only became available once CDs hit the market. A typical 5-CD box would require eight or more LPs, so cost and convenience played a role.

In some ways the advent of the CD has diminished the enthusiast's search for "Holy Grail" records (I still recall the excitement of finally stumbling across Robert Nitehawk's Black Angel Blues in a used-record bin and then years later finding his Live On Maxwell Street record -- both of which I'd been searching for for years) by making the search to easy; there's value in the persistence. But that's a small price to pay for the huge variety of music that's now readily available. And besides, the Internet came along and had an impact magnitudes greater than CDs...but that's another column.