Why Did the CD Die but the Book Lived?
Ruminations on the lifespan of physical media
As I’ve mentioned over the last month, I have a book due out this fall. Because of that, a bunch of my friends have been filling in over the last couple of weeks to bide me some time to finish up writing. I’m not totally done yet. But I’ve got enough breathing room to write to you today about a topic that feels quite appropriate. Why do people still buy physical books even though they don’t buy physical music (i.e., vinyl, cassette, CD)?
Why Did the CD Die but the Book Lived?
By Chris Dalla Riva
Whenever you tell people that physical media is dead in the music industry, they often point to vinyl as the counterexample. Headlines suggest that they probably have a point:
New York Times: “Vinyl Is Selling So Well That It’s Getting Hard to Sell Vinyl”
Wall Street Journal: “Inside One Record Store Riding the Vinyl-Revival Wave”
New York Post: “Vinyl records have taken over — and growing more popular than streaming”
Vinyl has undoubtedly seen a resurgence in the last decade. And I am part of that resurgence. Along with the fact that I frequent my local record store, I own close to 100 vinyl albums and 50 vinyl singles. Nevertheless, the vinyl resurgence is quite small in terms of aggregate industry revenues. In 2023, vinyl albums represented 7.9% of revenues in the United States. Streaming, by contrast, represented 78.1%.
Compare the physical music market to the physical book market. Book data isn’t as accessible as music data, but every source indicates that printed books not only continue to generate more revenue than e-books and audiobooks but that the print market has been relatively stable for the last few decades. The publishing industry’s problem during the 2000s wasn’t that readers were opting for digital options. It was that companies like Amazon were leagues ahead of them in building out online sales infrastructure.
I found this shocking. Yes, I’m an avid print book reader, but if every form of media from music to movies has gone digital, why not books? I decided to ask my readers what they thought. Here is what they put forth.
Physical books have been around for a much longer period of time than any physical music media
There’s a theory often called the “Lindy Effect,” which purports that things that have been around for a long time are more likely to continue to be around for a long time than things that are new. The Catholic Church, for example, has been around for thousands of years. Given that fact, it’s likely to outlast any religion founded in the last decade.
Books, too, have been around for a very long time. In fact, books predate the Catholic Church. Recorded music is an infant compared to the book. In fact, what we recognize as the music industry hasn’t been around for much longer than a century. The lifespan of various types of physical media — from the CD to the cassette — were even shorter than that. It’s much easier to kill something off if your parents remember a time before it.
Reading a book on a tablet or a phone is a bad experience but digital listening is a good experience
While I don’t find this reason particularly compelling, I know that many people would agree with it. Digital devices can be cumbersome and confusing. Why deal with that headache when the old way works just as well?
Books don’t require another device but music does
If I were to get you a book for Christmas, you can crack it open and start enjoying it immediately. That’s not the same with music. If I give you a CD, you need a CD player to listen to it. If I give you a cassette, you need a cassette player. The same idea applies to all forms of physical music media. Because of this, it wasn’t much of a leap for listeners to want music in a way that didn’t require another device. Books don’t have this problem.
You hold a book while you experience it, which isn’t the case with any form of music
Related to the last point, when I sit down to enjoy a book, I have to have the book in my hand. Again, this isn’t the case with music. Sure, you can hold the CD jewel box, but the music itself is ephemeral. This made it much easier to convince people to switch formats over the decades.
Books are more aesthetically pleasing to look at than physical music
Given that I’m writing this in front of my bookshelf, I understand this feeling. It’s the same reason why I love to own vinyl. That said, I don’t think it is the most compelling reason that physical books have survived for so long.
Because books take longer to consume, the economics are very different than music
In an hour, you can listen to a lot of music. That’s not the case for a book. In an hour, you can read a couple of chapters. Because of that, a digital, all-you-can-eat, Spotify-esque model doesn’t make as much sense for books.
“More broadly, CDs and DVDs were platforms to deliver digital information. Turns out the platform as a physical object was optional.”
This last point is the reason that I find most compelling. It’s in quotes because it was suggested to me by
. And I think he hits the nail on the head. The advantage of the CD was that (a) it was portable, (b) it was high fidelity, and (c) it was a great way to distribute digital information. That last point is vital in the computer age.But if the CD is really just trying to a way to encode and decode digital information, then an even better solution is to have no physical medium at all. Just grab that digital file from whatever computer server it is sitting on and start listening.
A New One
"Last Drum" by Kes & Tano
Soca - 2024
I was working on a project at work, and I asked our curators to send me five songs in distinct subgenres, along with the name of the subgenre. This song came from our curator focused on music of the Caribbean. She told me that it was “soca.” And I believe her. But while the joy of this song was washing over me, I was reminded how flexible our ideas of genre are.
This song sounded like stomping-and-clapping indie rock track that I would have listened to while I was in high school in the 2010s. Whatever way you choose to categorize “Last Drum,” I think you will enjoy it.
An Old Song
"Native New Yorker" by Odyssey
1977 - Disco
Last week, I was working on a very tedious analysis for the last chapter of my book. This analysis had me trawling through thousands of song titles. Whenever I end up doing a task like this, I’ll usually play some of the songs that are unfamiliar to me. Odyssey’s “Native New Yorker,” a song from the height of the disco era originally done by Frankie Valli, was one of those songs. And when that groove kicks in it even makes a proud New Jerseyan like me wish I was native to the other side of the Hudson River.
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Another reason I prefer printed books is that I can underline, make notes in the margin, dog ear pages, etc. You might perhaps be surprised to know how many of my books I have basically ruined because I make so many notes and underlying so many things, often times I use highlighters too. (I know, I’m crazy.)
but the fact is I take reading very seriously, I’m almost always studying whatever the subject matter is and all this makes it infinitely easier for me to find the important parts of a book i’m interested in and especially if that book is perhaps 400 pages long and I’m looking for something specific. I do this all the time. All. The. time.
My wife reminds me that you can do this on a Kindle as well, but I frankly I can’t stand those things. I can’t make notes and comments as readily as with the printed version, I have to use whatever options they provide and they always come up short. I realize people love kindles, but I can’t really stand them.
I love libraries, but can’t utilize them fully because I would wind up fucking up their books. And like music, I tend to want to own it, especially if it’s something I really like.
Your graph definitely highlights one aspect of it, the financial one. Initially, record labels touted the digital format of CDs as superior to vinyl and encouraged consumers to re-purchase albums they already had on vinyl on the newer CD format to boost revenue. As CDs became more popular and their limitations became more obvious (digital vs analog compression, scratches, etc.) they eventually lost out to the newer, cheaper technological advancement, digital purchase/piracy. I do think the Lindy Effect is a pretty solid argument for arguing Books over CDs but the initial premise is a bit unfair if you were to remove the medium and focus on just the ephemeral, intellectual property... music as an innovation has been around a lot longer than the written word. Thankfully, I don't think either of them or going away anytime soon.