The ramifications of the last chain music store’s closure
By Jerrison Oracion, Senior Columnist
With HMV bankrupt, there is no place to go to buy a large variety of CDs and films and shows on DVD and Blu-ray. It was already hard to get a CD, as a lot of people are getting music on iTunes and more content is available digitally than in physical media. Despite music becoming available only in digital form, some people still get music in various formats. CDs might eventually be the same as records are today.
In the past, a lot of people listened to music by getting CDs and having a CD collection. However, when the iTunes Store was opened, a lot of people began buying music in the store to use on their mp3 players and CDs started to disappear. I like both CD and digital, because the digital music listening experience is starting to get simpler. When you listen to a song on iTunes, you click the album and song that you’d like to listen to, and the song begins immediately. Compared to listening to an album in a CD player, you open the case of the CD, you put the CD in the CD player, you wait for the CD to load and then, finally, the album begins.
Listening to a CD is like preparing for a big event, but it has its positives. The quality of a song in digital may not sound as great from laptop speakers, though if you have great speakers or headphones, you will hear the song the way the musician wants you to hear it, depending on how it was mastered. The disadvantage of digital is that you do not get to see the beautiful artwork that is inside the case of the CD and the package. However, in some albums, they include a digital version of the booklet of the album so that you can learn more about the album.
Some people think that records are better than digital because they have a better sound. When I listened to Bob Marley’s best-of album Legend on record, it sounded great, and it seemed louder than in digital. Records are not obsolete as you can still get records in a record store, and there is even a National Record Store Day. The same thing might happen with CDs now. It might have to be renamed National Record and CD Store Day, if vintage CD stores ever open up, or if record stores start widening their stocks to include more of them.
In the past few weeks, I tried to get the soundtrack of La La Land on CD in HMV and it was sold out. Instead, I had to get the soundtrack of the film from Amazon and it cost more than at HMV, and since HMV is closing I’ll have to buy from Amazon. Surprisingly, I received it in two days, even though that I do not have Amazon Prime.
In the case of DVD and Blu-ray, you can still get them in many stores, including Best Buy. This is despite the fact that a lot of people are watching films and shows on streaming services like Netflix, Crave TV, and Amazon Prime Video. The disadvantage of streaming services is that they do not have special features allowing you to go beyond the film, so a lot of content is lost. If you wanted to get a film from The Criterion Collection, which would contain a lot of extra content, you can still get them in video stores like Vancouver’s Videomatica, or at The Criterion Collection’s website, especially during their flash sales.
While a lot of people are listening and watching content digitally, physical media will still be available to preserve content for future generations.
