Where have all the CDs gone?

Sophomore CJ Carlson sits with his laptop on his legs as a guitar riff plays loudly from its speakers. The notes and vocals combine to form a work of art, but he didn’t pay for it.

Music has evolved over the years not only in style, but in format. From records to MP3 files, tunes have become more accessible to everyone, but that’s not always a good thing. So, where have all the CDs gone?

Carlson said he has always downloaded his music illegally on the Internet and has never even purchased a disc, except blank ones to burn music onto.

“My friends were computer nerds, so I got a lot of stuff for free, and still do,” he said.

University of South Dakota Music Professor David Moskowitz said the music industry has been slowly spiraling downward since the ‘80s.

“For awhile, the sellable unit was one song,” Moskowitz said. “Now I feel the unit is smaller than that; it’s a ringtone. It’s changed the way music is marketed, because it’s not a matter of if you can write a catchy song, its a matter of if you can write a four second catchy song bite.”

A recent example of this is Bruno Mars’ song “Locked Out of Heaven.” When listened to closely, it becomes apparent the song is comprised of bits of catchy pieces that are seemingly unrelated, so a person doesn’t have to even like the whole song, but rather, just the chorus or just the hook.

“I’m not a fan of Bruno Mars, but that song is mad catchy,” Moskowitz said.

There are some students at USD who still value holding a physical copy of a song and prefer longer, more themed pieces, like The Beatles’ Sargent Pepper’s album.

First-year Shane VanVeldhuizen only owned CDs until his large collection was recently stolen.

“When I was younger I started building up a collection because I liked having them,” he said. “I know it was impractical, but I never wanted to deal with having an iPod.”

He said owning the CDs was important because he liked listening to the album as a whole, instead of just downloading one song at a time.

“I think you get a lot more out of it if you listen to a whole album,” VanVeldhuizen said.

But most people currently use electronic devices to listen to their music in the form of MP3 files. Students all over the USD campus can be seen walking around with headphones in their ears, and it is impossible to know whether they paid for the music or not.

Carlson said he’ll never pay for downloads.

“I will steal it regardless,” he said. “It’s free stuff. It’s too hard to track and everybody does it.”

Moskowitz said the music industry had a chance back in the ‘80s or ‘90s to jump on this ship and missed their chance.

“The musical landscape and the customer base changed and the industry didn’t change with it,” Moskowitz said.

Instead, the industry opted to start suing their customer base, creating tension with the people who were supposed to be spending money on their product.

And they were fixing the prices, too.

“People regardless of their economic status would be much less likely to illegally share music if music wasn’t so expensive already,” Moskowitz said.

When the cost of CDs neared $20, there was a class action lawsuit filed against five major label companies and three of the United States’ largest music retailers accusing them of fixing the prices of CDs.

USA Today reported the music industry lost the suit and was issued a fine, but they were never forced to lower the prices they had fixed.

“In their failure to lower the price, they created an adversarial relationship with their customer base,” Moskowitz said.

This angered many artists as well.

The band Radiohead released their music through their own website and let the customer choose the price while System of a Down printed “Steal this record” on their CDs.

“It really put a lot of people on edge with the record industry, even me. I was like ‘Wow, that’s not a way to treat your customer base,” Moskowitz said.

VanVeldhuizen said he has recently started illegally downloading music, but still prefers owning a CD.

“There are a lot of artists who make a lot of songs to be listened to separately, but there are artists who want their music listened to on the full disc,” he said.

One such band he cited is TV on the Radio, a group who releases albums that sound very different from each other.

“It’s cool to download stuff for free, but if I really enjoy an artist I’ll buy their CD because it’s a way to support them,” VanVeldhuizen said.

First-year Reid Kiner owns about 80 CDs and has about 1,400 songs on his iPod, some of which he bought and some of which he illegally downloaded.

“I feel like if you really like an artist you might as well go out and buy their CD just to support them,” he said. “But if you just want to hear some new music you should just download it. You shouldn’t have to pay for something if you’re going to be disappointed.”

He said he wasn’t worried about getting caught downloading illegally and had no qualms about it either, especially when so many musicians live lavishly.

“They make enough money,” he said.

Carlson wasn’t worried about getting caught either.

“One time my cable company warned me to stop illegally downloading stuff,” he said. “I didn’t stop because they never said anything again. I just don’t want to pay for it.”

Moskowitz said that when music sales became primarily data files, people lost the sense that there was a victim to their crime of stealing music.

“As soon as you lose the physical, people don’t see it as stealing,” he said. “We live in a post-Napster world. There’s going to have to be a culture shift.”