whataver happened to minidisc?

I was cleaning out some old boxes the other day, and ran across some minidisc masters. As a musician, minidisc was an awesome and affordable solution for making digital recordings. The format was great, too. You had this small disc that fit into the palm of your hand (like in sci-fi movies like "Johnny Mnemonic") but with a protective case so that it doesn't get scratched. The recorder/player was available to consumers at a decent price (about $250) from a brand you could trust (Sony). There were some complaints about the compression applied to the disc, but it never bothered me. Certainly not as much as some of the effects of MP3 compression today.

I used my minidisc recorder for several years until the loading mechanism quit working. It was beyond warranty and I scrapped it. Since then, I forgot about the minidisc. Technically, it sounds about as good as CD, and with the protective and editing features (you could name/rename tracks and rearrange them from the front panel - no PC required), one could even say that it is superior to compact discs. But it never took off. The CD came out just before the minidisc, and as is often the case with competing technologies, the first horse out of the gate got the bets. I'd like to pick up another minidisc player one day, just to transfer these old masters onto my computer. Unfortunately, I have been searching and most of the players are quite expensive. In addition, I'll have to run it through some digital converters to get it onto my PC because the consumer players no longer allow you to transfer the file directly to your PC. You can blame that on those RIAA jerks and their copyright protection antics. (I guess I am not *allowed* to copy songs that I wrote and produced, eh?)

Meanwhile, the MP3 player continues to extend its foothold on the consumers of the world. Fascinating new devices like the iPhone are including MP3 players, and nearly all CD and DVD players (both home and auto) can read and play them. I read recently that there is a new format for the minidisc that allows it to hold 1Gb of data on one disc. That's amazing, considering how much smaller it is than a DVD. Do you think it is making a dent in MP3 player sales, though? Doubtful. I believe that if we retain any kind of physical storage medium, a new generation of the minidisc is the direction we are heading in - smaller with more capacity. Eventually, we'll have mini DVDs that will hold the same amount of data as the current DVD. Either that, or the quality of movies and audio will continue to increase, thereby requiring more data capacity, and any capacity-per-size optimization will be negated. I thought that the music industry might turn to tiny memory cards at one point (like you use in a digital camera), but they are so volatile and easy to corrupt that I'm glad they haven't.

I also read a recent article lately that stated that vinyl sales were up 13% in the UK, particularly 7 inch singles. Talk about unexpected. In this land of "Have Everything, Own Nothing" (Napster's advertised motto), it is refreshing that there are still some true music "collectors" out there. Let's hope that they still have some sort of media to hold in their hands in ten years.