By Leanna Pankratz (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: January 11, 2012
It’s a sad time to be a music fan – at least one that still consumes something as apparently outdated as CDs. On a recent visit to the doomed Robson Street HMV, I was seeing a lot more yellow and red that I’m comfortable with. The store, due to close in late January, boasted sale prices of up to 50 percent off – advertised by individuals like a young man standing outside with a sign telling the world his employer was closing down. At least he seemed to handle his job with aplomb. “Big sales!” he urged passers-by. You hear that, Vancouver? Everything. Must. Go.
I suppose it was inevitable. It’s just hard to swallow the finality of such a circumstance. No more teetering on the edge of worry over the future of our friend the compact disc. No, this is the cold hard truth. Call in for the last rites. The CD is officially dying and I for one am beginning to feel the grieving process setting in.
Sixty employees—my new buddy Sign Guy included—will be affected by the shut down, as well as countless Vancouverites who avoided the switch to mp3 that relied on the 50,000 square foot giant for their film and music needs. On a slightly more local scale, I myself will also be affected by this change, as well as numerous acquaintances and friends who I know are just not quite ready to say goodbye yet. Was it really necessary, HMV, to add yet another blow to my ever decreasing sense of familiarity and to the raging nostalgic inside?
The factors playing into the shutdown involve overall CD sales and that ever-present dilemma of rent in Vancouver. It’s simply too expensive to keep the store running at such high prices – worsened by the fact that consumers are just not buying CDs anymore. “It’s regretful, really,” states president of HMV Canada Nick Williams in an interview with The Vancouver Sun. “The last thing that we want to do is leave Vancouver’s downtown… but a store of that magnitude unfortunately does not fit into our long-term real estate strategy.” Even prestigious companies like Britain’s Royal Warranted Linn Products (a company that manufactures CD players) is to halt production on music players due to the decline of the disc and the rise of digital media – a quick and convenient threat to a “clunkier” model that also poses a significantly higher price tag.
The death of the CD, it seems, is yet another casualty of our increasingly swift dash towards Tomorrowland, and I admit I am not surprised by its demise. A recent poll cited in The Vancouver Sun states that 30 per cent of Canadian music consumers prefer to shop for their tunes online.
It’s too bad that the CD is being subjected to such a slow, painful death.
Maybe it’s the golden age idealist in me, but I’m feeling slightly more than melancholic at the fact that such an integral object of my childhood, is gradually being cycled out into a kind of corporate oblivion. Is this how previous generations felt when vinyl went out of style? I suppose it’s only a matter of time before the hipsters of the future adopt the CD as an ironically quirky expression of cultural savvy. As cute as it is to be retro, I truly am going to miss the days of earnest CD revelry. We 90s kids are unique in that we caught the tail end of the analog era – a lifestyle ingrained into our early childhood memories, only to be snuffed out by the heavy feet of an earth lumbering towards a mechanical age. It’s only a CD, I know, but its discontinuation signifies the death of one more facet of my fleeting youth, and arguably, one last tie to a non-digital world. Consider this an obituary to the Compact Disc. May my little friend rest in peace.
