If you were to look down the aisles of the local consumer
electronics shop these days you would notice that there are
a number of MP3 players that are seemingly poised to
overtake the age old CD player in the consumer electronics
market. Yes, it would definitely seem that after close to
two decades of dominance the CD player is fading away and
the MP3 player is replacing it. In order to understand why
this is so, one needs to look at the differences between CD
players and MP3 players as well as their own historical
evolution in the marketplace.
A CD Player is a device that plays Compact Disks which are
audio disks that contain a finite amount of information
digitally recorded onto them. Although compact disks had
been around since the mid-1980's they did not start to
really take off in sales until the early 1990's and their
effect on the consumer electronics world was nothing short
of staggering. When compact discs came along it was not
only the end of the record album but it was also the end of
cassette tape as well. While a great deal of the reason for
this was due to the fact that CDS possessed significantly
better sound quality thanks to their digital recording
(Albums cassettes and 8-Track tapes were recording on the
old analogue systems and were loaded with "hiss") one could
never dismiss the portability of the CD. You could listen
to a CD on your car's CD player. You could listen to a CD
on your Sony Walkman. You basically had a number of
portability options that a record album could not provide.
Now, a cassette tape could provide these but the sound
quality was lacking. As such, CD players greatly overtook
cassettes in the marketplace.
In time, there came the notion that it was not necessary to
record digital data onto a disk but rather encode the data
into a file that could be compressed into a player's
memory. This is, in essence, what an MP3 player is. The
"true" name of an MP3 player is a "digital audio player"
and its primary purpose is to play audio files...not disks.
In fact, some MP3 players can also play video files which
CD players can not. Audio files can be stored either
directly on the hard drive memory of the MP3 player or they
can be stored on a removable flash card that is only a mere
fraction of the size of a compact disk. This is clearly the
biggest difference between MP3 players and CD players.
This connects to the main benefit to an MP3 player over a
CD player: convenience. This is rooted in the fact that you
download MP3 files onto the player as opposed to inserting
a CD. This is a TREMENDOUS benefit because you can store
upwards of 500 songs on an MP3 player's memory and tuck the
player in your pocket. (Because there is no need to house a
compact disk or cassette tape portable MP3 players are
significantly smaller than CD players) If you were to try
and carry 500 songs around with you on a CD player you
would need to figure out a way to conceal 50 compact disks
on your person. Ok, sure, you could carry them around in a
back pack too but that is no bargain!
So, much like what the CD player did to record albums and
audio cassettes many years ago it would seem that the MP3
player is poised to overtake the CD player in the consumer
market. No, CD players will not disappear overnight but
they will eventually give way to the progress represented
by MP3 Players. That is just the way the wheels of consumer
electronics progress spin.
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Richard Adams is the founder of some of the most popular
mp3 information sites online. His latest venture is
http://www.discountmp3playerszone.co.uk
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