CD的沒落與音樂的永恒

What Starbucks Is Ditching Along With CDs

CD的沒落與音樂的永恒

I CURRENTLY possess around six large moving boxes of compact discs tossed beneath a tarp in the dank cellar of my apartment building. Since 1999, I have been receiving promotional copies of CDs, an occupational hazard of my job as a professional music critic.

本人目前持有大概六箱CD，全都扔在潮濕的公寓樓地下室里，上面蓋著塊防水帆布。自1999年以來，我收到過很多推廣宣傳唱片——這是作為專業(yè)音樂評論人需要面對的一項職業(yè)危害。

I generally stopped purchasing CDs 11 years ago, on the occasion of my first, pink iPod, a first-generation Mini that revolutionized my ability to work virtually anywhere without the extra baggage of jewel cases and an unwieldy Discman.

我在11年前基本停止購買CD，當(dāng)時我得到了人生第一臺iPod，粉紅色的第一代Mini，我的生活被徹底改變，我可以隨心所欲地在任何地方工作，不用再扛著一堆塑料盒子和一臺笨重的Discman了。

Now, when record labels send physical copies of CDs rather than email digital files, it seems like an imposition — I know, a real first-world problem, but I live in Brooklyn. Who has space for all of this? A friend of mine, also a critic, used to live among towers of CDs, to the point they threatened to take over his entire apartment. I imagined the Fire Department one day having to break in and rescue him from a toppled pile, pinned under stacks of Maroon 5 promos, the worst way to die.

有些唱片公司喜歡送實體的CD拷貝，而不是通過電子郵件發(fā)數(shù)碼文件，這有點強人所難——我知道這屬于“第一世界困擾”，但我住布魯克林。哪來那么多地方擱這些?我有個同為樂評人的朋友，有段時間家里CD堆成山，幾乎占滿了整間公寓。我設(shè)想過有朝一日消防隊破門而入，營救被埋在CD下面的他，一疊疊的魔力紅(Maroon 5)推廣碟壓得他動彈不得——這絕對是世上最爛的死法。

The CD, never a much-loved object, is inching toward critical endangerment. At the end of this month, Starbucks plans to stop selling CDs from those comforting cardboard counter-display cases, where they were as convenient an impulse buy as mints and biscotti. The company’s decision does not come as a shock; what’s most surprising is that Starbucks continued to hawk CDs for this long.

從來就不太招人喜歡的CD唱片，正一步步走向物種滅絕。本月底，星巴克(Starbucks)收銀臺上那些賞心悅目的紙板貨架將不再出售CD，它們曾經(jīng)和薄荷糖、意大利脆餅一起，隨時準(zhǔn)備迎合顧客的消費沖動。星巴克的決定并不意外;真正讓人驚訝的是這家公司居然能賣唱片賣到今天。

According to Nielsen, sales of albums on CD decreased by 14.9 percent in 2014, compared with an overall increase in streaming. Even with an uptick in vinyl sales among purists (Nielsen tracked a vinyl sales increase of 51.8 percent), our music collections as tangible, tactile objects are well on their way out.

據(jù)尼爾森(Nielsen)的數(shù)據(jù)，CD專輯銷量在2015年下降了14.9%，相比之下，流媒體音樂銷量有整體提升。即便追求純粹的群體中出現(xiàn)了黑膠唱片銷量的上升(尼爾森監(jiān)測到的黑膠銷量漲幅達(dá)51.8%)，作為有形實體的音樂收藏還是在向消亡進發(fā)。

I’ve dragged my own CD boxes from apartment to apartment for more than a decade, certain that one day I will hire someone to convert them all to MP3, a task so banal and time-consuming the thought of it makes me want to bury myself under the stacks with my friend. I can tick off most of the music I have down there, some of which would probably do well as eBay loot — if I ever bothered to sell them. When I moonlight as a D.J., I no longer rely on crates of vinyl and CDs. I use my MP3 collection and an app on my iPad. Still, I can’t quite unclutter the CDs rotting in boxes in my basement. They’re more memories than objects, impossible to trash.

十多年來那幾箱CD跟著我搬了不知多少次家，我堅定地認(rèn)為，總有一天會雇個人把它們都轉(zhuǎn)成MP3。這件事太無聊，太浪費時間，想到要自己去做，我寧可跟朋友一起被唱片活埋。地下室里有些什么唱片我基本上都記得，其中有些在eBay上應(yīng)該還會挺搶手——如果我愿意花時間去賣的話。我在做兼職DJ時已經(jīng)不用黑膠和CD了。我會使用我的MP3收藏，還有一個iPad應(yīng)用。然而我還是沒辦法處理掉那些在地下室里發(fā)霉的CD。它們更多的是記憶，不是物品，不可能當(dāng)垃圾扔掉。

Starbucks has been selling CDs since the mid-1990s, but began a heavier push toward mass distribution a few years later, about the same time that I began swearing off them — a savvy business decision for the coffee company as well as the musicians it stocked. But the fact that its endeavor began around the rise of the iPod only sealed the CDs’ fate: Starbucks was simply prolonging the inevitable end, a caffeinated march to the whimpering finale for the medium.

星巴克在1990年代中期開始賣CD，但過了幾年才開始大規(guī)模分銷，差不多也就是我開始拋棄CD的時候——對這個咖啡公司和它相中的音樂人來說，這是個很好理解的商業(yè)決策。但這個計劃開始時，iPod正在興起，所以它反倒是宣告了CD的宿命：星巴克只是在延長一個不可逆轉(zhuǎn)的結(jié)局，這是一場注入了咖啡因的游行，它的終點，就是這種載體的傷感告別。

Still, there’s a sense of nostalgia to it. I miss the old Virgin Megastore in Union Square, which shut down in 2009, and the visceral experience of flipping through the stacks, discovering new albums through means so simple as their interesting cover art or, even better, via new-release listening stations equipped with a skip-track button and germy headphones. If the label sent you the record, spending the time opening all that packaging — ugh, the impossible-to-open sticky tape on jewel cases — was still an investment, like reading a book in the library.

然而這里面還有一些懷舊的成分。我想念2009年關(guān)門的聯(lián)合廣場維京唱片大賣場(Virgin Megastore)，還有在一排排的唱片中翻找、發(fā)現(xiàn)新專輯的真切體驗，挑選的方法可以簡單到只看封面有沒有意思，或者還有個法子更妙：去新唱片試聽臺，那里有一個跳到下一曲的按鈕，和一只細(xì)菌叢生的耳機。唱片公司送來的唱片，要把那么多盒子拆開也是相當(dāng)費時的——想起唱片盒上那些死活撕不下來的不干膠貼——就像去圖書館看書。

Now I discover most new music on Soundcloud and Tumblr, and while it’s infinitely more convenient insofar as it does not require me to physically part myself from my laptop, it doesn’t feel quite as adventuresome.

如今我多數(shù)時候通過Soundcloud和Tumblr發(fā)現(xiàn)新音樂，這樣做方便太多，我的身體都不需要離開手提電腦，但這個過程不像以前那樣有種冒險的感覺。

The CDs stacked on the display cases at Starbucks didn’t just signify that Starbucks was hip, but that the coffee chain was set on asserting itself as a player in the music industry. Coffeehouse rock as a genre was suddenly quite literal, and associated with such easy, chill, adult contemporary acts like Norah Jones, whose “Come Away With Me” at one point seemed impossible to avoid at a Starbucks. The category was folk, it was smooth jazz, it was even certain types of really cool music like salsa from the famed New York label Fania or a compilation album from Sonic Youth. In critics’ circles, “Starbucks music” became derisive shorthand for music with no edge, music to buy on a whim.

星巴克貨架上的CD并不只是為了彰顯星巴克的時髦，它還表明，這家連鎖咖啡館在聲明自己是音樂產(chǎn)業(yè)的一股力量。作為一種音樂風(fēng)格的咖啡館搖滾，突然變得真切起來，和諾拉·瓊斯(Norah Jones)這類輕松、清涼的成人當(dāng)代樂(adult contemporary)緊緊聯(lián)系在一起，有一段時間，只要去星巴克就免不了要聽到瓊斯的《遠(yuǎn)走高飛》(Come Away With Me)。涉及的類型有民謠，有smooth jazz，甚至有些相當(dāng)酷的音樂類型，比如著名紐約廠牌Fania的salsa，或是Sonic Youth的一張合輯。在樂評圈子里，“星巴克樂”被用來嘲弄那些不溫不火的音樂，都是供人一時興起消費的。

It seems likely that as CDs disappear from big-box stores and coffee megachains, they will be definitively gone. We’ll trade the clinical sound of a CD track for its compressed MP3 counterpart. And though to my ear the difference is negligible, music will sound ever so slightly worse.

隨著CD從量販超市和大型咖啡連鎖店中消失，看來它的離去已經(jīng)沒有懸念。我們愿意放棄CD唱片的精準(zhǔn)音質(zhì)，轉(zhuǎn)而使用經(jīng)過壓縮的MP3。雖然在我聽來，兩者的差別可以忽略不計，但音樂的聲音的確是稍微變差了一些。

For serious music fans, of course, there is no shortage of other tactile ways to show off a collection — and by doing so, send a message to the world not just of your taste but of what kind of person you are. Not only is vinyl on the upswing, but we’re even in the midst of a mini-renaissance of a formerly archaic music-storage medium: the cassette tape, which is newly in vogue among young underground punk purists and D.I.Y. record labels.

當(dāng)然，對正經(jīng)樂迷來說，用可觸摸的方式炫耀自己的音樂收藏不是什么難事——通過這樣的炫耀，你不但能告知全世界你有怎樣的音樂品位，還能展現(xiàn)你是怎樣的一個人。眼下我們經(jīng)歷的不只是黑膠唱片的風(fēng)潮再起，而是一場小型的老式音樂存儲載體復(fù)興運動：其中包括最近在地下朋克純粹主義者和個人廠牌中很時興的磁帶。

In the ’90s, I had three or four plastic milk crates of cassettes that I lugged around from apartment to apartment, long after I lost my tape player. I still have a few I can’t part with. Even with the notion of entirely digitizing our music libraries, having something we can hold in our hands is, simply, a more complete visceral experience. It transforms the music into a material good, not simply an abstraction.

在九十年代，我有三四個裝滿磁帶的塑料牛奶箱跟著我四處搬家，盡管我的錄音機早就沒有了。其中有一些至今無法割舍。即便我們把整個音樂庫全部數(shù)碼化，能有個東西拿在手上，總歸是一種更真切的體驗。它把音樂轉(zhuǎn)化成了物質(zhì)商品，而不再只是一種抽象存在。