Why the CD is alive and well

The compact disc's days, we are constantly being told, are numbered. Nobody wants them now, apparently, not in these days when you can download music straight to your iPod. Some point to the download-only success of a few hits as the thin end of a wedge that will eventually result in the complete disappearance of the shop-based sector of the entertainment industry. After all, who wants to spend days browsing through dusty racks of CDs - and even more antiquarian, old vinyl albums - only to be faced with the problem of giving them a home? And, anyway, hasn't everyone always hated compact discs, with their nasty, compressed sound and their horrid perspex cases with the little lugs that snap off so easily, and their eyestrain-inducing tiny typefaces? No, nobody wants CDs these days.

In which case, I wish someone would tell that to the 75 acts whose labels have sent me their albums to consider for review this week. What can they be thinking? All that effort, all that artistry, all those hopes and dreams, wrapped up in something which, so we're told, nobody wants. Why don't they just get with the project, sort themselves out a MySpace site, and wait for the world to come to them?

Well, because, like most of us, when push comes to shove, they realise that most people actually quite like CDs - and vinyl, come to that. They enjoy browsing in shops, poring over cover artwork, and deflowering the shrink-wrap cellophane. They enjoy, in short, the thrill of ownership in its concrete sense, rather than the more abstract notion of ownership associated with the digital realm. This is because you never really "own" a downloaded piece of music; it's just some sounds marked by a few letters in an iTunes library listing: not the same thing at all.

So who are they, these 75 hopeful performers currently vying for punters' attentions? Well, besides the six CDs I ended up reviewing, there are several solo outings from former band-members going it alone, such as Charlotte Hatherley, guitarist with Ash, Tracey Thorn and Euros Childs; a veritable sorority of solo female singer-songwriters headed by Mary Chapin Carpenter, and an equivalent frat-houseful of sensitive young fellows bearing acoustic guitars; a sprinkling of rappers, the best being the home-grown talent Klashnekoff; bleeping electronica from Pole, Amon Tobin and Electroconductor, none of it particularly sparkling; bangin' house grooves from Schwab; a gospel documentary soundtrack, Say Amen, Somebody, and a reissue of the Performance soundtrack with a splendid new sleevenote by yours truly; smatterings of dub, jazz and country; and a swathe of British and American indie, clearly the genre quickest to cotton on to the whole home-recording phenomenon that has transformed the music industry over the past decade.

One of the new young bands to take advantage of this technology is Manchester's Autokat, whose distinctive brand of sinister guitar pop can be sampled on their Late Night Shopping debut. Creative control is paramount to Autokat, who record, mix and master everything themselves at their rehearsal space. "No pressure, and no producer putting their ideas on us," says their singer, John (they eschew surnames). "We just want to do what we want, the way we want it, and not have anybody telling us what to do. But if a big label came and offered us loads of money, that would be fine too!"

Like every new band, Autokat have their own MySpace home page, a mandatory thing for modern musicians in search of an audience. As John says, "These days, people probably go to MySpace before they even visit the band's own website, it has become that important."

And how many MySpace "friends" do they have? "Oh, I think we're quite picky!", he laughs. "Our bassist Ben looks after the site, and I think he turns a lot of them down. He's not a MySpace whore. He hates the way that some bands just become your 'friends' so they can spam you. But some people get really excited about having 140,000 'friends' - there are even programmes that will help you generate 'friends'. What's that all about?"

What indeed. One man who has no need of 140,000 faux-friends is Roddy Woomble, frontman of the Scots stadium-indie outfit Idlewild, whose sixth album Make Another World comes out this week. At their biggest, Idlewild sold 300,000 copies of The Remote Part for Parlophone, but could only manage around half that with Warnings/Promises - which, in today's cut-throat industry, meant goodbye to EMI, and hello to Sanctuary.

"We're quite a sizeable college-rock band, but I think that's about as big as we're going to get," Woomble admits. "I think we're too cynical to play the game anymore. After a while you realise there's more to life than sitting in a van for four months, playing places like Salt Lake City."

His ambivalence also extends to the success or otherwise of the band's records. "The Remote Part was the only record of ours that ever had a song played on the radio, the way that bands like The Killers are played all the time - so much that they become annoying, even if you like them. That was the time that I started to worry we might be getting annoying, because we were on the radio so much. I don't think we're annoying any more because we're never on the radio!"

His blasé attitude, though, doubtless conceals a quiet confidence about the prospects for the sturdy Make Another World, which should re-establish Idlewild as players. But it's not the only one of this week's releases in which Woomble has an interest. He was the bright spark who dreamed up the idea for Ballads of the Book, a project combining the talents of Scottish literati and musicians, as the likes of Mike Heron, King Creosote, Aidan Moffat - and Idlewild, of course - provide music for lyrics written by such as Ian Rankin, Alasdair Gray and Michael Faber.

"It's Scottish writers writing words for Scottish voices," he explains. "What I like about the record is that literature is usually considered to be high art, and pop music low art, and it's good to have a diverse group of people breaking those barriers down from both sides. It's not a money-making venture, it's not trying to get high in the charts, the whole purpose of it was simply to see if it could exist."

A similarly uncommercial rationale applies to another of this week's compilations, The Song Before The Song, featuring original recordings of songs subsequently made famous through cover versions - things like Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog" and Josh White's "House Of The Rising Sun". It's the latest in a series of themed anthologies compiled and annotated by the university lecturer Steve Hardstaff, a former illustrator whose work was used by bands such as Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin. "It's not an academic exercise, like some compilations are," he says. "We're just trying to make records that are great to listen to, first and foremost, and have some historical interest too. There's no point in putting out something just because it's historical; it has got to be good as well."

Since most of the tracks are drawn from his own collection, much of Hardstaff's work on a CD like The Song Before the Song involves researching the provenance of tracks.

"International copyright laws are very vague," he explains. "Obviously, one tries to trace the owners through the [Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society] MCPS and other channels. But most of the music is now in the public domain. Then it's a case of finding the best possible sound-source for that particular item because, even with digital sound restoration, you can kill something stone dead by taking out every last click and pop."

Hardstaff admits that he couldn't make a living compiling these anthologies. "We're happy if we cover our costs, or maybe make a small profit," he concedes. "The good thing is that the shelf-life is not limited, so you can keep back-catalogue for a longer time than with new bands."

Someone who does make a living from his albums is Bryan Josh, the leader of the nu-prog-rock band Mostly Autumn who, over nine years of diligent touring, have built up enough of a following to fill places like London's Astoria, without any major-label assistance. This week's Heart Full of Sky album is their sixth studio one.

"It has been full-time for five years now," Josh explains. "We fund the band through record sales and ticket sales, selling albums at concerts and through our website. That generates enough money to enable the band to keep going. For the initial funding of an album, we make a special limited edition - the last one was two and a half thousand - and sell them first, which covers our costs. Then afterwards we release a standard edition on general release.

"If it goes as normal, we'll probably do about 12,500 of Heart Full of Sky. Anything above that depends on publicity and radio-play. But we generate our fanbase from people coming to see us, which is the best way. We do two main tours a year, and some festivals, writing and recording the albums in between. It keeps us busy - too busy, in fact, so we're trying to reduce the number of dates we do, but do bigger ones, because we like to put on a good light show."

As these examples demonstrate, the reasons for making CDs are almost as numerous as the CDs themselves, and more so the further one gets from the major labels' headline acts. New recording technology has given everyone the chance to file their own albums alongside those of their heroes; and while it's not exactly a level playing field, it nonetheless represents a small and significant step in the emancipation of the fan, and offers a much-needed counterbalance to the obsession with formula and celebrity that has corroded the mainstream music industry.

And, although the computer music revolution has become something of a double-edged sword, opening the floodgates way beyond the quality controls once imposed by the industry, it's also allowed many more marginal talents to follow their star. As Josh says, "It's like living out a dream, working at what I love. Whatever level of success we get, that won't change."

BUT THESE REALLY ARE A WASTE OF PLASTIC

RUSSELL WATSON That's Life (Decca)

Operatised lounge-crooning. It's bad enough when Rod Stewart does it, and unbearable here.

BUSWELL Buy Me New Shoes (4th Street)

No, Buswell, buy me new earplugs - preferably with money earned from selling your instruments. It's Waterboys-esque. As in drippy.

APSE Spirit (Acuarela)

Rumbly, grumbly post-rock from Americans who've listened to too much Godspeed You Black Emperor. This takes akes the long way round to ugly.

VARIOUS ARTISTS World's Best Mum (Sony BMG)

Described as "forty tracks to show how much you care". Well, exactly! Nothing says "Mum, I don't know you" more than a crap compilation like this.

NOTORIOUS BIG Greatest Hits (Clean) (Bad Boy)

Clean? It'd take a tanker of Swarfega to clean up tracks as wretched as these.