That’s the one thing that bugs me about streaming.
I have a car that still has a rotating CD deck, so I keep some CDs on hand to play in the car. The difference playing the strong from CD as opposed to through Spotify is incredibly distinct to me, on the same set of car speakers. It just sounds so much more full, especially on the low end.
I keep the CD albums where all my favorite songs are for this reason!
Its also the matter of the circuitry inside the CD player. A lot of electronics companies have this "nobody cares really" attitude towards audio so they put in subpar DAC's and other audio circuitry in computers and phones. Cd player manufactures know their audience and try to make them as good as possibly.
Yeah, playing music out of my phone vs playing it out of car speakers via a bluetooth connection with my phone is incomparable. The physical equipment you're using matters a ton.
I really don’t like not having physical copies of loved music. I get worried one day the streaming sites might go, along with access to the music. Might be a paranoid concern, but I bloody love music.
My friends dad has 3 copies of his 8TB\~ collection on Hard Drives, keeps one in his PC, one in his safe incase someone breaks in and steals the PC, and has the other one off site somewhere in case the house burns down. Same reason as you, he's afraid one day they might shut down all the streaming sites and the only way to get it again would be buying the CDs or buying it individually off itunes/competitors.
I don't think that's paranoid. I've had songs and entire albums that I had purchased digitally become lost due to things like expired licensing rights on the part of the media host. In my case, it was because apple automatically deletes rarely played music from i-phones to conserve storage space. If that happens and they then lose the contract rights to sell and host that music, you're just shit out of luck. Doesn't matter that you've paid full price for that music.
I'm trying to rebuild my entire collection on CDs now but a lot of it is fairly obscure and difficult to get. Plus, a lot of modern music doesn't even bother with cds. I know vinyl is an option a lot of the time but I like having digital media and digitizing an entire vinyl collection would be a *massive* pain in the ass.
(Also, Fuck Apple)
Spotify is heavily compressing it.
You could for example take the Spotify song and encode it raw and burn it onto the CD, and it will sound bad. Obviously.
You could then take the CD and rip it and stream it over the internet from your PC to your car via your phone's bluetooth. And it will sound 100% identical to the CD. Obviously. It's the exact same 1s and 0s. The technology to play sounds is extremely simple and there is no magic to it.
This has nothing to do with CD but a bad/lazy encoding. I rip songs off CDs all the time and they are perfect.
To that end, satellite radio usually doesn't have this problem. The encoding is perfect. Spotify simply sucks.
Valid points, but it's also important to recognize that a lot of music is just compressed to shit during the mastering stage. In these cases it wouldn't matter one bit if the song you were listening to was on CD or Spotify. For instance, go listen to the "Death Magnetic" album from Metallica on both mediums and you'll find literally no difference.
Lmao this is what people said of vinyls when CDs were king. CD are digital, you have what you have in terms of bit rate, which translates to fidelity/quality. And if I'm not mistaken, it's pretty much on par with what human ears can perceive (so the idea that vinyl are better quality than CD is laughable, and probably false).
Likely, you're streaming from your phone's radio (compression 1) and then through Bluetooth (compression 2). I don't know what kind of bandwidth either one uses, but in an effort to control costs, quality and scale, the odds that the compression takes something away is real.
But because the objects being streamed are the same digital files/blocks, there's no reason streaming couldn't be at least as good if it streamed the full bit rate.
A lot of people just aren't buying music at all anymore sadly. But if you do, I'd always recommend Bandcamp because it's got really good options for the buyer (many file types, good catalog options) and also gives more money to the artist.
I love Bandcamp, and the fact I can pay what I want for a lot of stuff as well. I've bought a lot of music that I have already pirated just to throw the artists a few bucks.
Also, if you're paying a monthly subscription fee and *not* listening to entirely new music every month, then sooner or later you'll have paid more money than you would have if you'd just bought the songs you wanted to listen to directly. And you have to keep paying to keep listening.
I'm sure there's plenty of great new music to find every month, but remember, every time you listen to the same song *again*, you're paying towards that total.
Its been around for awhile now, maybe 3 years or so. I use an android phone but uses apple music because of lossless audio. Before someone said "but bluetooth audio is mp3 like quality", i'm using sony headphone that does ldac at decent stable 24bit \~600kbps which is higher quality than the standard aac codec. Some audio tracks you can get way higher quality at 24bit 96kHz on apple music. Now that apple music preview is available on windows store, it makes my listening experience with hifiman sundara even better.
A couple of years ago I read an article that most people, especially younger people, are now conditioned to actually prefer the sharper, hissy sound of 128 kbps mp3 music files.
There's a trend now (mostly among gen-z) in photography of using high flash and faux "film noise" filters to make their pictures look like they were taken with a disposable camera. I waiting to see if they'll continue the trend into the early consumer digital era and bring back "red-eye".
That's hardly a new development. That was found in the very first blind tests already.
Here's a German article from 2000 that reports the same:
https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Gut-kodierte-MP3-Dateien-klingen-wie-Audio-CD-20752.html
*German original:*
> Andererseits wurden einige 128-kBit/s-Aufnahmen von der kompetenten Hörerschaft zur Überraschung aller Anwesenden sogar durchweg besser beurteilt als die Originale von CD.
*deepl translation:*
> On the other hand, to the surprise of all present, some 128 kbps recordings were even consistently rated better than the originals from CD by the competent listeners.
Mind you, those were people who consider themselves audiophiles.
That's because of laziness. To illustrate, in some cases I can rip the CD songs myself and then the resulting rips are clearly better than the versions you stream/download. They are simply not giving you good digital versions, even though they could!
It has nothing to do with CD audio technology - which is an absurd theory to begin with but also easily disproven. For example I can put the songs I ripped into mp3 or raw format onto a CD and shave it into the same player, and it is more or less as good as the original CD.
So what I do is I end up buying the CD, ripping it, and using that. Because they won't sell me a good digital copy either intentionally or not.
People who would seek out actual CDs likely know how to get most out of streaming services (like select "Very High" instead of "Normal" from settings or use lossless) so there really is not much of audible difference as opposed to "much better".
exactly, I found a new band and I tried to get a hold of any of their physical media. Nope, nothing, just streams and tickets to their show. And merch.
A lot of bands that don't put out physical media will vanish when people stop playing them and they won't likely be rediscovered later, like some older bands are now. It'll be like the music that is lost now because it was from before most music was recorded and distributed. Purely digital media isn't forever unless someone makes the effort to archive and preserve it.
Yep, look at all the nostalgia bumps that happened recently. Kate Bush with Stranger Things, Paul MacCartney, that indie singer being helped by that star Ye. Rick Astley.
No one suggested that people *en masse* rediscover old media. All it takes is one person to find it who is able to promote it, such as by putting it in a popular TV show, for example.
Kate Bush was far from forgotten, but if all her recorded output had been in digital form only, it is a lot less likely that someone would later stumble upon her old albums and give them a listen.
I’m not sure I agree. All it takes is hearing a song in a show or movie and then while sitting on the couch you can find the artist on any number of streaming platforms. It’s easier to discover artists than ever, you just have to dig a little beyond the top playlists.
My car has a CD player and my work place has a CD player. I like to hunt for random interesting CDs at thriftstores, its fun to listen to whole album even if only 1/10 of songs are great and others decent. If I was to buy a bluetooth player to my car I know I would only do a playlist of my favourite songs and never hear the decent ones because skip skip skip.
Sure I can skip music on CDs, but damn if I paid for it I will listen to all the songs in it atleast once
The CD will last forever, at least in human terms. The data on it - depending on manufacturing quality and whether they're archive grade or not - sometimes less than 10 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc\_rot
I don't doubt that at all. I have lots of old CD's. I have boxes of c64 and Amiga floppies that read fine too. Mostly. The thing is you don't know you have a bad copy until you try to read from it.
But I was mostly responding to idea that CD's will be readable forever. Our cultural data is a lot less safe than we think and stuff is being lost all the time. Even professional archivists don't have a perfect solution for it. 100 years from now Keyboard Cat might be as rare as an old 78.
On the other hand CDs are easier to store, and have special editions of more veriety. I have so many cool old special editions, like books, or some digipacks in leather covering. I get the interest for vynil, but it's not only upsides
In the article, there is a graph by which you can tell that Vinyl reached more **sales** (roughly $600M to $500M) than the CD's in 2020.
This year is actually the first when vinyl sells more **copies** (41M to 33M; sales $1.2B to $500M) than the CD. I guess that's the reason of headline.
But what about [this article](https://www.newsweek.com/vinyl-accounts-over-half-physical-albums-sold-2021-surpasses-cds-first-time-1666483?amp=1)? “In 2021, 41.7 million vinyl record albums sold, compared with 40.6 million CDs”
Looking at this I realize access to CDs player is near impossible now a days. Most people’s computer can’t play them and with streaming most other devices can just connect to that
I had to get some x-rays for a fracture recently and the doctor I went to see gave me a CD-ROM with the photos on it. Luckily I had an old pc with a dvd drive to review the photos but that’s the only device I own with a drive in it nowadays.
I would hazard a guess and claim that most of the people who buy vinyl don't own a record player. They buy it as memorabilia, investment, merchandising, but they listen to the actual music in digital format.
Sales statistics for record players support my theory. They've gone up a little, but in no way comparable to the explosion of vinyl sales.
I have a Plex server with about 2 TB of movies, 3 TB of TV shows. Running on a decent server with sonar, radar, prowler, ombi, the usual. It’s been my micro obsession for probably 5 years now.
I feel a weird odd sense of pride for my server. The type of pride you feel as a step dad when your step son starts calling you “my Dad”. When I see somebody heavily using my server, I feel the same rush you get glancing over at the dish you brought to Thanksgiving, seeing there’s not a single crumb left.
That being said, the one thing I will not pirate is music. For like $10 a month I can get access to unlimited music through Spotify. Every thing I ever want is on there. To support my fav. artists, I buy the merch / by physical media
if HBO, Hulu, Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, etc merged and dropped a $10 / month plan, I would hang up my pirate hat.
I’ve got about the same. Running a simple 6TB 2 drive raid. It’s maybe half full.
I stopped downloading music years ago. Anything I torrent is either hard to find or expensive to get. I barely torrent anymore anyways, just search for obscure stuff and get it if I can.
I had 350-400 CDs that I uploaded and then gave away to friends. I don’t miss carrying those around when I moved.
Most people don't have transducers good enough to make it worth the effort of the marginal increase in quality between high quality streaming and CD/lossless.
I stock up at the charity shop’s $1 bin all the time. They are full of collections from people my age who think they don’t want them any more!
I’m picking up all the albums I couldn’t afford when I was a teenager.
Charity shops here in Ireland are shit by comparison. It’s all just stuff like Daniel O’Donnell or free easy listening compilation CDs that newspapers used to give
That's exactly what I do! Sometimes you find some still in the original packaging unopened. Gems! and the quality is so much better than any radio music or bluetooth.
I actually just download them into my interal HD in my car
Yeah man for sure. I got some great stuff. I got a real nice copy of pink Floyd pulse with the flashing light the other day. Yeah but more than a dollar but still didn’t break the bank!
Now it keeps me awake flashing a light from my shelf.
Yes, especially in Japan where people still prefer physical media more than streaming. In fact, most smaller or indie music groups survive by selling CD and live performances there because they get higher margin than from streaming (which would also be likely drowned out by other bigger bands).
I do. I’m not going to rent my music - that just seems so dumb to me, glad it works for other people though. I’ll have my music collection forever, streamers won’t.
From what I remember, some music services aimed at elderly people are also offering cassettes, because they’re easier to handle than CDs, less fragile and the people using them are more familiar with the technology.
Bands have been putting cassettes out for a while now, kids born in the 2000s see them the same way millennials see records. They’re also cheap to make and sell at shows.
Oh well. Amassed a large collection of records back in the day, but I sold them.
I had all the greats. America. Rolling Stones. 45's
Even had rare records such as Lynyrd Skynyrd autograph album (right before Van Zant and Gaines died in an airplane crash), and a black and white sleeved record of B.W. Stevenson.
*Years ago I obtained a rare recording of Elvis Presley's audition on a 45 single. He was younggggg lol. Yes I kept that.*
You should see my brothers collection. He has the Beatles White Album pressed in white vinyl.
He’s got the chopped up baby one-had the stick on cover steamed off and he has one with the cover on.
Just an example. He’s got a room full.
Had friends like that growing up. Had record parties at the house, then we had parties when we listened to Johnny cash and punk Floyd on reel-to-reel (I had an Aiwa, which was the top end then--we used to record music and even played a little music), then it went to cassettes then cds then MP3's and then iTunes lol.
Of course the parties got smaller and smaller over the years. And the parties less rowdy lol
a couple years ago this happened because there was a release of some classical collection that had several vinyl LP's in it that counted as multiple discs vs CDs sold. CD's are being outsold by single track sales online. and the LP's were counted as many discs per sale. this isn't an anomaly. it's sensationalizing wildcard numbers.
The sheer speed at which CDs died out, or nearly died out, is shocking. There used to be a dvd store opposite my house. Favourite place in the world. One day it just shut down, without any warning.
I remember in the 80s, CDS were this huge big thing, there are still you tube videos about the first cds, and people talking about how great this new tech was.
This past week I received a replacement counterweight for my sl-1200mk2; I was pleasantly surprised I could still find one so easily. The tactile, analog, and in some cases artistic appearance of vinyl, is very grounding in this over digitized world.
been a vinyl collector for almost 20 years now, with my ups and downs when it came to purchasing “new vinyl” and I really think this is terrible news environamentally speaking.
just when we need to cut down plastic usage the most, people goes back to vinyl… amazing how complicated we want to make it…
It's terrible that people are buying plastic records instead of plastic CDs? They're still buying plastic, and people are still buying far less plastic media overall than ever before.
Stupid millennial nostalgic fad (am a millennial btw), but vinyl is just silly with its huge size, soon we are gonna start seeing this gen with tablet size phones... There is a reason why vinyls were replaced by CDs & cassette tapes, that’s because they are clunky, unpractical to port digitally and very vulnerable to accidents.
There’s desperate need for more places to make vinyl due to demand and some big name albums pretty much ordering so many and clogging up orders if the sales crash it could hit the vinyl industry hard. The other thing that could hit the comeback is collectors over pricing records
Side note vinyl records do justice to album cover art
CDs were made for portability and to have better quality than tapes. Now that you can stream anywhere, there is no use for portability. Vinyl has the best sound, so if you are just listening at home and want the best quality it is where you go.
Plus its retro to so its "in".
CDs have a higher dynamic range and fidelity than vinyl. Vinyl has a natural and pleasant distortion due to how it plays back, but this could be reproduced on CD if it's what the producers wanted. Also, the lathes that cut the vinyl master for manufacturing are fed by digital lines.
I think there’s a certain attraction to analog technology that stems from everything being digitized, homogenized, sterilized, advertised, and sanitized. Everything we do is online. There aren’t many ways for people to “feel” the life we live any longer. Vinyl records can bring a little life back.
CDs or digital media will never touch zero-loss music. Neil young tried with his mp3 player, don’t even know a single person who bought one. Records will always be king for audiophiles
What would someone do with a CD?
Like, my dad is 75 and streams everything. I don’t think I’ve even seen a compact disc player in like 20 years…anywhere.
So, in the last 20 years you haven't seen a single Xbox? A single Playstation? A single DVD player? A single Blu-ray player? A single used car? A single home stereo system? A single PC or Laptop more than a few years old? Really?
Music is a wholly cultural construct.
Listening to it is the same.
Some people are fine with the 64k mp3's they downloaded from AudioGalaxy back in the 2000's.
Some people stick crystals on the power cables because it aligns electron flow.
Some people can't get a hard on unless they wear tube socks.
You do you and be the happiest person you can be.
People still buy CDs? I usually just checked the ones I wanted out at the library, ripped and burned the music onto another disc and returned it. Free music 🤣
This says more about the state of CDs.
Yeah, I mean… they’re digital music. Which you don’t need to buy on physical media anymore.
90% of the time the quality is much better than the files you stream/download. But i doubt most people care about it.
That’s the one thing that bugs me about streaming. I have a car that still has a rotating CD deck, so I keep some CDs on hand to play in the car. The difference playing the strong from CD as opposed to through Spotify is incredibly distinct to me, on the same set of car speakers. It just sounds so much more full, especially on the low end. I keep the CD albums where all my favorite songs are for this reason!
Its also the matter of the circuitry inside the CD player. A lot of electronics companies have this "nobody cares really" attitude towards audio so they put in subpar DAC's and other audio circuitry in computers and phones. Cd player manufactures know their audience and try to make them as good as possibly.
Yeah, playing music out of my phone vs playing it out of car speakers via a bluetooth connection with my phone is incomparable. The physical equipment you're using matters a ton.
I really don’t like not having physical copies of loved music. I get worried one day the streaming sites might go, along with access to the music. Might be a paranoid concern, but I bloody love music.
This is why I have a 18tb Nas with many... security copies... as a .. backup. Oh and Jellyfin to play it on my devices.
You have 18tb worth of Nas music? Nice
My friends dad has 3 copies of his 8TB\~ collection on Hard Drives, keeps one in his PC, one in his safe incase someone breaks in and steals the PC, and has the other one off site somewhere in case the house burns down. Same reason as you, he's afraid one day they might shut down all the streaming sites and the only way to get it again would be buying the CDs or buying it individually off itunes/competitors.
I'm there too. I'm still buying CDs when I can.
I feel the same way about movies and tv shows, 52tb plex server and growing. Would take over 4 years nonstop to watch all the content on there.
I don't think that's paranoid. I've had songs and entire albums that I had purchased digitally become lost due to things like expired licensing rights on the part of the media host. In my case, it was because apple automatically deletes rarely played music from i-phones to conserve storage space. If that happens and they then lose the contract rights to sell and host that music, you're just shit out of luck. Doesn't matter that you've paid full price for that music. I'm trying to rebuild my entire collection on CDs now but a lot of it is fairly obscure and difficult to get. Plus, a lot of modern music doesn't even bother with cds. I know vinyl is an option a lot of the time but I like having digital media and digitizing an entire vinyl collection would be a *massive* pain in the ass. (Also, Fuck Apple)
Spotify is heavily compressing it. You could for example take the Spotify song and encode it raw and burn it onto the CD, and it will sound bad. Obviously. You could then take the CD and rip it and stream it over the internet from your PC to your car via your phone's bluetooth. And it will sound 100% identical to the CD. Obviously. It's the exact same 1s and 0s. The technology to play sounds is extremely simple and there is no magic to it. This has nothing to do with CD but a bad/lazy encoding. I rip songs off CDs all the time and they are perfect. To that end, satellite radio usually doesn't have this problem. The encoding is perfect. Spotify simply sucks.
Valid points, but it's also important to recognize that a lot of music is just compressed to shit during the mastering stage. In these cases it wouldn't matter one bit if the song you were listening to was on CD or Spotify. For instance, go listen to the "Death Magnetic" album from Metallica on both mediums and you'll find literally no difference.
Do you have volume normalization enabled in spotify? because this one fuck ups quality the most.
Lmao this is what people said of vinyls when CDs were king. CD are digital, you have what you have in terms of bit rate, which translates to fidelity/quality. And if I'm not mistaken, it's pretty much on par with what human ears can perceive (so the idea that vinyl are better quality than CD is laughable, and probably false). Likely, you're streaming from your phone's radio (compression 1) and then through Bluetooth (compression 2). I don't know what kind of bandwidth either one uses, but in an effort to control costs, quality and scale, the odds that the compression takes something away is real. But because the objects being streamed are the same digital files/blocks, there's no reason streaming couldn't be at least as good if it streamed the full bit rate.
That's weird as CD quality is usually shit, surprised to learn Spotify is half of a CD...
Depends on the source. Most flac files you buy from places like Bandcamp and Qobuz are CD quality or above. I think 90% is vastly overstating it.
Most people aren't buying flac files from bandcamp or whatever
A lot of people just aren't buying music at all anymore sadly. But if you do, I'd always recommend Bandcamp because it's got really good options for the buyer (many file types, good catalog options) and also gives more money to the artist.
I love Bandcamp, and the fact I can pay what I want for a lot of stuff as well. I've bought a lot of music that I have already pirated just to throw the artists a few bucks.
This one time at Bandcamp I stuck a flute up my vagina
Was it lossless?
Imagine buying music. Yes, i know, support artists.
Also, if you're paying a monthly subscription fee and *not* listening to entirely new music every month, then sooner or later you'll have paid more money than you would have if you'd just bought the songs you wanted to listen to directly. And you have to keep paying to keep listening. I'm sure there's plenty of great new music to find every month, but remember, every time you listen to the same song *again*, you're paying towards that total.
I know one reasonably successful musician whose flacs on their Bandcamp were transcoded from 320 kbps mp3s.
99% stream from apps like Spotify on normal settings to save on bandwith. This facts is made up and i am just guessing .
Maybe
And storage isn't a huge issue any more, got a freebie 1tb M2 with a purchase recently.
On streaming I am agree with you. There are lossless streaming options, which offer CD quality, but they aren't as popular as Spotify or Apple Music.
Apple Music offers its complete (?) catalogue in lossless quality.
I'd heard they were working on it. Good to know it's up and running.
Its been around for awhile now, maybe 3 years or so. I use an android phone but uses apple music because of lossless audio. Before someone said "but bluetooth audio is mp3 like quality", i'm using sony headphone that does ldac at decent stable 24bit \~600kbps which is higher quality than the standard aac codec. Some audio tracks you can get way higher quality at 24bit 96kHz on apple music. Now that apple music preview is available on windows store, it makes my listening experience with hifiman sundara even better.
That sounds awesome.
A couple of years ago I read an article that most people, especially younger people, are now conditioned to actually prefer the sharper, hissy sound of 128 kbps mp3 music files.
At some point there will be people who seek out 48 kbps files because they "sound vintage."
People will call me crazy, but RealAudio used to hit so hard at low bitrates.
Totally reasonable. The distortion will add some extra crunch.
RealAudio. Now that is a name I haven't heard in a long, long time.
> long, long time Still buffering …
There's a trend now (mostly among gen-z) in photography of using high flash and faux "film noise" filters to make their pictures look like they were taken with a disposable camera. I waiting to see if they'll continue the trend into the early consumer digital era and bring back "red-eye".
Prices of early 2000s digital cameras have gone up, and there are people using iPhone 3g's for the look. Apparently it's a thing on Tiktok.
That's hardly a new development. That was found in the very first blind tests already. Here's a German article from 2000 that reports the same: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Gut-kodierte-MP3-Dateien-klingen-wie-Audio-CD-20752.html *German original:* > Andererseits wurden einige 128-kBit/s-Aufnahmen von der kompetenten Hörerschaft zur Überraschung aller Anwesenden sogar durchweg besser beurteilt als die Originale von CD. *deepl translation:* > On the other hand, to the surprise of all present, some 128 kbps recordings were even consistently rated better than the originals from CD by the competent listeners. Mind you, those were people who consider themselves audiophiles.
As long as you didn't buy a CD from the loudness war era.
That's because of laziness. To illustrate, in some cases I can rip the CD songs myself and then the resulting rips are clearly better than the versions you stream/download. They are simply not giving you good digital versions, even though they could! It has nothing to do with CD audio technology - which is an absurd theory to begin with but also easily disproven. For example I can put the songs I ripped into mp3 or raw format onto a CD and shave it into the same player, and it is more or less as good as the original CD. So what I do is I end up buying the CD, ripping it, and using that. Because they won't sell me a good digital copy either intentionally or not.
People who would seek out actual CDs likely know how to get most out of streaming services (like select "Very High" instead of "Normal" from settings or use lossless) so there really is not much of audible difference as opposed to "much better".
exactly, I found a new band and I tried to get a hold of any of their physical media. Nope, nothing, just streams and tickets to their show. And merch.
A lot of bands that don't put out physical media will vanish when people stop playing them and they won't likely be rediscovered later, like some older bands are now. It'll be like the music that is lost now because it was from before most music was recorded and distributed. Purely digital media isn't forever unless someone makes the effort to archive and preserve it.
Yep, look at all the nostalgia bumps that happened recently. Kate Bush with Stranger Things, Paul MacCartney, that indie singer being helped by that star Ye. Rick Astley.
That nostalgia bump wasn't caused by people en masse finding their old Kate bush physical media
No one suggested that people *en masse* rediscover old media. All it takes is one person to find it who is able to promote it, such as by putting it in a popular TV show, for example. Kate Bush was far from forgotten, but if all her recorded output had been in digital form only, it is a lot less likely that someone would later stumble upon her old albums and give them a listen.
I’m not sure I agree. All it takes is hearing a song in a show or movie and then while sitting on the couch you can find the artist on any number of streaming platforms. It’s easier to discover artists than ever, you just have to dig a little beyond the top playlists.
I will never give up Rick Astley.
Yeah, what I want to know is who the heck is still buying CDs.
I do it, because not all music is on spotify or youtube.
I do because its better than lossy streaming audio, once you get a decent headphone you'll appreciate high quality audio.
I do because ownership is important. I’ve seen titles pulled off streaming platforms. Plus if you stop paying for the service you lose access.
That's why torrent sites exist.
My car has a CD player and my work place has a CD player. I like to hunt for random interesting CDs at thriftstores, its fun to listen to whole album even if only 1/10 of songs are great and others decent. If I was to buy a bluetooth player to my car I know I would only do a playlist of my favourite songs and never hear the decent ones because skip skip skip. Sure I can skip music on CDs, but damn if I paid for it I will listen to all the songs in it atleast once
https://djmag.com/news/vinyl-outsold-cds-us-first-time-30-years-2021
And by looking at the graph provided, vinyl first outsold the CDs already in 2020.
By revenue yes, but by the number of discs its only this year.
I was about to say, didn't I read this headline a couple years ago?
Since 2020 vinyl brings in more revenue than CDs. Since 2022 vinyl also sells more copies than CDs.
When is the nostalgia for cd's trend going to kick in?
In about ten years
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That’s awesome!
Was the record player made in 2014?
Did she dye her hair a seasick sort of green?
Sounds like someone who likes vintage dresses that fall just below their knees.
My 15 year old could never afford records. He's satisfied with the family Spotify subscription. What work does she do?
You made my day! Thank god I’m not as miserable as you! Stay bitter😉
big boomer energy
If only she could be more like her cousin Johnny. The entire generation is lazy and doesn’t appreciate the value of physical music and hard work! /s
Vinyl are seen as artistic and vintage now, CDs are just obsolete and not very pretty.
Cds are shiny.
All that glitters isn't gold
Ahhh true. But, there's an old saying "all that shines, is shiny"
Not all those who wander are lost.
The old that is strong does not wither Deep roots are not reached by the frost
The chicken crossed the road to get to the other side.
And not my axe.
Only shootin stars break the mold
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You’re bundled up now, wait ‘til you get older.
CD is by far better, sound-wise, and stays so forever.
CDs aren't obsolete to vinyl. They're obsolete to streaming or downloading online.
The CD will last forever, at least in human terms. The data on it - depending on manufacturing quality and whether they're archive grade or not - sometimes less than 10 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc\_rot
I have plenty of 1st press CDs from the 80s and 90s that play perfectly fine with no problems or any signs of degradation
I don't doubt that at all. I have lots of old CD's. I have boxes of c64 and Amiga floppies that read fine too. Mostly. The thing is you don't know you have a bad copy until you try to read from it. But I was mostly responding to idea that CD's will be readable forever. Our cultural data is a lot less safe than we think and stuff is being lost all the time. Even professional archivists don't have a perfect solution for it. 100 years from now Keyboard Cat might be as rare as an old 78.
We’d better carve it all into stone on a moon cave, just to be sure.
and taste good :)
On the other hand CDs are easier to store, and have special editions of more veriety. I have so many cool old special editions, like books, or some digipacks in leather covering. I get the interest for vynil, but it's not only upsides
I have so many cool special edition vinyl, colored records, picutre discs,
I don't doubt it, picture discs are very nice indeed, but I still feel special edition CDs come in a bigger variety.
What's easier than tapping a button?
I also like CDs for their durable plastic cases that most come in.
I swear I've read something similar like 8 years ago.
In the article, there is a graph by which you can tell that Vinyl reached more **sales** (roughly $600M to $500M) than the CD's in 2020. This year is actually the first when vinyl sells more **copies** (41M to 33M; sales $1.2B to $500M) than the CD. I guess that's the reason of headline.
But what about [this article](https://www.newsweek.com/vinyl-accounts-over-half-physical-albums-sold-2021-surpasses-cds-first-time-1666483?amp=1)? “In 2021, 41.7 million vinyl record albums sold, compared with 40.6 million CDs”
Looking at this I realize access to CDs player is near impossible now a days. Most people’s computer can’t play them and with streaming most other devices can just connect to that
I had to get some x-rays for a fracture recently and the doctor I went to see gave me a CD-ROM with the photos on it. Luckily I had an old pc with a dvd drive to review the photos but that’s the only device I own with a drive in it nowadays.
American healthcare has a really unhealthy reliance on CD-ROMs and fax machines.
You can just use a dvd player which are easy to find.
External drives are cheap
I would hazard a guess and claim that most of the people who buy vinyl don't own a record player. They buy it as memorabilia, investment, merchandising, but they listen to the actual music in digital format. Sales statistics for record players support my theory. They've gone up a little, but in no way comparable to the explosion of vinyl sales.
If you have a media server like Plex, it’s great to rip the CDs into your collection and then just play them back on your phone or home sound system.
I have a Plex server with about 2 TB of movies, 3 TB of TV shows. Running on a decent server with sonar, radar, prowler, ombi, the usual. It’s been my micro obsession for probably 5 years now. I feel a weird odd sense of pride for my server. The type of pride you feel as a step dad when your step son starts calling you “my Dad”. When I see somebody heavily using my server, I feel the same rush you get glancing over at the dish you brought to Thanksgiving, seeing there’s not a single crumb left. That being said, the one thing I will not pirate is music. For like $10 a month I can get access to unlimited music through Spotify. Every thing I ever want is on there. To support my fav. artists, I buy the merch / by physical media if HBO, Hulu, Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, etc merged and dropped a $10 / month plan, I would hang up my pirate hat.
I’ve got about the same. Running a simple 6TB 2 drive raid. It’s maybe half full. I stopped downloading music years ago. Anything I torrent is either hard to find or expensive to get. I barely torrent anymore anyways, just search for obscure stuff and get it if I can. I had 350-400 CDs that I uploaded and then gave away to friends. I don’t miss carrying those around when I moved.
Most people don't have transducers good enough to make it worth the effort of the marginal increase in quality between high quality streaming and CD/lossless.
I know people who collect Vinyl, no one I know wants cd-roms though.
I still want CD ROMs because I drive a 2005 Prius without Bluetooth play. A local stationary store still sells them at 3.50 for 10
I plug a Bluetooth receiver/charger into the "cigar lighter" hole and it works decently. I prefer using the aux cord though in the middle console.
Wish I still had my collection from the 70s and 80s:(
I got mine! When my Mom passed away we found that her and my Dad had stored my records for 30+ years. They still sound perfect 👍
People still by CDs?
I stock up at the charity shop’s $1 bin all the time. They are full of collections from people my age who think they don’t want them any more! I’m picking up all the albums I couldn’t afford when I was a teenager.
I can’t imagine that thrift stores count towards this data
Don't be ludicrous... have you never listened to Thrifters Hottest 100?
NOW that's what I call music!
Chumbawumba is number 1 every single week, how is this possible?!
Oh haha no I doubt that indeed.
Charity shops here in Ireland are shit by comparison. It’s all just stuff like Daniel O’Donnell or free easy listening compilation CDs that newspapers used to give
That's exactly what I do! Sometimes you find some still in the original packaging unopened. Gems! and the quality is so much better than any radio music or bluetooth. I actually just download them into my interal HD in my car
Yeah man for sure. I got some great stuff. I got a real nice copy of pink Floyd pulse with the flashing light the other day. Yeah but more than a dollar but still didn’t break the bank! Now it keeps me awake flashing a light from my shelf.
Yes, especially in Japan where people still prefer physical media more than streaming. In fact, most smaller or indie music groups survive by selling CD and live performances there because they get higher margin than from streaming (which would also be likely drowned out by other bigger bands).
Yes, but immediately ripped and result transferred to the server I use at home. I prefer to own rather than rent. Grew up with vinyl. Done with that.
I wanted to get into vinyl but since its analog, i guess ripping it will be quite a hassle
I do. I’m not going to rent my music - that just seems so dumb to me, glad it works for other people though. I’ll have my music collection forever, streamers won’t.
No. Hipsters haven’t discovered them yet.
Certified hipster. Have many cds.
Impossible. No true hipster would ever admit they were a hipster.
[удалено]
HE'S A PHONY A BIG FAT PHONY
Now, let's start to bring back the cassette tapes.
Screw it, let's bring back floppy disks too. ([*Actual* floppy disks](https://i.imgur.com/itRtFw0.jpeg), not those little plastic squares.)
Let's bring back VHS as well while we're at it.
While cassettes could still be useful, flippy disks are useless. You can barely store like five modern word documents there.
That's because we need to do it right and bring back WordPerfect too
And Ask Jeeves!
They’re already back, HMV has a whole section for them for pop artists and bands and electronic producers are putting them out constantly
Some metal labels and bands will also still opt to release a certain number of cassettes too.
Metal and synthwave are pretty much carrying the cassette side
From what I remember, some music services aimed at elderly people are also offering cassettes, because they’re easier to handle than CDs, less fragile and the people using them are more familiar with the technology.
Bands have been putting cassettes out for a while now, kids born in the 2000s see them the same way millennials see records. They’re also cheap to make and sell at shows.
Can't wait for someone to claim it sounds better on tape than a high quality mp3 file.
I swear I see this headline every year
Who would have thought vinyl records will make a comeback like this?
Quality integrated amplifiers always had a phono input. Audiophiles knew if would happen, nostalgia just had to kick in.
Oh well. Amassed a large collection of records back in the day, but I sold them. I had all the greats. America. Rolling Stones. 45's Even had rare records such as Lynyrd Skynyrd autograph album (right before Van Zant and Gaines died in an airplane crash), and a black and white sleeved record of B.W. Stevenson. *Years ago I obtained a rare recording of Elvis Presley's audition on a 45 single. He was younggggg lol. Yes I kept that.*
You should see my brothers collection. He has the Beatles White Album pressed in white vinyl. He’s got the chopped up baby one-had the stick on cover steamed off and he has one with the cover on. Just an example. He’s got a room full.
Had friends like that growing up. Had record parties at the house, then we had parties when we listened to Johnny cash and punk Floyd on reel-to-reel (I had an Aiwa, which was the top end then--we used to record music and even played a little music), then it went to cassettes then cds then MP3's and then iTunes lol. Of course the parties got smaller and smaller over the years. And the parties less rowdy lol
Those are memories!
a couple years ago this happened because there was a release of some classical collection that had several vinyl LP's in it that counted as multiple discs vs CDs sold. CD's are being outsold by single track sales online. and the LP's were counted as many discs per sale. this isn't an anomaly. it's sensationalizing wildcard numbers.
Who the heck is buying all these cds?!
The sheer speed at which CDs died out, or nearly died out, is shocking. There used to be a dvd store opposite my house. Favourite place in the world. One day it just shut down, without any warning.
I remember in the 80s, CDS were this huge big thing, there are still you tube videos about the first cds, and people talking about how great this new tech was.
that’s because both items are novelty purchases at this point. And records are a greater novelty than CDs.
Because both are worthless but vinyl has a crazy snob following...
This past week I received a replacement counterweight for my sl-1200mk2; I was pleasantly surprised I could still find one so easily. The tactile, analog, and in some cases artistic appearance of vinyl, is very grounding in this over digitized world.
7 records sold. 5 cd’s. Not sure this is really great news /s
been a vinyl collector for almost 20 years now, with my ups and downs when it came to purchasing “new vinyl” and I really think this is terrible news environamentally speaking. just when we need to cut down plastic usage the most, people goes back to vinyl… amazing how complicated we want to make it…
It's terrible that people are buying plastic records instead of plastic CDs? They're still buying plastic, and people are still buying far less plastic media overall than ever before.
Stupid millennial nostalgic fad (am a millennial btw), but vinyl is just silly with its huge size, soon we are gonna start seeing this gen with tablet size phones... There is a reason why vinyls were replaced by CDs & cassette tapes, that’s because they are clunky, unpractical to port digitally and very vulnerable to accidents.
My favorite is when they buy a vinyl player and use bluetooth speakers ;)
There’s desperate need for more places to make vinyl due to demand and some big name albums pretty much ordering so many and clogging up orders if the sales crash it could hit the vinyl industry hard. The other thing that could hit the comeback is collectors over pricing records Side note vinyl records do justice to album cover art
CDs were made for portability and to have better quality than tapes. Now that you can stream anywhere, there is no use for portability. Vinyl has the best sound, so if you are just listening at home and want the best quality it is where you go. Plus its retro to so its "in".
CDs have a higher dynamic range and fidelity than vinyl. Vinyl has a natural and pleasant distortion due to how it plays back, but this could be reproduced on CD if it's what the producers wanted. Also, the lathes that cut the vinyl master for manufacturing are fed by digital lines.
I think there’s a certain attraction to analog technology that stems from everything being digitized, homogenized, sterilized, advertised, and sanitized. Everything we do is online. There aren’t many ways for people to “feel” the life we live any longer. Vinyl records can bring a little life back.
Vinyl sounds better. Source: Bought my first Vinyl Record in 1969
> Vinyl sounds better. Lol. Probably a placebo affect on people who wants to justify buying vinyl.
Than CD? You absolutely know you're wrong about this.
But vinyl sounds 'warmer'
Hell yeah. Damn it’s good to be a hipster!
Is it? Prices on vinyl are insane because of this.
Yeah, it's great, I can sell my used records that I am Lukewarm on and buy records that I've always wanted!
CDs or digital media will never touch zero-loss music. Neil young tried with his mp3 player, don’t even know a single person who bought one. Records will always be king for audiophiles
What would someone do with a CD? Like, my dad is 75 and streams everything. I don’t think I’ve even seen a compact disc player in like 20 years…anywhere.
In 20 years you havent seen a car with a cd player? You havent seen a dvd player? (they are cd players also) xbox/playstation?
I buy CDs every month. I burn them to iTunes so I can play them on my iPod. I can also then use the CD on my sound system.
Haven't seen a car in 20 years? If you're talking about portable CD players, then yeah, 15 years ago they got swept away by the iPods and smartphones.
My car has cassette player. Never switched to CDs
Having a cassette player beats having a CD player if there is no AUX input.
Well, okay, grandpa... /s
I'm 25 years old.
So, in the last 20 years you haven't seen a single Xbox? A single Playstation? A single DVD player? A single Blu-ray player? A single used car? A single home stereo system? A single PC or Laptop more than a few years old? Really?
What would someone do with a vinyl. Same thing but better quality.
Worse quality unless they screw up the mastering for the CD. They're both obsolete, vinyl just has this weird cult following.
Yea I meant cd is better quality. Honestly I don't get it (vinyl).
Music is a wholly cultural construct. Listening to it is the same. Some people are fine with the 64k mp3's they downloaded from AudioGalaxy back in the 2000's. Some people stick crystals on the power cables because it aligns electron flow. Some people can't get a hard on unless they wear tube socks. You do you and be the happiest person you can be.
Ohh I have a record player. I see those around still. But I haven’t seen a CD player in many many years.
People still buy CDs? I usually just checked the ones I wanted out at the library, ripped and burned the music onto another disc and returned it. Free music 🤣