CD sales are alive and well in Japan

I was a bit like that as a kid when it came to my less favoured CDs that somehow ended up on the floor, under a t-shirt, then stood on. But since then I've been super-careful with my sleeves. I salvage the best quality jewel cases from anything I sell, too, so my collection is always as shiny and unbroken as possible.

Yes, Europe stop with those fucking jewel cases that dent the front cover! America got it right by the end of the 80s lol

In the 90's I realized you could fuck up any part of the CD that was not written to, so I used to write messages with marker on the shiny side of the CD that were empty.  You can also cut out shapes, but it's pretty fucking hard.  Drill holes, etc.  I still believe Digipak is the best CD transport format, and maybe I can use it to release graffiti on the underside of the CD.  Nah, I dunno, I'm pretty fucking tired.  My feet are wet from rain and holes in my soles.  Homeless as fuck.

I love the CD format the most. It pisses me off that a few artists that I would buy CDs from just release on Vinyl and download only these days. Fairplay if they're not gonna sell enough CDs to make it worthwhile but I don't agree with paying £10+ for just a download and no physical CD. I bought a PS4 at Christmas and was surprised that it won't play CDs, reading a few forums there's a lot of people saying shit like "Who still listens to CDs?" I do Goddamnit!

  On 8/18/2016 at 1:57 PM, The Dead Mexican said:

reading a few forums there's a lot of people saying shit like "Who still listens to CDs?" I do Goddamnit!

This is just how well the 'nobody buys CDs anymore' propaganda has worked, and I can't quite work out where it's come from. Obviously the music industry has realised that it can charge ridiculous prices for vinyl so they're probably more profitable than CDs (which the general public has been cynical about the price of for years), but it's still bizarre that people can say stuff like this despite - like the article I posted above - they're still dramatically outselling downloads in terms of album purchases.

I've actually come across people who think vinyl is outselling CD these days. The mind boggles.

I still buy them.  Annoying that laptops are coming without drives now.  Also, I go to the local record stores here and there are walls of CDs... it's not like they've stopped selling them.

Don't believe the Millennial hype.

CDs are just clutter imo, but I'll buy one on the rare occasion that it's cheaper than digital. No vinyl ever though.

#Millennialhype

My CD consumption has been steadily increasing again in the 2010s.

I've always preferred having a physical item. Metadata just aren't the same, and they're often completely missing, so besides not having the physical cover art, you also download a bunch of tracks without credits or label/catalog info etcetera.

They can be dirt cheap if you have the patience not to buy everything right as it's released. I guess the discounts add to the perception of them as an unloved format but have no idea about actual sales. But despite being a dime a dozen they're objectively pretty much the highest fidelity you can get in a physical medium, nothing (physical or otherwise) really does significantly better as far as listening is concerned.

It's true that when they start skipping they become unlistenable, and don't degrade quite as well as other media. But IMO their fragility was always more of a self-defeating prophecy since they were touted as being damn near indestructible compared to vinyl and hence everyone habitually abuses the things. Treat them with care and pressed CDs will probably last a lifetime.

I'm over the whole collecting physical media thing - it just ends up in some cupboard or closet, and given enough time, it will be unplayable either due to rot, or lack of physical media players.

  On 8/18/2016 at 8:35 PM, Joyrex said:

I'm over the whole collecting physical media thing - it just ends up in some cupboard or closet, and given enough time, it will be unplayable either due to rot, or lack of physical media players.

Have anything rare to sell? =)

  On 8/18/2016 at 8:39 PM, StephenG said:

 

  On 8/18/2016 at 8:35 PM, Joyrex said:

I'm over the whole collecting physical media thing - it just ends up in some cupboard or closet, and given enough time, it will be unplayable either due to rot, or lack of physical media players.

Have anything rare to sell? =)

 

Working on that...

That's the hard part - getting rid of all this stuff!

CDs are pain in the ass but I've thrown away all the cases though so now they pretty much fit in a smallish box.

I don't even have any easy way to listen to them. I would need to connect an external CD drive to my laptop or something.

  On 8/18/2016 at 8:49 PM, mokz said:

CDs are pain in the ass but I've thrown away all the cases though so now they pretty much fit in a smallish box.

 

I don't even have any easy way to listen to them. I would need to connect an external CD drive to my laptop or something.

Or get, y'know... a CD player (they still make those), and hook it to your stereo or boombox.

  On 8/18/2016 at 8:52 PM, Joyrex said:

 

  On 8/18/2016 at 8:49 PM, mokz said:

CDs are pain in the ass but I've thrown away all the cases though so now they pretty much fit in a smallish box.

 

I don't even have any easy way to listen to them. I would need to connect an external CD drive to my laptop or something.

Or get, y'know... a CD player (they still make those), and hook it to your stereo or boombox.

 

Why? I have ripped all of my CD collection and I can listen from the hard drive. The CDs themselves are basically just a backup storage.

  On 8/18/2016 at 8:58 PM, mokz said:

 

  On 8/18/2016 at 8:52 PM, Joyrex said:

 

  On 8/18/2016 at 8:49 PM, mokz said:

CDs are pain in the ass but I've thrown away all the cases though so now they pretty much fit in a smallish box.

 

I don't even have any easy way to listen to them. I would need to connect an external CD drive to my laptop or something.

Or get, y'know... a CD player (they still make those), and hook it to your stereo or boombox.

 

 

Why? I have ripped all of my CD collection and I can listen from the hard drive. The CDs themselves are basically just a backup storage.

 

same here. i keep the special ones for back up. i've had to re-rip a few when suddenly weird artifacts showed up during playback in itunes or on the ipod. i've thinned the heard in recent years though and getting it boiled down to just the essentials.

  On 8/19/2016 at 2:55 AM, xxx said:

I discovered something rather shocking. 5 disc changer from 1994 into one channel of a Yamaha EMX-512SC and Toshiba laptop with OEM soundcard in another. Started Syro on disc and ran the FLACs on computer. Started flipping back and forth for an A/B and was fucking stunned at how thin and lifeless the laptop was to the disc player under identical conditions. I EQ'd the laptop channel against the CD player but I could never quite nail it. I never knew how poorly the stock laptop cards performed.

Not surprised at all. I've not done much reading into the why, or what component(s) of the chain is at fault, but CD > digital almost always in my experience. It's sometimes almost not noticeable at all, I'm sure I'd fail lots of A/B tests like that, but sometimes the CD quality is SO much better than the HQ digital, again for whatever reasons that are likely nothing to do with the initial quality of the audio signal.

One thing I see when people are talking about why they don't use CDs is the convenience, which I find odd. Am I the only one who doesn't have their computer switched on all the time? At the minute if I wanted to play a digital album I'd have to turn my laptop on, look for the file and load it. If there's a system update or something then it delays it massively. If I want to pop a CD on I just grab it off my shelf and put it on, takes about five seconds.

Also not every room here even has a computer, which means my files are useless elsewhere.

I think the point is you don't need a computer on all the time or in every room anymore, it's really easy and cheap now. You can retrofit any old system with a chromecast audio or something similar for £20-25 and send flacs to it from your phone or any device that's on the same wifi. Works great, sound is analogous to CD (obviously depending on loads of variables), cheap and you can add it to any system that doesn't already have wireless capabilities. That's before getting on to fancy shit like multiroom.

I've defo gone full digital/ vinyl only, sold about 95% of my CDs, no regrets at all :) yet....

Also most optical discs will fail at some point, just something to be aware of if you've got a massive collection

Yeah Chromecasy Audio, AirPlay, Sonos, etc. No computer necessary. Much more convenient than cds.

Ah, didn't know about any of that. Still seems like a bit of a faff to me when I already have all the gear I need, but it makes a lot more sense now.

I bought a Yamaha HDMI Receiver that had Airplay specifically for that reason.

I can't recall the last time I played music FROM my computer... networked NAS and receiver make the computer pointless (other than to run iTunes as a way to put music into the NAS, which I could still do without).

Mmmm I just played the first Iron Maiden album on a 1987 cd. It's in perfect condition. What precisely is this cd rot I'm supposed to be panicking about?