I still buy Music CDs. Why? Because once I have the disc in my hand, no-one can legally take it away from me. I can enjoy the contents legally until I'm dead, all for a single one-off payment with no-expiry.
However, my households use of streaming media (mainly Spotify) has increased for 'casual' listening, so I think there is a balance, and I hope that buying physical media for music wont disappear completely any time soon.
All my CDs (over 1,000 of popular/rock/metal and about 400 of classical, at the last count) are ripped in a lossless format, and on my file server, to be enjoyed in a modern way. I do dislike jewel cases, and all my CDs (and inlays etc.) have been re-homed into archival bags, which take up a lot less space. I think while CDs (and DVDs, and Blu-rays) are still being sold, they should 100% shift to carboard packaging instead of plastic.
I know I'm showing my age, but there's just something enjoyably tangible about physical media, as opposed ephemeral files stored in a cloud.
I had ~1100 CDs in 2000. Now I have close to 0. I don't even own a device I could play a CD in nor rip it. None of my 4 PCs (3 Macs, one Gaming Windows Box) have a CD (nor DVD nor Bluray) player.
Instead I have about 9000 mp3 files.
I find streaming services frustrating because their recommendation algorithm suck. I tried playing "Swing" and it gave me "Volare" by Dean Martin. (that's not Swing), I pick Prince Radio and it plays rap (Prince has no relation to rap). My mom's into Tuba Skinny so I pick Tuba Skinny radio, every song it choose was nothing like Tuba Skinny (Dixieland Jazz). And on and on. It get music similar to the artists less than 1 out of 6 times.
Same... literally. About 1200 CDs in 2000, I ripped them at some point and sold them when I became a digital nomad. I have no idea where those rips are; I think I may have just liked them all on Spotify and kept a folder of obscure albums I wasn't likely to find online. But I'm not sure where that folder is.
I bounce between Spotify and Youtube Music and Apple Music. I recently got into Apple Music library curation but then I got a Tesla which supports Spotify (and Tidal, but...). So I'm back on Spotify. But Apple Music has one really nifty thing -- highlighting major tracks on albums so that album exploration can be enhanced a bit.
But honestly, my appetite for keeping up with and curating albums is waning. I wish there was a nice "cd changer" like interface to one of these services -- load up 6 albums and randomize. Queueing isn't the same.
(I'll repeat a desire I've had a long time -- playlists of albums, not tracks, with album-shuffle. So simple, yet nobody supports it).
I have a few online streaming radio stations I love -- Radio Paradise in particular. Someday I can see chucking all the "streaming service album" management and just going other-peoples-radio.
You can't control the quality of purchased music files. More significantly, you can't be sure that gapless playback has been encoded correctly into anything sold by the track. I continue to purchase music on CDs but they get used once while being ripped then go into storage.
There are a few good providers of lossless audio files, so you can get still get a lossless, DRM free version of your music to own forever without having to have a printed CD. The two that I frequent are:
- bandcamp.com - mostly indie, but I've actually purchased a few more "mainstream" artists from here in the last couple years.
- hdtracks.com - have a wide selection, but tend to be pretty pricey.
I'm worried about bandcamp.com after being purchased by Epic Games. BC's terms of service and privacy policy were updated to reflect this change, mostly legal ownership and related stuff, but I feel they're going to do the regular acquisition process: wait a year or so, make a detrimental change to the service, piss off a lot of people.
Yeah, I've moved back from being full on Spotify in the last 2-3 years, largely because of music being taken away. But I never cared much for the physical aspect of physical media, so it's drm free music from itunes/qobuz for me.
Doing similar with movies/tv but more slowly. Partly because the only legal option is ripping blurays/uhds (Need to clarify I'm not in the US), which is more hassle and also they're bulkier to store and finally there's less tv/movie content I'm inclined to rewatch. But movies/tv have the plaftform fragmentation/content going away problem even worse, and the streaming services love to try serve low bitrate content, or even refuse higher resolutions altogether if you're not using a locked down enough setup, so that's been picking up steam for me
> I still buy Music CDs. Why? Because once I have the disc in my hand, no-one can legally take it away from me.
Precisely. The same reason I am wary of digital money. Its just too easy for the powers that be to flip a bit to make it all inaccessible. I do not trust them enough to give them that much power. They can still make things inaccessible, but they would have to put up with some inconveniences.
Mark me old school, but I like the physical cover designs, art work and well done liner notes too.
I’m right there with you. When possible, I still buy a band’s CD. I absolutely love having a CD in hand, being able to appreciate that bands still think about album artwork.
I also find that when I commit to listening to physical media, I’m more likely to listen to the whole thing through, rather than cherry picking songs.
Nobody can take them away, but the problem that I've found with with physical DVDs (I can't comment so much on CDs) is that they deteriorate after just a few years. For a while in 2010, my wife and I routinely borrowed DVDs from a library, but we gave up when it seemed like half of them were unplayable; sometimes from the beginning, sometimes freezing an hour into the movie. Over the next five years, we found that our own small collection of DVDs was becoming unplayable even though we rarely handled them. Now we have only a few DVDs left for our kids to watch in our minivan's DVD player, and I've ripped them so that I can burn new copies every year or two when the previous copies wear out. Replacing our favorites from our old collection with Amazon video purchases seemed like the best option.
> Nobody can take them away, but the problem that I've found with with physical DVDs (I can't comment so much on CDs)
I do exactly like GP: I rip everything to bitperfect (and it's verifiably bitperfect, using online DBs of other people who ripped the same CDs) FLAC files but I still keep my audio CDs.
We do not care if they're unreadable: we've got the bitperfect digital files on our SSDs / servers / USB stick and whatnots.
Now of course it's not convenient if you're always on the road.
But yeah: moved to another country a few weeks ago. My trusty old CDs were in a big cardboard box!
That's weird. Are you sure wherever or however you're storing them isn't damaging them somehow? Or maybe your player is on the way out? I've played some very old discs that work just fine. I haven't had any issues with DVDs despite having a few from the early 2000s.
Library discs are another story. Those are abused to hell and back.
I ditched all 400+ CDs and 300+ DVDs (and some 50 LPs). They just took up space, and never got used. I've just recently paired down my book collection to 20 from 250. I just don't need all this physical stuff that I rarely use.
The thing about CDs and LPs is that they're a store of value, similar to older books. I sold my old LPs but definitely got less than I could have, and I'm not gonna make that mistake with my CD and tape collection. Right now there's at least 10 CDs I bought that have gone up in value in the past year alone.
I do something similar. When I'm actively listening to an album I'll put on a record, if I'm driving or putting on some background music while I do chores or work, I use apple music. I know records are bulky and finicky but I like the ritual, the bigger album art, and little things like reading the liner notes and dead wax markings. I'm not really an audiophile or anything, my setup is pretty middle of the road, I just really like the ritual and the closes I've come digitally was discovering new music in the soulseek chatrooms and organizing my mp3 collection and foobar skin.
Because you don't think you are able to store 1000 audio CDs loss less for the rest of your life?
I mean that's not that much of space.
You probably have other similar critical things like pictures or videos so you have to have a backup strategy for that anyway.
And what music would you have which would be so unique that in the worst case scenario you are happy that you still have those 1000 music CDs but no longer your pictures etc?
Just curious what are these archival bags you're talking about? I just got rid of all my jewel cases and was looking for storage for the CDs themselves, ended up just cutting my own custom dimension cardboard box but if there's good economic alternatives I'm all ears.
On the one hand, you seem to (understandably) take great pride in the legal ownership of your CDs, but on the other hand, you're almost certainly breaking the law by ripping them. How do you feel about that?
I have the same conflict with DVDs/BluRay. I want to play by the rules and pay for the media I enjoy, but it's absurd that it's illegal for me to rip the content that I've lawfully purchased for my own consumption.
Obviously, laws differ in different countries, but in the US, making a backup copy for personal use is considered fair use, and is legal.
With DVDs and Blu-Rays, the situation is less clear because there is a specific law against breaking DRM. However, to my knowledge, there has never been a lawsuit against a _user_ of software that lets you rip a DVD or BD, that law has only been used against companies that make or distribute the software itself. Either because of the fair-use right or plausible deniability, it's unclear whether enforcement of this provision against an individual end-user would be permissible.
> On the one hand, you seem to (understandably) take great pride in the legal ownership of your CDs, but on the other hand, you're almost certainly breaking the law by ripping them. How do you feel about that?
It's totally legal both in the US and the EU (apparently not in the UK though).
Now I do very probably, without knowing it, break some law(s) every single freaking day because "the more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws". And I feel exactly zero guilt about that.
If you're ripping CDs that you purchased and only for your own personal use (i.e. not distributing the ripped files), then IMO the far more relevant question is an ethical one: does what you're doing in any way harm the artists or the copyright holders of the works you are copying?
>I think while CDs (and DVDs, and Blu-rays) are still being sold, they should 100% shift to carboard packaging instead of plastic.
Hard disagree.
I sold my large collection of records recently, for 2 reasons.
1. Because I realized I hadn't listened to effectively any of them in the past 5 years, across 2 house moves. I'm leaving on travel soon and may work abroad in the future, so better to liquidate now than later.
2. My entire collection had that "vintage" stink, aka mold/mildew/etc. I had mixed old and new records together, which effectively tainted the outer cardboard of the records. This caused me a serious amount of stress and anxiety (which is a separate problem to resolve) to the extent that I rushed selling the records to a record store (which I have minor regrets about, blog write-up to come on this all).
This all to say, while I really do dislike how plastic dependent we've become in society, from everything like fruits and plastic bags, I LOVE that CDs come in jewelcases for 3 distinct reasons
1. The plastic CD case protects the CD, and the inner paper booklet, from damage and other external factors, if stored properly. Also, cardboard cases for CDs often don't include inner booklet notes, which is disappointing. Cardboard CD cases are less resilient to damage as well.
I personally need some plastic archival bags (and if you can recommend some, please do), because I want to avoid my CDs coming to a similar fate as my vinyl. I found a few that caught a bit of a stink recently, and hurriedly cleaned the exterior cases (another benefit).
2. The plastic cases help with management and organization of the physical collection very easily, as every case is effectively the same size. While there are some slimline CD releases, and of course cardboard or double/deluxe CD releases, for single CD releases they all conform to the same size, making require space estimates and stacking very convenient to do.
3. Extremely easy to replace if damaged, dirty, smelly, etc. You can buy new blank CD cases so easily, and if you can't find an exact replacement, similar cases could be found. This is one reason I dislike vinyl cardboard covers: if the cover is damaged or stinky/moldy/etc enough, you're screwed. Throw it out, but good luck finding just a cover replacement. Whereas with a CD, you can get a digital copy of the inner booklet and CD one way or another, and remake a new physical copy if desired. Obviously, that's done for personal consumption only.
By extension of that last note, I want to say I love CDs for the fact that they're robust, reliable, DRM-free (excluding previous cases), high quality, and identical every play.
/end my input
/start personal rant
Having the power to own your media physically and digitally is another benefit (by ripping the CD). I also love that many CDs come with the inner booklet which often contains interviews, lyrics, bonus photos, or other fun content that wouldn't be found in a vinyl release. I do admit that vinyl releases are beautiful with the large print 12" covers, but how many records do you realistically prop up on a shelf somewhere?
We moved off VHS tapes to DVD, and Blu-Ray has been around for years now, and yet despite that DVDs are still produced. I don't forsee any kind of death of CD or DVD in the near future, especially as more streaming services pull back or move media in and out of their catalogues; increasing costs don't help either.
Also separate side note, the case for a vinyl record being an involved process I agree with. I would say that limiting CD purchases per month could be viewed in a similar fashion, buying 1-3 a month and listening to each through.
I still use the paper sleeve with window for individual discs. Then bag those + paper inserts. I like those particular bags because they're consistently thin unlike zip-lock style bags so they pack nicely, and they fit most DVD paper inserts/cardboard sleeves except some multi-disc sets.
I'm currently in the process of getting rid of all my plastic jewel cases and agree with op, it should not be the default, there's better ways. If there's a market for plastic they could just sell collector's editions or package it in such a way that it's easy to use your own jewel cases, but I'd prefer a less wasteful default. Steelbook blu rays are on the right track in the collectables regard although they still use more plastic on the inside than I'd like.
>I don’t think any of the writers or outlets publishing these headlines are out to mislead. But none of them seem to have consulted anyone actually trying to sell CDs, either
Nobody even bothered to read the original source report, much less make sense of it, or even gave the article they wrote a minute's thought. They saw the story somewhere else (perhaps got it from a wire service too), and rewrote it just enough to appear as an original article.
They could not care less about the content of the article, or what they were reporting. It's just another thing to post within a day to make the meagre salary they're paid, or to boost one's BS blog.
You're being a little harsh, but essentially correct.
I worked at a newspaper for about five years, even wrote a weekly column for a couple. Lemme tell you, coming up with something interesting to say every week is really hard.
"CD sales are up a tick? Oh, something to write about, which incidentally is my job, thank god." That's it.
This is something that frustrates me about large news/content sites. So much of it reads like it was written because someone needed to write something and not because this particular thing needed to be said.
Only having experience with HDtracks, they don't really have much. Sure they have the most popular stuff for the most part but I often find that albums are missing for an artist or entire artists are missing. Not sure if it is a geographic restriction or if its like that everywhere.
Is it? As far as I know, lossless is only offered for the Apple Music streaming service, but not for downloads from the iTunes store, which remain as 256K AAC files.
Have you done a blind test comparing a 256 or 320 kbps AAC file to a FLAC one? At that bitrate, the AAC file is lossy in the sense that you can't recreate a bit-for-bit perfect copy of the original, but most humans shouldn't hear any difference.
A decent proxy to know that this is true is that at those bitrates, a FLAC file is often smaller than the AAC one. Yes, this makes you wonder why you'd want to use an lossy format instead of the lossless one if you have the choice ... but the point is that you'll probably have just as good an experience with a high-bitrate lossy-encoded file.
> Have you done a blind test comparing a 256 or 320 kbps AAC file to a FLAC one?
That's irrelevant, FLAC is an archival format. If you rip a CD, it makes perfect sense to rip it to flac in order to have no data loss whatsoever, and be able to fork it off to whatever lossy format is de rigueur for your new device. If you rip to a lossy format, then each copies will accumulate approximations from the different codec's perceptual models, especially if you keep deleting the previous copy and only keep the new one.
I don't put FLAC files on my phone, it takes way too much space, and the phone doesn't support it anyway. The phone gets AAC conversions of the "master" FLAC files.
I know thit is about personal entertainment value, but to hopefully add a different perspective: FLAC means being able to use it for mixing/mastering in DJ sets or compilations due to losslessness.
Besides, the quality of 256 VBR won't be the same as 256 CBR, but with FLAC, there's only different compression sizes.
The advantage of storing in FLAC though is that if you do want to encode to a more lossy format later you are not going to make the file worse than if you were to originally go from say .wav to mp3. Or if you wanted to manipulate the file later for use in a movie or something. Given that tons of players do FLAC these days and storage is relatively cheap I don't really see any advantage to using AAC.
That's also dependent on your headphones. I might have shitty earbuds today, but in the future when I might have 3D "puts the sound directly into your brain" phones, I might tell the difference
You'd probably buy the music as a download file from an official store (like Beatport). In fact, a lot of good electronic stuff on there never saw a physical release, so ripping CDs is not even an option.
Licensing probably depends on your country. In Germany, you need to register with GEMA and pay a fee depending on the size of your audience.
Yeah, there are lots of places selling DRM free, lossless music. However, between the lot of them they fall far short of comprehensive coverage and I frequently have to buy and rip CDs to get the music I want.
IANAL, but ripping a CD that you own and then using that digital music yourself is legal - providing the songs to someone else (who hasn't paid for the album) isn't.
You say that, but other people say the opposite. I have no idea who's right. If you happen to have a link to a detailed legal analysis, with references, feel free to post it. I don't promise to read it myself but probably someone reading this is sufficiently interested in copyright law to read further.
The thing with CDs today is that they are merchandise, as with cassettes or vinyl or whatever. You don't buy them to listen to them, but to have them.
I think this understanding is crucially necessary for musicians hopping on this "trend". Like they could make action figures or mood rings or whatever. What the fans want are buying is a tangible thing, a keepsake.
So first they need an actual fan-base that may be interested in a keepsake, and the keepsake should be worthwhile, feel luxurious. Like it doesn't need to actually be expensive, but it shouldn't feel cheap.
Agreed. I think this is why vinyl has taken off. It is much more physical then a CD. The artwork is larger and it just feels more personable. You have to be much more careful with it, and listening to it is a bigger investment. And a collection of vinyl looks great.
I think a similar trend has happened with books. Certainly, e-readers are awesome. But for some things, you really want to have a physical copy. And in that case, a hardback is way better than a paperback. It is a long term keepsake and looks nice on your shelf.
I think for many people, their collection of music, books, or other items allows them to show off their personality to their guests. When I go to someone's house, if they have a large bookshelf, I love to look through it to get an idea of their interests. It can be great conversation starters. You can't do that with purely digital media.
CDs (and tapes and records) have some Hollywood accounting [0] around them, just as movies do. I'm sure the band would much rather you buy their t-shirt or poster or something else that their label had nothing to do with. All this depends on the band and their deal, of course, but just as well, they'll probably make the most profit off a t-shirt anyway.
I think what people take for granted is this was true even before digital piracy. Most exposure to music was through radio play, and cassette copying was fairly popular from 80s onward. Rock wasn't dead yet (or at any rate, it was far more alive) and concert-going was (I think?) bigger among youth in general. Owning records was always an expensive thing and the majority of music fans didn't try to go broke buying every little thing they enjoyed.
Which brings to mind, I always wonder how pop artists are reaching platinum sales today, because their physical media has zero prestige to most collectors. Is it from radio stations and DJs or something? The figures just don't make sense to me. Pop music fans use Spotify or the radio, by and large.
But there are plenty of genres and artists (1-person bands recording in their basement) that don't make sense live or aren't able to perform live.
There is a big difference between a musician and a performer. The bands that are both certainly have the biggest advantage, but we shouldn't discredit people who are just making music.
As a general trend, I’d expect people to not return to mass events (theaters, concerts etc.) in the same numbers as before.
It started before covid, so I think live events won’t be much of a revenue source in the future, except for a select few artists who will attract those still enjoying the crowd experience.
I kinda hope memberships programs and other direct artist/fan settings come to fill that gap at a larger scale.
> musicians will have to earn their income by playing live
Yes!! This is how it's supposed to be. The music itself is not scarce, it's the artists who are scarce. Society doesn't need this copyright rent seeking system. If artists want to make money, they should need to actually perform.
I think the last recent time musicians had to play live often to get income was during the peak of file sharing networks. Now that everybody is willing to pay for services like spotify to listen to their music, live concerts are becoming rare again.
Musicians need to play live now more than ever to make an income; the sale of physical records are going downwards and have been doing so for the past 20 years. [1]
Unless you happen to be amongst the absolute minority of people having a hit single on your hand or a popular back catalogue, you can't expect to make a lot of money from online streams. Several sources [2][3] report that Spotify pays around 0.003 USD per stream on average. Supposedly your musics share of everything streamed in a given month will also impact the actual payout.
This take seems very slanted towards new CD sales.
I listen to a lot of underground music (namely black metal, hip-hop, and the like), and not only are CD's selling out regularly, so are cassettes. Once they've sold out, they hit Discogs and Ebay at severe markups that people are happy to pay. Several CD's that I've bought in the past few years have compounded many times over in value, as the supply can be very limited but the demand isn't diminishing. The spread on my collection per Discogs ranges from $800-$2500. That lower bound has been continuous, but I saw the upper bound increase by $1000 in just the past two years.
It's also not uncommon for me to go hunting for CD's that originally sold in the 80/90/00's, so as to get around "re-masters" that undo the lo-fi sound underground music fans enjoy so much. I doubt my copy of The Cramps' first compilation* is going to reflect in last year's CD sales.
I'm aware that this is a niche interest, but it's a growing niche. There are a few subreddits that I've followed in the past (/r/CDCollectors and /r/CDKvlt), and in my time there, I saw those groups grow considerably.
There IS a CD Revival, if you look in the right place.
> It's also not uncommon for me to go hunting for CD's that originally sold in the 80/90/00's, so as to get around "re-masters" that undo the lo-fi sound underground music fans enjoy so much. I doubt my copy of The Cramps' first compilation* is going to reflect in last year's CD sales.
I'm into pop and rock, but it's not uncommon for me to go hunting for CD's that originally sold before 1996 or so to get around "re-masters" that compress the life out of the music and undo the hi-fi sound that I enjoy so much.
> This take seems very slanted towards new CD sales.
Yeah, because the articles that it's commenting on are about the supposed "increase in sales" of CDs this past year. Which only includes releases in 2021.
I'm not happy paying scalpers, but I WILL pay a Discogs merchant to sell me specific region-locked media (for example, Japan-only releases which often feature special remasters, or often bonus tracks and extra media). The cost of buying from them is often the same or slightly above paying through the real site (plus translation headaches), and cost of a reshipper.
1. The "music industry" which is a carefully controlled mafia of an elite few, yet which consumes as much oxygen as possible in popular media.
2. Every other musician and artist.
The best thing you can do is go around the corner and hear a local band. Go to their merch table at the show and buy the cassette or vinyl they have for sale.
Aside from CDs themselves, has anyone noticed a severe lack of CD players these days?
I might be off-base, but as far as I can tell, basically no laptop computer and rather few desktops come with any type of optical media drives these days. Haven't shopped for a car in a while, but I don't think I've seen one with a CD player either. Most music seems to be consumed on phones and tablets, where it's basically impossible to have a CD drive. I would expect you can still buy standalone home theater-style CD players, but I bet the sales of them are pretty low these days.
The only reason I have a optical media reader at all is that I homebuild my PC. I bought an optical drive for I think like $20 or something like a decade ago on my first build, and just kept the drive and case through multiple upgrades. If I did a new build from scratch tomorrow, I'm not sure I'd bother. My current drive, the door doesn't open half the time, and I haven't bothered to try and fix or replace it, since I basically never use it.
> Haven't shopped for a car in a while, but I don't think I've seen one with a CD player either.
They're still somehow around (don't know for how long). A friend of mine bought a MY2020 BMW and the original owner specc'ed a CD player.
My car also still has one (MY2013).
I care about my physical CD collection but I don't care about actually putting them in a CD player: as long as I can rip them to FLAC, I'm happy. Virtually any el cheapo ($20 USD or so) desktop DVD reader/writer will work to rip CDs. And these are still selling everywhere.
> I care about my physical CD collection but I don't care about actually putting them in a CD player:
Indeed, get into an accident or hit a rare bump and now your CD is scratched.
Not sure if this would still happen in 2022, but at the least back in the day an entire music collection of original CDs was worth stealing in a car break in.
The baseline radio in many cars is an AM/FM with Bluetooth or Audio in. CD is usually still provided with the upgraded package, but many people don’t have stereos at all anymore - let alone one with a CD player.
The author, Damon Krukowski, recently did an interesting interview on Bloomberg's Odd Lots about streaming music services and basically how they screw over small time musicians:
> Earlier this year, there was a growing movement among some musicians (lead by Neil Young) to remove music from Spotify as a protest against Joe Rogan. But frustration at the streaming music giant goes back a lot further than that. And it has to do with how royalties are paid, and the lack of transparency about how music gets discovered on the service. On this episode of Odd Lots, Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal speak with Damon Krukowsky, the former drummer of the indie rock band Galaxie 500, and one half of the duo Damon and Naomi. He gives us his perception of industry economics, and explains his frustration as an independent musician with how the service works.
Readit News
However, my households use of streaming media (mainly Spotify) has increased for 'casual' listening, so I think there is a balance, and I hope that buying physical media for music wont disappear completely any time soon.
All my CDs (over 1,000 of popular/rock/metal and about 400 of classical, at the last count) are ripped in a lossless format, and on my file server, to be enjoyed in a modern way. I do dislike jewel cases, and all my CDs (and inlays etc.) have been re-homed into archival bags, which take up a lot less space. I think while CDs (and DVDs, and Blu-rays) are still being sold, they should 100% shift to carboard packaging instead of plastic.
I know I'm showing my age, but there's just something enjoyably tangible about physical media, as opposed ephemeral files stored in a cloud.
Instead I have about 9000 mp3 files.
I find streaming services frustrating because their recommendation algorithm suck. I tried playing "Swing" and it gave me "Volare" by Dean Martin. (that's not Swing), I pick Prince Radio and it plays rap (Prince has no relation to rap). My mom's into Tuba Skinny so I pick Tuba Skinny radio, every song it choose was nothing like Tuba Skinny (Dixieland Jazz). And on and on. It get music similar to the artists less than 1 out of 6 times.
Prince certainly created some songs that would qualify as rap, and they were some fairly big hits:
My Name is Prince: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0g9Qkrc8nE
Sexy MF, including the rap section here: https://youtu.be/bfHsF6FKgb4?t=324
A compilation of some Prince raps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ez4iEHtAuw
I bounce between Spotify and Youtube Music and Apple Music. I recently got into Apple Music library curation but then I got a Tesla which supports Spotify (and Tidal, but...). So I'm back on Spotify. But Apple Music has one really nifty thing -- highlighting major tracks on albums so that album exploration can be enhanced a bit.
But honestly, my appetite for keeping up with and curating albums is waning. I wish there was a nice "cd changer" like interface to one of these services -- load up 6 albums and randomize. Queueing isn't the same.
(I'll repeat a desire I've had a long time -- playlists of albums, not tracks, with album-shuffle. So simple, yet nobody supports it).
I have a few online streaming radio stations I love -- Radio Paradise in particular. Someday I can see chucking all the "streaming service album" management and just going other-peoples-radio.
Slacker (in the Tesla) is also good enough.
- bandcamp.com - mostly indie, but I've actually purchased a few more "mainstream" artists from here in the last couple years. - hdtracks.com - have a wide selection, but tend to be pretty pricey.
Doing similar with movies/tv but more slowly. Partly because the only legal option is ripping blurays/uhds (Need to clarify I'm not in the US), which is more hassle and also they're bulkier to store and finally there's less tv/movie content I'm inclined to rewatch. But movies/tv have the plaftform fragmentation/content going away problem even worse, and the streaming services love to try serve low bitrate content, or even refuse higher resolutions altogether if you're not using a locked down enough setup, so that's been picking up steam for me
Sadly bandcamp has been bought by Epic, so it's unlikely to live long :(
Precisely. The same reason I am wary of digital money. Its just too easy for the powers that be to flip a bit to make it all inaccessible. I do not trust them enough to give them that much power. They can still make things inaccessible, but they would have to put up with some inconveniences.
Mark me old school, but I like the physical cover designs, art work and well done liner notes too.
I also find that when I commit to listening to physical media, I’m more likely to listen to the whole thing through, rather than cherry picking songs.
I do exactly like GP: I rip everything to bitperfect (and it's verifiably bitperfect, using online DBs of other people who ripped the same CDs) FLAC files but I still keep my audio CDs.
We do not care if they're unreadable: we've got the bitperfect digital files on our SSDs / servers / USB stick and whatnots.
Now of course it's not convenient if you're always on the road.
But yeah: moved to another country a few weeks ago. My trusty old CDs were in a big cardboard box!
Library discs are another story. Those are abused to hell and back.
Why exactly do you buy a physical medium?
Because you don't think you are able to store 1000 audio CDs loss less for the rest of your life?
I mean that's not that much of space.
You probably have other similar critical things like pictures or videos so you have to have a backup strategy for that anyway.
And what music would you have which would be so unique that in the worst case scenario you are happy that you still have those 1000 music CDs but no longer your pictures etc?
I have the same conflict with DVDs/BluRay. I want to play by the rules and pay for the media I enjoy, but it's absurd that it's illegal for me to rip the content that I've lawfully purchased for my own consumption.
With DVDs and Blu-Rays, the situation is less clear because there is a specific law against breaking DRM. However, to my knowledge, there has never been a lawsuit against a _user_ of software that lets you rip a DVD or BD, that law has only been used against companies that make or distribute the software itself. Either because of the fair-use right or plausible deniability, it's unclear whether enforcement of this provision against an individual end-user would be permissible.
It's totally legal both in the US and the EU (apparently not in the UK though).
Now I do very probably, without knowing it, break some law(s) every single freaking day because "the more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws". And I feel exactly zero guilt about that.
Hard disagree.
I sold my large collection of records recently, for 2 reasons.
1. Because I realized I hadn't listened to effectively any of them in the past 5 years, across 2 house moves. I'm leaving on travel soon and may work abroad in the future, so better to liquidate now than later.
2. My entire collection had that "vintage" stink, aka mold/mildew/etc. I had mixed old and new records together, which effectively tainted the outer cardboard of the records. This caused me a serious amount of stress and anxiety (which is a separate problem to resolve) to the extent that I rushed selling the records to a record store (which I have minor regrets about, blog write-up to come on this all).
This all to say, while I really do dislike how plastic dependent we've become in society, from everything like fruits and plastic bags, I LOVE that CDs come in jewelcases for 3 distinct reasons
1. The plastic CD case protects the CD, and the inner paper booklet, from damage and other external factors, if stored properly. Also, cardboard cases for CDs often don't include inner booklet notes, which is disappointing. Cardboard CD cases are less resilient to damage as well.
I personally need some plastic archival bags (and if you can recommend some, please do), because I want to avoid my CDs coming to a similar fate as my vinyl. I found a few that caught a bit of a stink recently, and hurriedly cleaned the exterior cases (another benefit).
2. The plastic cases help with management and organization of the physical collection very easily, as every case is effectively the same size. While there are some slimline CD releases, and of course cardboard or double/deluxe CD releases, for single CD releases they all conform to the same size, making require space estimates and stacking very convenient to do.
3. Extremely easy to replace if damaged, dirty, smelly, etc. You can buy new blank CD cases so easily, and if you can't find an exact replacement, similar cases could be found. This is one reason I dislike vinyl cardboard covers: if the cover is damaged or stinky/moldy/etc enough, you're screwed. Throw it out, but good luck finding just a cover replacement. Whereas with a CD, you can get a digital copy of the inner booklet and CD one way or another, and remake a new physical copy if desired. Obviously, that's done for personal consumption only.
By extension of that last note, I want to say I love CDs for the fact that they're robust, reliable, DRM-free (excluding previous cases), high quality, and identical every play.
/end my input /start personal rant
Having the power to own your media physically and digitally is another benefit (by ripping the CD). I also love that many CDs come with the inner booklet which often contains interviews, lyrics, bonus photos, or other fun content that wouldn't be found in a vinyl release. I do admit that vinyl releases are beautiful with the large print 12" covers, but how many records do you realistically prop up on a shelf somewhere?
We moved off VHS tapes to DVD, and Blu-Ray has been around for years now, and yet despite that DVDs are still produced. I don't forsee any kind of death of CD or DVD in the near future, especially as more streaming services pull back or move media in and out of their catalogues; increasing costs don't help either.
Also separate side note, the case for a vinyl record being an involved process I agree with. I would say that limiting CD purchases per month could be viewed in a similar fashion, buying 1-3 a month and listening to each through.
Keep on collecting!
I still use the paper sleeve with window for individual discs. Then bag those + paper inserts. I like those particular bags because they're consistently thin unlike zip-lock style bags so they pack nicely, and they fit most DVD paper inserts/cardboard sleeves except some multi-disc sets.
Nobody even bothered to read the original source report, much less make sense of it, or even gave the article they wrote a minute's thought. They saw the story somewhere else (perhaps got it from a wire service too), and rewrote it just enough to appear as an original article.
They could not care less about the content of the article, or what they were reporting. It's just another thing to post within a day to make the meagre salary they're paid, or to boost one's BS blog.
I worked at a newspaper for about five years, even wrote a weekly column for a couple. Lemme tell you, coming up with something interesting to say every week is really hard.
"CD sales are up a tick? Oh, something to write about, which incidentally is my job, thank god." That's it.
* It must be lossless and high quality.
* It must work offline.
Is it? As far as I know, lossless is only offered for the Apple Music streaming service, but not for downloads from the iTunes store, which remain as 256K AAC files.
Programmes like iTunes appear to be unlawful as they enable and encourage this infringement.
UK copyright law isn't fit for it's alleged purpose.
This is true of copyright law everywhere.
A decent proxy to know that this is true is that at those bitrates, a FLAC file is often smaller than the AAC one. Yes, this makes you wonder why you'd want to use an lossy format instead of the lossless one if you have the choice ... but the point is that you'll probably have just as good an experience with a high-bitrate lossy-encoded file.
That's irrelevant, FLAC is an archival format. If you rip a CD, it makes perfect sense to rip it to flac in order to have no data loss whatsoever, and be able to fork it off to whatever lossy format is de rigueur for your new device. If you rip to a lossy format, then each copies will accumulate approximations from the different codec's perceptual models, especially if you keep deleting the previous copy and only keep the new one.
I don't put FLAC files on my phone, it takes way too much space, and the phone doesn't support it anyway. The phone gets AAC conversions of the "master" FLAC files.
Besides, the quality of 256 VBR won't be the same as 256 CBR, but with FLAC, there's only different compression sizes.
Adjacent question: what’s the legally correct way to license music for public use (e.g. DJ set)
Licensing probably depends on your country. In Germany, you need to register with GEMA and pay a fee depending on the size of your audience.
I think this understanding is crucially necessary for musicians hopping on this "trend". Like they could make action figures or mood rings or whatever. What the fans want are buying is a tangible thing, a keepsake.
So first they need an actual fan-base that may be interested in a keepsake, and the keepsake should be worthwhile, feel luxurious. Like it doesn't need to actually be expensive, but it shouldn't feel cheap.
I think a similar trend has happened with books. Certainly, e-readers are awesome. But for some things, you really want to have a physical copy. And in that case, a hardback is way better than a paperback. It is a long term keepsake and looks nice on your shelf.
I think for many people, their collection of music, books, or other items allows them to show off their personality to their guests. When I go to someone's house, if they have a large bookshelf, I love to look through it to get an idea of their interests. It can be great conversation starters. You can't do that with purely digital media.
0 - https://www.techdirt.com/2010/07/13/riaa-accounting-why-even...
Which brings to mind, I always wonder how pop artists are reaching platinum sales today, because their physical media has zero prestige to most collectors. Is it from radio stations and DJs or something? The figures just don't make sense to me. Pop music fans use Spotify or the radio, by and large.
There is a big difference between a musician and a performer. The bands that are both certainly have the biggest advantage, but we shouldn't discredit people who are just making music.
It started before covid, so I think live events won’t be much of a revenue source in the future, except for a select few artists who will attract those still enjoying the crowd experience.
I kinda hope memberships programs and other direct artist/fan settings come to fill that gap at a larger scale.
Yes!! This is how it's supposed to be. The music itself is not scarce, it's the artists who are scarce. Society doesn't need this copyright rent seeking system. If artists want to make money, they should need to actually perform.
Unless you happen to be amongst the absolute minority of people having a hit single on your hand or a popular back catalogue, you can't expect to make a lot of money from online streams. Several sources [2][3] report that Spotify pays around 0.003 USD per stream on average. Supposedly your musics share of everything streamed in a given month will also impact the actual payout.
[1] - https://gloriousnoise.com/2022/data-2021-total-music-sales-a... [2] - https://subjekt.no/2020/08/09/som-musiker-er-det-nesten-umul... (Norwegian) [3] - https://www.orpheusaudioacademy.com/spotify-pay/
I listen to a lot of underground music (namely black metal, hip-hop, and the like), and not only are CD's selling out regularly, so are cassettes. Once they've sold out, they hit Discogs and Ebay at severe markups that people are happy to pay. Several CD's that I've bought in the past few years have compounded many times over in value, as the supply can be very limited but the demand isn't diminishing. The spread on my collection per Discogs ranges from $800-$2500. That lower bound has been continuous, but I saw the upper bound increase by $1000 in just the past two years.
It's also not uncommon for me to go hunting for CD's that originally sold in the 80/90/00's, so as to get around "re-masters" that undo the lo-fi sound underground music fans enjoy so much. I doubt my copy of The Cramps' first compilation* is going to reflect in last year's CD sales.
I'm aware that this is a niche interest, but it's a growing niche. There are a few subreddits that I've followed in the past (/r/CDCollectors and /r/CDKvlt), and in my time there, I saw those groups grow considerably.
There IS a CD Revival, if you look in the right place.
I'm into pop and rock, but it's not uncommon for me to go hunting for CD's that originally sold before 1996 or so to get around "re-masters" that compress the life out of the music and undo the hi-fi sound that I enjoy so much.
Yeah, because the articles that it's commenting on are about the supposed "increase in sales" of CDs this past year. Which only includes releases in 2021.
No one is happy to pay a scalper.
1. The "music industry" which is a carefully controlled mafia of an elite few, yet which consumes as much oxygen as possible in popular media.
2. Every other musician and artist.
The best thing you can do is go around the corner and hear a local band. Go to their merch table at the show and buy the cassette or vinyl they have for sale.
I might be off-base, but as far as I can tell, basically no laptop computer and rather few desktops come with any type of optical media drives these days. Haven't shopped for a car in a while, but I don't think I've seen one with a CD player either. Most music seems to be consumed on phones and tablets, where it's basically impossible to have a CD drive. I would expect you can still buy standalone home theater-style CD players, but I bet the sales of them are pretty low these days.
The only reason I have a optical media reader at all is that I homebuild my PC. I bought an optical drive for I think like $20 or something like a decade ago on my first build, and just kept the drive and case through multiple upgrades. If I did a new build from scratch tomorrow, I'm not sure I'd bother. My current drive, the door doesn't open half the time, and I haven't bothered to try and fix or replace it, since I basically never use it.
They're still somehow around (don't know for how long). A friend of mine bought a MY2020 BMW and the original owner specc'ed a CD player.
My car also still has one (MY2013).
I care about my physical CD collection but I don't care about actually putting them in a CD player: as long as I can rip them to FLAC, I'm happy. Virtually any el cheapo ($20 USD or so) desktop DVD reader/writer will work to rip CDs. And these are still selling everywhere.
Indeed, get into an accident or hit a rare bump and now your CD is scratched.
Not sure if this would still happen in 2022, but at the least back in the day an entire music collection of original CDs was worth stealing in a car break in.
Only put easily replacable copies in your car.
> Earlier this year, there was a growing movement among some musicians (lead by Neil Young) to remove music from Spotify as a protest against Joe Rogan. But frustration at the streaming music giant goes back a lot further than that. And it has to do with how royalties are paid, and the lack of transparency about how music gets discovered on the service. On this episode of Odd Lots, Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal speak with Damon Krukowsky, the former drummer of the indie rock band Galaxie 500, and one half of the duo Damon and Naomi. He gives us his perception of industry economics, and explains his frustration as an independent musician with how the service works.
* https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/ee1d1ad6-b109-11ec-b00b-0f6...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_Krukowski