[HN Gopher] CD sales grow for first time since 2004
___________________________________________________________________
CD sales grow for first time since 2004
Author : Drew_
Score : 141 points
Date : 2022-03-11 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| pacifika wrote:
| Yeah the current generation sees right through software as a
| tracking service.
| bin_bash wrote:
| You think teens wary of Spotify tracking what they listen to
| caused a 15% increase in sales?
| pacifika wrote:
| Teens see the result of the internet on their mental health,
| and decide to forego it yes. Even lawmakers clued up
| onemoresoop wrote:
| I really hope to see that and maybe a movement emerging in
| that direction. Sadly teenagers are one good target for
| commercial music because they could be easily manipulated
| with tropes that no longer work for other age groups (but
| they did when they were teenagers).
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I have two teenage children and they both pay out of their
| own pockets for Spotify
| trophycase wrote:
| My experience is that teens have poor mental health and
| have no idea the internet is causing it.
| irrational wrote:
| Wait, what? You are joking, right? What percentage of teens
| have foregone the Internet?
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| you got some sources to back that up?
| pavlov wrote:
| After a decade of streaming movies, I started buying Blu-Rays
| again last year.
|
| The last straw was trying to watch Kurosawa's "Ran". The
| supposedly 4K remaster available on Amazon Prime Video is
| criminally badly encoded. During the raid on the castle, you
| literally can't see the smoke because macroblocks are popping so
| hard on every keyframe.
|
| The Blu-Ray is pristine and nobody can take it away from me. With
| streaming services, you pay for movies but you never know what
| quality they actually deliver on a given day. These are public
| corporations trying to deliver shareholder returns in what has
| become an environment of sinking stock prices, so if they can
| save on bandwidth costs by making the movie look a bit worse,
| they'll probably do it at some point -- and then again next
| quarter.
| deergomoo wrote:
| > The supposedly 4K remaster available on Amazon Prime Video is
| criminally badly encoded. During the raid on the castle, you
| literally can't see the smoke because macroblocks are popping
| so hard on every keyframe
|
| This is such a widespread issue, especially in dark scenes.
| Netflix is bad, but Prime Video seems by far the worst. I
| watched Mr Robot through a few months ago, and at times it was
| like watching 2009-era YouTube, despite being 4K on paper.
|
| I'll take a 1080p Blu-Ray over a 4K stream any day. UHD Blu-Ray
| is nice, but it's a shame it's still 1.5-2x the price of
| regular BD. Then again you can still buy DVDs for some reason,
| so I guess high quality physical media is starting to be
| considered an enthusiast option..
| xeromal wrote:
| Similarly related, I've been collecting UHD blu-rays for the past
| year and have been enjoying it greatly.
|
| Lawrence of Arabia is being released as a 4k scan later this year
| and I'm pumped!
|
| I think there are a few parts to physical media collection
|
| * No fear of the media getting "Cancelled" and you losing access
| to it
|
| * Quality is always consistent. 4k and high quality audio bit
| rates generally do ok when streaming but start artifacting when
| there are any hiccups in your connection. I have GB service and I
| Still have low quality moments on my streaming.
|
| * Collecting items scratches an itch I didn't know I had
|
| * With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you songs
| that you wouldn't normally consider or search for. Spotify makes
| it easy to skip a song you may not like but I tend to try out new
| songs on my record player and sometimes I like new things
|
| * The artwork for blu-rays, vynyls, and CDs can be beautiful and
| make a nice addition to a shelf or library in your living room.
| Scalestein wrote:
| Something about vinyl specifically is the fact that there is a
| real break in the album when one side ends. It requires some
| thought and gives an additional aspect to artists when creating
| the track listing.
|
| For example, "Stairway To Heaven" is the last track on the
| first side of Led Zeppelin IV. If you listen on Spotify the
| song hits the (overplayed) epic climax, smooth come down and
| ends with some haunting vocals. Then immediately the jaunty bop
| of Misty Mountain Hop comes on all bouncing around the room in
| a totally contrasting upbeat mood. Very jarring.
|
| It is very obvious these were planned to the end of one side
| and the beginning of another. When Stairway ends I need a
| minute to breathe and take it in before moving on. With a vinyl
| record this is planned for and intended by the artist, but on
| any other medium (save cassettes maybe) you lose this
| capability.
| mark-r wrote:
| Even just the fact that the artist gets to specify the play
| order. Today it's rare that a playlist will even have two
| songs from the same artist in sequence, but in olden days you
| could have a sequence that was greater than the sum of the
| parts. My favorite example is the last 3 songs on side A of
| The Cars Candy-O - Double Life is kind of relaxing, Shoo Be
| Doo cranks up the tension, and Candy-O starts with a
| crescendo that releases the tension. I don't actually know if
| that was intentional, but it feels like it was.
| bgorman wrote:
| If you use YouTube and search for "LG Oled 4k" you will find
| fantastic looking streaming videos that look better than
| anything streaming from Netflix, HBO max, Disney plus, Apple TV
| etc...
|
| It is very frustrating that Blu Ray is the only way to get high
| quality Hollywood content. The technology is there for
| streaming
| humaniania wrote:
| I don't understand 4K blu ray. It's 4x the resolution of HD but
| only has ~2x the storage capacity of blu ray. Isn't that
| limiting bitrate/quality?
| xeromal wrote:
| UHD Blu-Rays can go up to 100GB in capacity and can be read
| at 144Mbits/second. I don't think it limits many movies, but
| my 4k Lord of the Rings copy has the movie split into
| multiple discs.
| deergomoo wrote:
| Different codecs. Regular Blu-Rays are largely H.264 (though
| some of the original releases are MPEG-2 like DVDs); UHD is
| H.265 which is way more space efficient.
| WalterBright wrote:
| All true except for one thing. DVDs and Blurays are very
| susceptible to the slightest damage, even invisible damage.
| Every time I play one, I wonder if it is going to play or hang
| halfway through. Many also make it hard to actually get to the
| movie, inserting several minutes worth of various delays.
|
| At least CDs don't have that last problem, just insert and they
| play. CDs can also be pretty beat up and still play fine.
| titzer wrote:
| I have over 1000 DVDs. The vast majority I bought used.
| They're a lot more durable in my experience, as long as you
| don't abuse them. Slight scratches can be buffed out. Some
| have a reflective foil layer printed on the "up" side (rather
| than integrated into the plastic layers), and if you damage
| that, it's hosed.
|
| Store your DVDs in sleeves or in the original cases, and you
| shouldn't have any problems. Don't leave them laying around
| or stack them.
|
| At some point I want to rip all my DVDs and put them on a
| media server (~4-6TB worth), but it's a serious undertaking.
| mark-r wrote:
| When my kids were very young, I discovered that they had a
| talent for destroying DVDs. So I put together a media PC
| and started ripping. I've had to upgrade the HD a couple of
| times, but every kid's DVD I ever bought is now available
| instantly on that PC, and the originals are packed away in
| boxes where they don't get touched.
| adenozine wrote:
| Local computer shops might be a place I'd check. I know
| some places that could put a high schooler after school to
| work on a simple project like that for a few days.
| titzer wrote:
| I calculated that 4 DVDs per hour would take 250
| hours....that's several weeks of work. I found a robot
| that does this, but the company that makes it seems to
| have gone out of business.
| morsch wrote:
| You could use multiple drives in parallel. Also:
| https://github.com/automatic-ripping-machine/automatic-
| rippi...
| adenozine wrote:
| Assuming a single-threaded process with one final
| destination, sure. If you're just archiving them, a
| couple cheap-o machines with external SSDs can really
| crank through the bytes.
|
| 1000 dvds is really not such a large number, it will go a
| lot quicker than you think.
|
| Source: I once made 180(!) copies of a ~400 page document
| for an event, by using six copy machines and collating
| from stacks of 30 sheets. I don't remember exactly how
| long it took, but it was less than 2 full workdays. It's
| all about the M:N efficiency!
| marcodiego wrote:
| > Many also make it hard to actually get to the movie,
| inserting several minutes worth of various delays.
|
| This depends on the software you use to play it.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I wish the component players had better read failure
| programming to overcome those scratches. I have tried finding
| reviews for the better players with no luck. Using a laptop
| sometimes handles scratches better.
| WalterBright wrote:
| In my experience, DVD players have gotten steadily more
| able to deal with damaged discs over the years. But still,
| if one doesn't play in one player, it might play in
| another, or maybe a blueray machine will play it. It's not
| predictable.
|
| Sometimes, washing the disc will get it to play. Sometimes,
| rubbing a tiny bit of oil (!) on it will get it to play.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| From my understanding, CDs are actually quite prone to damage
| because the layer that stores the data is actually on the
| "label" side of the CD. Anything that damages the label can
| also damage the data layer just underneath.
|
| DVDs moved the data layer into the middle - sandwiched
| between two layers of plastic, Blu-rays move it to the
| surface opposite the label, but add a protective coating to
| try to keep it from getting damaged[1]. I _think_ DVDs are
| actually the least prone to permanent damage from scratches
| because of their sandwich structure - surface scratches can
| often be buffed out. However all 3 can also progressively
| rust if damage exposes the recording layer to air[2].
|
| [1] https://www.cdrom2go.com/blu-ray-information
|
| [2] https://blog.discogs.com/en/say-no-to-disc-rot-how-to-
| look-a...
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Yeah my experience with physical media from the cassette
| age to now is that CDs are by far the most finnicky of the
| physical medias. Any little scratch or gunk leads to
| skipping and bad playback. I can count on one hand how few
| DVDs I've seen that had problems, and I've never seen a
| blu-ray that ever failed to play.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I was archiving / ISO'ing my CDs/DVDs last month. So many
| of them weren't even recognized as a disk. Many had read
| errors. The disks were in proper form.
|
| Did the same for my 3.5" floppy disks. None of those had
| problems
| metalliqaz wrote:
| You should note that if you were using Windows 10, it
| sometimes has problems with old CD-ROMs. If you rip the
| disk, it reads fine, but Windows Explorer doesn't
| understand the filesystem and reports the disk as a DVD-R
| or something
| sascha_sl wrote:
| It's important to mention the durability of the medium is
| very different when you compare writables to pressed, and
| there's a large variance in quality for writeables,
| particularly now that lots of old stock (with a history
| of non-favourable storage conditions) is intemixed with
| demand being low.
|
| If you really value your data, use archive disks. They
| are costly, but they will actually reach their rated
| lifespan, often of 50-100 years.
| nicoburns wrote:
| In many jurisdictions it's legal to have a digital backup if
| you own the cd/dvd. So you wouldn't necessarily have to
| actually use the CD/DVD to play the media.
| chasil wrote:
| Actually, Blu-rays are supposed to have an improved chemical
| formulation that resists scratches/damage compared to CD and
| DVD media.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Hard-
| coating_technolog...
|
| Audio on scratched CDs can sometimes be cleanly ripped and
| repaired with the cdparanoia program. I don't know anything
| that does this with DVDs.
|
| https://www.xiph.org/paranoia/
|
| CDs and DVDs can also be refinished by equipment that grinds
| down and polishes the plastic, assuming the data layer is
| intact beneath it. This cannot be done with Blu-ray media,
| because of the altered surface chemistry.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Same here. I started buying UHDs because they meet or exceed
| theatrical resolution. I stopped buying DVDs and BluRays
| knowing that someday I'd have a TV where I'd see the pixels.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you
| songs that you wouldn't normally consider or search for.
| Spotify makes it easy to skip a song you may not like but I
| tend to try out new songs on my record player and sometimes I
| like new things
|
| This is the exact itch I tried to replicate with
| https://audile.app
|
| It loads a random album from Deezer's collection on every page
| load.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I'm glad that more people than me are doing this. I'm concerned
| about the shrinking selection of PC Blueray drives will prevent
| us from further keeping control of our media. The problem with
| Blueray is the requirement of needing updates for newer titles.
| There are methods of stripping the DRM and getting unencumbered
| files but after they stop selling the last blueray drive then
| the clock starts.
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, I've thought about this too. I have an LG super drive
| that does blu ray, lightscribe, and a bunch of other cool
| tech but it's about 8-10 years old. I'm waiting for it to
| self destruct. lol
| nebula8804 wrote:
| LG sells Bluerays drive that can be hacked but
| unfortunately they have mixed quality/reliability. Pioneer
| sells really reliable drives that can only currently do
| regular blueray, not 4k but they are being worked on. I
| suggest to nab one before they disappear and then hopefully
| they get cracked eventually. MakeMKV forums can provide
| more info.
| [deleted]
| IYasha wrote:
| +1! btw, I heard it's notoriously hard to play UHDs on a PC -
| how do you do it?
| 6yyyyyy wrote:
| You let someone else do all the hard work and download their
| DRM-free torrent.
| tnbp wrote:
| MakeMKV makes it trivial.
| xeromal wrote:
| This is the right way!
| georgeecollins wrote:
| You can still buy albums on MP3 from a variety of places. I
| guess that is the same as getting the CD and ripping it, but I
| like to own MP3s I have paid for. I enjoy playing music from my
| collection rather than having it served to me by a service for
| a variety of reasons. But I am not knocking streaming. It's
| just nice to really have the asset.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| You can't trust that commercial MP3s are encoded for gapless
| playback which is sort of important for live albums that play
| through without stopping. On my rips all pregaps are
| preserved at the end of the previous track and playback is
| always identical to the CD.
| opan wrote:
| Maybe I'm being pedantic, but CDs are higher quality than MP3
| usually. You can rip losslessly to WAV or FLAC and preserve
| the original. MP3 is lossy and will be a lesser version.
| HNDen21 wrote:
| when you buy a CD from amazon.. for lots of them, you can
| download the MP3s right away after you paid for it
| jolmg wrote:
| Didn't know that. It's a weird disparity that you can't
| download a PDF when you bought a book. You get an online
| book viewer instead. I would have expected them to
| likewise stream the audio if anything, or require you to
| use their app to listen to it.
| mzvkxlcvd wrote:
| one problem i've found with music is someone discovers an
| uncleared sample, and the album either becomes unavailable,
| or stays available with samples removed so its not actually
| the same album anymore.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Not a problem if you buy DRM free files, which most places
| offer. You're just responsible for storing them from the
| moment of purchase.
| mzvkxlcvd wrote:
| it is a problem. if you go to buy the album today, the
| updated versions already have the offending samples
| removed. the originally released CD does not have this
| problem.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I've been buying DVDs/Blu-Rays again.
|
| In my case it's mainly because you can't trust the online
| streaming companies to preserve access to content, especially
| if it's older content that's no longer considered politically
| appropriate.
|
| The watershed moment for me was when Netflix removed The Mighty
| Boosh over a small number of admittedly questionable scenes.
| There are other places I could stream it from, but some other
| content can be hard to find, even illegally. Other comedies
| have had scenes modified or episodes pulled.
|
| As a side benefit, I concur with the observation that the
| quality of Blu-rays and even DVDs is typically better than the
| streamers. Lots of films are 4k Dolby vision on Blu-Ray but
| still only 1080p on Netflix/Prime. Apple TV tends to be better,
| but usually no cheaper than buying the disc.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Sometimes it's almost as if they want you to pirate stuff.
|
| Monkey Dust Series 3 is another series that is now impossible
| to buy legally. They used various people's music but didn't
| have the rights, so it got broadcast and then they couldn't
| sell it on DVD.
|
| I like to keep a copy of obscure and hard to find recordings
| - it's almost as if recent history is being erased before our
| very eyes.
| pram wrote:
| Monkey Dust is criminally underrated.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| > Monkey Dust Series 3 is another series that is now
| impossible to buy legally. They used various people's music
| but didn't have the rights, so it got broadcast and then
| they couldn't sell it on DVD.
|
| This has become a reoccurring thing in the streaming world.
| Dramas have taken to changing the songs, and in the case of
| Dawson's Creek _the theme_ [0].
|
| I one time tried to watch an episode of Bevis and Butthead
| streaming, and the parts where they comment on videos were
| dead silent except for their remarks. Weird
|
| [0] https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a34671665/why-
| dawsons-cr...
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Limmy's Show Season 3 is the exact same:
| https://twitter.com/daftlimmy/status/542009546588581888
|
| The fact that the BBC could make this mistake several times
| does strike me as incompetence.
|
| The Monkey Dust situation is a real shame, as it was such a
| ground-breaking and innovative comedy programmes of its
| time. Ridiculous that something so influential can now only
| be watched thanks to piracy. Also kind of ironic
| considering some of the themes of Monkey Dust...
|
| The Wikipedia article also says this: "Another reason for
| the lack of DVD releases of the later series is thought to
| be the 'teenage jihadi' sketches being considered
| unsuitable in the wake of the 7 July 2005 London bombings
| that occurred a few months later."
| mattl wrote:
| Buy DVDs and rip them and run your own Plex server.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Even situations like Seinfeld. Netflix altered the aspect
| ratio by cropping the image, and it really does effect the
| show. And there's no option to change it.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| That was done for the HD syndication run. Not Netflix's
| fault.
| mod50ack wrote:
| However, Crackle ran HD 4:3 versions (in the original
| framing), so those do exist.
| jdesmond wrote:
| I do the much cheaper version of this and collect high quality
| 4k rips of movies and amass private tracker accounts.
|
| A normal length movie is about 80-100GB.
|
| I like the process of making groups in Plex too!
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I wish there was some guarantee of a movie's integrity
| matches the original disc. There are so many versions of a
| file floating around and while the file size of 80-100GB
| seems to indicate no transcoding, you can't be 100% sure.
| DougMellon wrote:
| >With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you songs
| that you wouldn't normally consider or search for. Spotify
| makes it easy to skip a song you may not like but I tend to try
| out new songs on my record player and sometimes I like new
| things
|
| We currently have an old Macbook Pro running Qobuz that sits
| next to our receiver. I used to stand up and skip to the next
| song if I didn't like a track but it grew old quickly and I now
| just let it play through.
|
| I never realized how much good music I was skipping until now.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| > With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you
| songs that you wouldn't normally consider or search for.
| Spotify makes it easy to skip a song you may not like but I
| tend to try out new songs on my record player and sometimes I
| like new things
|
| This seems funny to me. Discoverability of new songs (and
| artists) seems like the strongest benefit of Spotify and it's
| kin. I usually check out a new album multiple times a week
| layer8 wrote:
| It's not discoverability, it's giving songs a chance that
| don't sound appealing at first, because skipping them would
| be too much of a hassle. Songs can grow on you after
| listening to them a couple of times even if you didn't like
| them initially. When using streaming services, that
| trajectory rarely happens unless you specifically decide to
| always listen to the whole album, multiple times.
| xeromal wrote:
| This is exactly what I meant. If a song doesn't immediately
| tickle my fancy on spotify, I hit next. With a vinyl, I
| just leave it on and oftentimes I end up liking it.
| spoonjim wrote:
| After several startups shut down and caused me to scramble to
| export my data and change my workflow I've decided to put much
| less of my life in things that other companies can tear away from
| me. I use Dropbox, iCloud, etc. that I expect to stay available
| and without big price increases, as well as things like Spotify
| where I make sure to not invest too much time in curating
| playlists in case Spotify's pricing gets raised to the point
| where I don't want to use it anymore. Perhaps others have done
| the same.
| ozzythecat wrote:
| I stopped purchasing ebooks and am buying hardcover or paperback,
| even if it costs more.
|
| I want to physically own my purchases, not just have some
| entitlement to some file on a server.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm not buying NFTs, either!
| uhtred wrote:
| it's often cheaper to buy a cd and rip to flac than to buy a hi-
| res download. Plus you also then have the cd to play on cd
| player!
| dehrmann wrote:
| Only if your time is free.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I'm ashamed to admit that I will never be compensated for the
| four minutes it took to rip the hour long CD that I will
| listen to for the next few decades of my life.
|
| Instead, I invoiced HN for the time it took me to browse this
| forum and post this comment, and I strongly urge HN to
| require registered users to include personal payment
| information so we can bill each other for our time spent
| reading and replying to each other.
|
| Life is a tax on my time, and I will not be cheated.
| uhtred wrote:
| I do it in my free time
| mindslight wrote:
| I don't understand how people can post comments like this as
| support for _streaming_.
|
| Not being able to watch/listen anything when Internet uplink
| or service is down. Low quality and artifacts due to
| congestion. Relearning menus when on-high decides to change
| the UI. Password resets and locked accounts. Suffering
| through ads. Waiting for device firmware to update. Having to
| buy a new device because your old one isn't supported.
| Dealing with HDCP issues. Having to buy a new display because
| your old one isn't supported.
|
| That seems like a lot more wasted time and frustration at
| inconvenient times, rather than having to do a bit of work on
| your own schedule to rip a CD or start a torrent. I'd say the
| main difference is that with the top-down solution you don't
| have to think too hard - just do whatever the top-down system
| instructs you do, no matter what it costs you.
| deutschew wrote:
| I grew up with Napster, Morpheus, KazaA, eDonkey/eMule. never
| ever bought music.
|
| recently i bought a music CD for the first time. I really liked
| the artist. Was surprised to find:
|
| - a complete booklet of all track lyrics
|
| - some additional behind the scenes content
|
| - hidden tracks
|
| - no DRM, I can simply lend it to ppl.
|
| - if need be Windows Media Player will rip to mp3
|
| - a good feeling from sunk cost and my willingness to repeat this
|
| There is a reason that CD/DVD sales in Japan are still going
| strong.
| momojo wrote:
| Wrong thread?
| bitsoda wrote:
| You're probably looking for
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30641467
| dang wrote:
| Moved hither. Thanks!
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Perhaps some consumers are discovering that they really don't
| like it when an artist they have been listening to on their
| subscription streaming service suddenly disappears because of a
| label dispute.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| That's what got me to finally set up a little script to tag,
| convert, and store music files in apple music. I was getting
| annoyed not only at entire albums or artists being unavailable
| on apple music, but also sometimes individual songs, which just
| seems insane to me.
|
| Now I drag some flac files into a folder, the script converts
| them to ALAC, tags them from discogs, and adds them to my apple
| music library, which auto syncs to icloud so I can listen to
| them on my phone whenever I want. No more "unavailable". I also
| back the files up to a second location because one time like 10
| years ago I think I heard a rumor of itunes randomly deleting
| files that were added manually without being purchased through
| the store. Don't know if that's a real thing or not but storage
| is so cheap it doesn't really matter.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assume those people would purchase a digital file of the song
| with a lot less friction than buying and ripping a CD.
| detaro wrote:
| Plenty platforms will sell you a CD and give you the download
| immediately.
| midnightclubbed wrote:
| Over the last 10 years people have been trained to stream
| digital files. I am curious if the digital sales of artists
| who disappeared from Spotify went up, or if they saw an
| increase in physical media sales, or neither. I suspect a
| small increase in physical sales as people realize the
| fragility of digital distribution but data may say otherwise.
|
| Is that information available? Back when physical sales were
| the only sales it was easy to track the 'popularity' of any
| given song or album, with streaming and digital sales those
| numbers seem to be fire-walled by the various streaming
| services.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Probably. But owning the CD allows you to re-rip it at some
| future date if you decide that storage is cheaper than it was
| 20 years ago and you'd really prefer to have some of your
| favorite albums in lossless FLAC format than lossy MP3. Or at
| the very least, maybe a _higher quality_ mp3 than the 128kbps
| that was the norm during the Napster era.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| What I find is that unless you keep CDs in a very well
| monitored environment (right humidity and away from light,
| etc..) they aren't aging very reliably and sometimes they
| stop working completely.
| giantrobot wrote:
| You're entirely discounting the cost of _physical_ storage.
| It 's a non-zero and non-trivial cost to store and move all
| those CDs. If you've ripped them with high quality lossless
| settings you will not get better sound later reripping as
| FLAC. So unless you only ever ripped them with the old
| unregistered l3enc (limited to 112kbps and a shitty encoder
| anyways) there's little reason to rerip them.
|
| You may want to keep physical CDs for nostalgia or because
| you like the physical artifact but if you've ripped them in
| the past 15 or so years your lossless copy is likely
| transparent to lossless to the human ear.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I fear you've misunderstood me. I said going from LOSSY
| to Lossless, not lossless to lossless. Meaning even if
| your first rip was LAME-encoded VBR MP3 or OGG, you might
| decide you want to re-rip later as FLAC or APE.
| giantrobot wrote:
| And you misunderstood me, if you've got a good LAME rip
| you will not be able to distinguish it from a FLAC rip
| off the original CD. You'll be using several times the
| storage for no perceptible improvement. While disk
| storage is cheap the _physical_ storage of those CDs is
| not nor is the time required to handle the CDs to rip.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I am certain I have contributed to this statistic.
|
| I was sent off the deep end after Spotify removed one song in
| particular from my playlist that I really wanted to listen to on
| one occasion.
|
| We are only into the month of March, and I have already spent
| ~$500 YTD on physical CDs, BluRays and other multimedia formats.
| Last year I probably spent close to 3-4k on the same.
|
| The rate at which I have pirated content (which is otherwise
| difficult to source on physical media) is also up dramatically
| since this incident.
| skydhash wrote:
| I was so hyped when Spotify added my country. But I then found
| that most of the artists I listen to (Reggae artists, CHVRCHES)
| was missing from the catalog. I keep it for a little time as it
| was cheap, but did not bother to renew when my card expired.
| blt wrote:
| As a person who carried a Discman for quite a few years, I do not
| miss CDs. I can only imagine that these CD buyers are either
| listening exclusively at home, or immediately ripping to FLAC.
|
| I guess having the album art is nice, but if that's your main
| motivation why not go all the way and collect vinyl?
| kart23 wrote:
| i've been buying cds for a while, mostly just new albums of a few
| of my favorite artists. the only thing that worries me is that
| most new cars don't have cd players anymore.
|
| I also bought some cassettes a few years ago that are pretty
| valuable now, but absolutely nowhere to play them since my old
| car was my only cassette player.
| brewdad wrote:
| My car has a factory CD player still. Yay!
|
| It's located INSIDE the glove box. WTH?
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| That's a seriously inconvenient location. Where do you keep
| your driving gloves?
| MartinCron wrote:
| My older car has a 6 CD magazine, very fancy for the time. When
| my kid noticed the "eject" button on the dashboard, she thought
| that the car had ejector seats!
| vikingerik wrote:
| To be clear, this is an increase from calendar year 2020 to 2021.
| The 2020 baseline was artificially low with the pandemic. This
| isn't a trend, it's one skewed data point.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Yeah, it's almost certainly more likely that the CD sales
| market has hit a floor with a variable margin...
| YaBomm wrote:
| vmception wrote:
| You're right, the trend is still down:
|
| 2018 - $696m
|
| 2019 - $631m
|
| 2021 - $584m
| Kapura wrote:
| Anecdotally, I've purchased several new CDs over the past 12
| months because I bought a used car that has a CD player and I CBA
| to set it up to work with my phone. Given that the used car
| market is undergoing an unprecedented boom, I wonder if some % of
| CD sales come from similarly motivated new used cars owners.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| I recently bought a "vintage" 2003 car, removed the aftermarket
| touchscreen stereo, and reinstalled the OEM tape deck. I'm
| playing my old cassettes, stuff I haven't listened to since the
| 80s.
|
| Adrian Belew, _Desire Caught by the Tail_.
|
| Brand X, _Product_.
|
| UK, _Danger Money_.
|
| Yeah, not exactly hi-fi, but not unlistenably wobbly. Car has a
| stick and wicked turbo lag too. Smiles for miles.
| digisign wrote:
| I have bought several CDs in the last year, in order to get
| .flacs that weren't otherwise available, or not available at a
| decent price. Unfortunately for the music business I've bought
| many used. It's like $8 vs $24 and I don't need to downsample to
| 16/48 to save space and play on the car stereo.
|
| All older recordings should be cheaper to combat piracy. The idea
| that I'm gonna pay top dollar for something multi-decades old
| because they remastered it (which is 10x cheaper to produce) is
| silly.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > All older recordings should be cheaper to combat piracy.
|
| That would kill the sales of new stuff.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I still do CDs, iTunes and iTunes Match.
|
| I get all of the streaming benefits, etc on my phone, without
| having to deal with a shitty streaming service. iTunes Songs are
| DRM free.
|
| Plus, since I'm pretty firmly established in the Apple world, I
| have an easy escape path for when they finally fuck up the music
| app beyond my level of tolerance.
|
| Cost-wise, it's about the same. I probably spend about $100 year
| on music most years.
| nih0 wrote:
| I've returned to buying physical media. Its really awesome.
| Things I like dont just dissapear anymore. And the 10 movies or
| so I watch per year is cheaper than a subscription service.
| 2ion wrote:
| For me, it was the trouble of inadquate losless download
| offerings by so many labels / distributors. Even if you just
| want a digital library, getting the physical medium and making
| your private digital copy is a so much more stress-free
| variant, and it also doesn't limit your choice, because almost
| all music is available on CD and a much smaller fraction as
| well-produced losless audio downloads. I'm not paying CD price
| for a mp3, it's not the 2000s anymore, I can afford to download
| 700M of data for an album --- data saving was the original
| purpose of lossy audio codecs to begin with.
| albertzeyer wrote:
| But you will not be able to read the CD anymore after some
| years.
| zacwest wrote:
| Burned CDs degrade because their method of writing is a
| chemical change. Pressed CDs do not suffer the same problem.
| [deleted]
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| Some bad pressings do - but it's true that the majority of
| pressed CDs remain readable.
| mark-r wrote:
| Pressed CDs decay because the reflective aluminum layer
| oxidizes. The bottom of a CD is a pretty impenetrable
| plastic, but the top is just painted on.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Rip. Mix. Burn.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I have CDs from the 1980s that read just fine. In any case, I
| plan on backing them up at some point.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I do, too. Not one suffers from "CD rot".
|
| I usually prefer CDs from the 80s, before they were
| "remastered", dynamically compressed, etc.
| kloch wrote:
| Most of the first CD's in the 80's were made straight
| from the masters engineered for Vinyl and Casette media.
| They sounded awful with absurdly excessive EQ in the
| 3-6KHz range. Non-technical people commented that they
| preferred Vinyl because they could "hear the Aluminum" in
| CD's.
|
| This was eventually fixed and proper CD masters started
| to become common in the early 90's.
|
| Another thing to consider is the natural aging of our
| ears. Even without abuse high frequency sensitivity
| degrades as we get older. Those 80's CD's probably don't
| sound as harsh to someone 40+ today as they did back
| then.
| mark-r wrote:
| I remember going to hear the first CD player imported to
| our city, it was a big event. I wondered why they had
| picked speakers to go with it that sounded so horrible.
| It wasn't until later that I found out it wasn't the
| speakers.
| midnightclubbed wrote:
| They were always mastered, there was just the 90s-2000s
| race for loudness that changed how they were mastered.
| There are some genre's that benefitted from that loudness
| war (pop music sonics changed dramatically) but yeah
| anything which should have had subtlety got squashed to
| oblivion.
|
| How do you feel about more recent re-masters where they
| have been more sensitive to over-compression and in some
| cases re-re-mastered to address the appalling re-masters?
| I have some issue with re-masters that attempt to fix
| problems with the source material. I'm not a huge fan of
| artists tinkering with the original material, adding
| elements that got lost in the mix due to overdubs/noise,
| were not technically possible, or just re-mixing for
| their taste. At least Taylor Swift is up-front about re-
| recording her albums.
|
| My gut is that music recorded/mastered to tape is going
| to sound 'as intended' on vinyl and everything recorded
| digitally (the old DDD label on CDs) targeted CD. I have
| nothing scientific to back that up though.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > How do you feel about ...
|
| I don't trust them enough to risk spending money on more
| re-masters. I always go for the original.
|
| Interestingly, I've grown to dislike music that is too
| perfectly produced. I like that the singing isn't
| perfect, there's some background noise picked up by the
| mikes, etc.
|
| For example, listen to some of the Jefferson Airplane
| albums from the 60s. Those albums would never be produced
| today, because the band is a bit of a mess. The harmonies
| are out of sync, the pitch is imperfect, the timing
| erratic, everything is off kilter. But that rawness is,
| strangely enough, what makes the albums so endearing and
| a treasure. It's like the band has come by your house and
| is just having fun in your living room.
|
| So much better than the antiseptically perfect modern
| productions, along with that awful ubiquitous autotuning.
| Barf. C'mon, dare to have a sour note here and there.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I find recordings of Moreschi (the last castrated tenor
| as far as I'm aware) to be very fascinating for that
| reason. The quality is terrible, he isn't hitting the
| notes or the rhythm particularly well, and yet it's
| really endearing.
|
| https://youtu.be/KLjvfqnD0ws is one that has been
| digitally cleaned up but prefer listening to the messy
| version sometimes
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Totally different type of music, but I feel the same way
| about rap.
|
| Eminem's very early music feels amateurish, you can hear
| various audio issues. But it's some of its best work.
|
| Now, anyone who makes an album can make something. That
| sounds absolutely spotless with about $2,000 worth of
| gear. Something's lost, there's something nice about
| hearing a mistake someone makes, but they don't have
| enough money to rerecord it so it stays on the record.
|
| Rarely when I make my own music, I'll just leave some of
| the problems in there.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Here is one that is particularly insidious: some of the
| remasters are done with new tracks, wherein the old
| musicians are replaced with session musicians, who do not
| have to be paid royalties and the like. I found out about
| this practice and began listening carefully ...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Wow. I didn't know about this practice. The music
| industry never stops innovating new ways to screw over
| their talent.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Computer programmers don't get royalties. Why is that
| different?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Session musicians replace the band members a _lot_ even
| in the 60s or 70s. Often, the band couldn 't play at all.
| They'd have to learn to play their own tunes so they
| could tour.
|
| See "The Wrecking Crew" documentary.
|
| Even for "Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass" there was no
| "Tijuana Brass". Herb was a session musician and decided
| he'd try making his own album. It was such a hit he had
| to go round up some brass players so he could tour.
| mark-r wrote:
| Ah, the A of A&M.
| albertzeyer wrote:
| I have many CDs bought around 2000 which I cannot read
| anymore.
| symlinkk wrote:
| You're confusing physical formats with the advantages of
| ownership.
|
| You can own DRM free digital files and have all of the same
| advantages, plus also enjoy the ease of use of digital.
|
| The only problem is there is no legal way of obtaining DRM free
| digital copies of movies or tv shows. For music you have
| Bandcamp and (I think) iTunes.
| Groxx wrote:
| I don't think they're confusing the two, it's more that
| sellers are forcibly combining the two. Nobody likes it, but
| they keep doing it, except in a couple sections where
| massively rampant piracy has essentially forced them to
| provide less user-hostile options.
| aparks517 wrote:
| > The only problem is there is no legal way of obtaining DRM
| free digital copies of movies or tv shows.
|
| I think that depends on where you are. Maybe someone will
| correct me, but I was under the impression that here in the
| US you can "format-shift" a DVD or BD you legally own by
| ripping it to an unencrypted format so you can watch it on
| your tablet or what-have-you. Isn't that the legal leg iTunes
| stood on (before ITMS) for ripping CDs to listen to on your
| computer or iPod?
| Groxx wrote:
| IANAL and have not followed this super closely so take this
| with a grain of salt, but from what I understand the answer
| is "no". In practice nobody pursues this kind of _personal_
| use, but that 's very different from it being _legal_ , and
| it has not truly been tested in courts either way.
|
| You _can_ make backups... with the encryption intact. But
| breaking DRM is _essentially always_ illegal for any
| purpose, thanks to the wonderful DMCA. And that 's before
| getting into EULAs that more and more frequently deny you
| ownership over what you bought, only a "temporary,
| revocable, non-transferable license to play this format on
| licensed devices in specific circumstances" or similar.
| symlinkk wrote:
| It is pretty hard to rip Blu Rays, from my surface level
| understanding only one piece of software supports it
| (MakeMKV), and only certain Blu Ray drives with specific
| versions of firmware support it.
| jerf wrote:
| mpv can be convinced to rip most blurays, but getting the
| requisite magic files can be a bit of a trip. You're
| looking for the latest "KEYDB.cfg".
|
| There's also still a chunk of blurays that it just won't
| rip because they're too sophisticated, although shocking
| few releases seem to be releasing those. (Must be a lot
| more expensive to make them.) You also run the risk that
| if you're not careful about what you put in your drive,
| you can have the latest Bluray disk revoke your drive
| simply by it spinning up and doing the initial read
| before you even ask for anything, from what I gather. I'm
| not sure if this is a current risk, but it's always
| changing.
|
| I've also found there's some confusion about what
| constitutes a 'track number'. DVD only has one, Bluray
| seems to have two. Most releases keep both in sync, but
| not all of them. The STTNG Blurays were a bit tricky to
| get the right shows off in the right order.
| brimble wrote:
| > And the 10 movies or so I watch per year is cheaper than a
| subscription service.
|
| Libraries (and the free-if-you-have-a-participating-library-
| card Kanopy streaming service) exist, too.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Back in like 2005 or so, I would get all my music and movies
| from the library and just make rips to blanks to grow the
| collection at home. I did that with netflix dvd service too.
| blueridge wrote:
| Yes, this is it. For me what matters is ownership--physical
| media, objects, artwork. I like owning things that bring me joy
| day after day. It's about being able to experience them
| whenever I want, on my terms. We rent, and lease, and license
| almost everything--books, software, cars, apartments, music,
| movies, furniture. Everything is offered "as a service". I get
| that a lot of people are drawn to the "flexibility" and ease of
| use that comes with rentals, with subscriptions, but not me.
| I'm not giving up on ownership.
| z3c0 wrote:
| One benefit of physical media that I don't see mentioned
| here: if you like underground music, the rarity of the
| CD/Vinyl can cause it to greatly appreciate in value over
| time. It's a great reward for dedicated fans who are willing
| to jump on a release early. A lot of my CD's double in value
| within months (eg this album[1] came out only 2 years ago*
| and has already tripled in value)
|
| [1]: https://www.discogs.com/master/1701108-Spectral-Lore-
| Mare-Co...
|
| *edit: I forgot what year it is
| major505 wrote:
| I still buys cds. I stop to buying and for a while brougth albuns
| in Itunes. After being tired of spotify I ended up trying to
| download my old albuns, and find I cant donwload them anymore. So
| I just got pissed and stated bying cds and ripping them.
|
| I don't care much about the phisical copy as long as it is
| preserved so I been buying digipaks.
| deergomoo wrote:
| While I'm not particularly interested in going back to physical
| media for music, I have mulled over the idea of dropping
| streaming and going back to buying albums.
|
| Apart from the fact that using Apple Music is an absolutely
| dreadful experience, anecdotally I feel like I enjoy music less
| when I listen in the ways that streaming tries to funnel you
| into, i.e. playlists and radio-like experiences. The music
| becomes less of an active engagement and more just background
| noise.
|
| The sticking points I have are that the discovery aspect is huge
| --despite my reservations about playlists, I've discovered a
| _lot_ of bands that I really love from them just popping up
| randomly. But also, the cost difference is a hard sell; I
| recognise that that 's largely a function of streaming pricing
| being pretty much unsustainable for all but the biggest artists,
| but when for the same price as one album per month I can access a
| huge portion of all the music in the world it's difficult to say
| no to that.
| ghusto wrote:
| Ha! Coincides with me starting to buy CDs again, so I guess I'm
| not the rebel I thought I was.
|
| I was buying albums as FLAC, when I realised; "wait a minute,
| what the heck am I doing?! This is more expensive than buying a
| CD which I can rip myself to FLAC anyway". So I did _a lot_ of
| research on the best medium to buy music in for sound quality
| (surprise; it's not vinyl), and I'm rebuilding my collection.
| Listening to albums is fun again :)
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Are you buying hidef audio in flac tho or flac where the source
| is the cd after whatever compression and normalisation has been
| applied?
|
| Personally, I think hi def audio is nonsense, but I know some
| audiophiles who swear they can tell a difference.
|
| Should you be one of those maybe the extra price is worth it ;)
| ghusto wrote:
| Yeah, I concluded the same during my research into which
| physical medium to buy. Save your money. Turns out standard
| 16bit music CDs are all you're capable of hearing anyway.
|
| Get one of those audiophiles and repeat a blind test 10 times
| ;)
| gruez wrote:
| > Are you buying hidef audio in flac tho or flac where the
| source is the cd after whatever compression and normalisation
| has been applied?
|
| That would only be applicable if the two versions are
| mastered differently. Is there any reason/empirical evidence
| that's the case? I think the reasonable default assumption is
| that the recording studio just exports the same master for
| flac and cds, because it saves work. If they're going off the
| same master, then the only difference is 16 bit 44.1khz PCM
| audio for CDs, vs 16/24/32 bit 44.1/48/96/192khz audio for
| "hidef audio in flac" which is imperceptible.
| eej71 wrote:
| What tools do you find helpful in managing tags and missing
| album art work?
| ghusto wrote:
| I wrote a simple script that asks some questions and uses the
| information to write the tags after ripping and encoding. I
| looked into looking it up automatically with CDDB, but typing
| out a few song names by hand seems to be more reliable.
|
| EDIT: This is it, in case it helps. It's not great, but it
| gets the job done for me. I also use MusicBrainz to add cover
| art.
|
| https://pastebin.com/8mDcr178
| tehnub wrote:
| I haven't done a ton of ripping, but a fair amount, and I've
| found Music on macOS to be pretty decent.
| benoliver999 wrote:
| I use beets
|
| https://beets.io/
|
| It's a bit nerdy but for large collections it's a godsend
| djrogers wrote:
| When ripping CDs myself with iTunes, I never found either to
| be a problem... Yeah, iTunes had other issues, but it's
| original functionality was 'Rip, Mix, Burn'.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| Not OP but I've been using MusicBrainz Picard[1] to manage
| tags on my collection (much of it was ripped 20 years ago and
| has traveled with me; I now use Plex and Plexamp for all
| music listening). Picard does sonic analysis and compares it
| against its database to find matches and then allows you to
| preview, change, and approve new tags and album art.
|
| 1: https://picard.musicbrainz.org/
| petercooper wrote:
| I'm mostly buying vinyl, but some CDs too, especially of stuff
| that isn't on streaming services (surprisingly common with older
| albums or those from non-US/UK countries). CDs can be poorly or
| well mastered, but the latter really sound better than a lot of
| the rips that have ended up on streaming services to me in a
| blind comparison.
| LiquidPolymer wrote:
| Cassettes are also ticking up in sales and major artists like
| Taylor Swift are releasing new material on cassette. Obviously
| this is a very niche market but I find it fascinating that
| physical formats are being appreciated again. I'm kind of a nut
| about this personally as I have reel to reel, cassette, DAT,
| minidisc, CD, and of course vinyl in my personal collection.
|
| A reel to reel machine is a heavy marvel of engineering and
| arguably sounds worse than many of the better compression
| formats. This giant machine with moving parts, required
| maintenance, and finicky loading is not everyone's cup of tea -
| but I love the quality of the machine and process by which it
| plays music.
|
| Locally we have a used CD, cassette, vinyl store that is always
| busy (Every Day Music - they actually have two very large retail
| locations.) I love the physical media aspect for all the reasons
| already mentioned by others in this thread. Nostalgia is also a
| prime ingredient. So hearing that these formats are finding a
| place in the market, however small, is good news and means more
| fun for me.
| 2ion wrote:
| Finding the best cassette decks these days is a science unto
| itself though. Lots of mediocre stuff getting put out to ride
| the hype.
| EVdotIO wrote:
| Got myself a Nakamichi BX-300, and I'm kinda blown away by
| how decent it is. With the price old 80's cassette decks go
| for today, it seems like you could produce a fairly well
| spec'ed machine for ~300 and have it sell. Agreed though,
| most of the stuff produced today is rebadged white label
| junk; go to a thrift store and pick up something second hand,
| it's probably better.
|
| Cassettes on the other hand may be another story though, I
| don't know if the chemistry allows for old metal tapes to be
| produced anymore.
| cogman10 wrote:
| What I don't quiet understand is why we never went to flash for
| media distribution.
|
| SD cards are dirt cheap and can hold massive amounts of data.
| Seems weird that we can't just hand out 128MB SD cards with an
| album on it.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| There were a few attempts, slotMusic is one that comes to
| mind.
|
| They kind of all were doomed. Why buy a digital music player
| that couldn't manage music as well as the cheapest MP3
| players? These products also felt like an attempt by the
| flash storage makers to dump older inventory since an album
| would fit on smaller cards than most consumers wanted. Then
| the iPod steam rolled the market. The convenience of iTunes,
| even over poor Internet connectivity, was hard to beat.
| secabeen wrote:
| I think speed of production is also a factor. A factory can
| stamp out CD/DVDs very quickly, flash has to be written out
| to by a computer.
| mmahemoff wrote:
| Bill Gates called it when interviewed about the upcoming Blu-
| Ray format in 2005. "Understand that this is the last
| physical format there will ever be. Everything's going to be
| streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it's
| even unclear how much this one counts."
| clintonb wrote:
| My guess is digital purchases became easier just before flash
| memory was cheap enough to use for albums. Also, distribution
| is much simpler, and the labels can get more profit due to
| decreased manufacturing costs.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| This is my thought too. By the time SD cards were cheap and
| ubiquitous, digital music already had a huge foothold, and
| has the convenience of not worrying about losing the SD
| card.
| dehrmann wrote:
| iPods became big around 2003. Back then, 128 MB of flash
| would cost you $40[1]. This was why HDD-backed mp3 players
| were so revolutionary for the time--flash wasn't viable, yet.
| By the time flash got cheap enough, portable mp3 players were
| so established that the time for physical media for audio had
| mostly passed.
|
| 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20030520151144/http://www.newe
| gg...
| hadlock wrote:
| Yep, the reason why the OG iPod was shaped/sized the way it
| was, is due to the form factor of commodity laptop hard
| drives. I forget, but I think the OG iPod had a firewire
| connector (sort of the equivalent of today's Thunderbolt
| 3/4), which allowed the owner to use the iPod as a portable
| hard drive. Most macs had at least one firewire port.
| prpl wrote:
| 2nd and 3rd gen too. I still have a 3rd gen
| [deleted]
| acomjean wrote:
| Isn't that what the nintendo switch is doing?
| prpl wrote:
| IMO - collectibility is inversely proportional to media and
| packaging size.
|
| That said, I think the Switch gets it right. If everybody was
| handing out microSD cards you'd have a nightmare managing
| those
| bluedino wrote:
| Sony would want to use their proprietary Memory Stick format
| willcipriano wrote:
| I buy CD's on Bandcamp but leave them in the wrapping since they
| also give you a flac copy. I imagine others do the same.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Bandcamp was recently bought by Epic Games. Do you happen to
| know of an alternative of the same quality?
| willcipriano wrote:
| I do not. I listen to all my music through Plex so I'll
| probably go back to ripping CD's and finding stuff on the
| open seas at the first sign of funny business. The nice thing
| about being able to download your content is Bandcamp can
| close and I still have what I paid for.
| tehnub wrote:
| Is there something wrong with Epic?
| henriquecm8 wrote:
| I don't if there's something specific, but there's a
| pattern of companies getting bought than after a year or
| two, your favorite thing about the platform gets remove or
| put behind a paywall. It might not happen, but I wouldn't
| hold my breath.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| My favorite thing about Bandcamp is buying albums and
| downloading them. That's already behind a paywall by
| definition.
| daenz wrote:
| [x] Works on relatively low tech hardware [x] Doesn't
| require internet connection [x] Can't be removed from your
| possession for violating ToS [x] Can be easily backed up
| Tenoke wrote:
| All of the above is true for Bandcamp except needing an
| internet connection initially but I don't imagine that's such a
| limiting factor. There's still CD sales going on there so the
| above doesn't explain it completely and I imagine the
| nostalgia, having a physical item, contrarianism etc. have a
| bigger hand in the resurgence.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Compounded by my lateness to the smartphone world, I feel
| hopelessly out of touch, but I have finally decided to start
| ripping a lot of my fairly hefty CD collection in hopes of
| playing them in my car, but many things I once thought true have
| mutated over time:
|
| - Headphone jacks disappearing from phones
|
| - iPhones in general, it seems like a lot of work just to get
| some random file _onto_ the damned thing
|
| - Head units don't recognize .m3u playlists (what?!)
|
| Overall, it seems the happy path is just to subscribe to some
| music service and like whatever it is they have on ("played at a
| reasonable volume," as the Pictures for Sad Children bit goes).
| However, I already have the radio for the "shut up and like what
| we feed you" option.
|
| We're swimming upstream a bit here, liking CDs.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Headphone jacks disappearing from phones
|
| For most phones it just got merged into the USB C port. It's
| the same thing, but with a different connector except USB C
| also supports digital audio output too instead of just analog.
| siskiyou wrote:
| I feel very fortunate to have grown up before streaming (ie,
| music you can't own). I collected about 800 CDs that I still have
| and listen to, and about 1200 LPs mostly given to me by people
| getting out of vinyl. I love the big artwork of LPs, and the
| ritual of cleaning and playing them, many of which are
| unavailable online. I ripped most of the CDs so I can avoid
| losses due to damage and listen on any device. I pay zero dollars
| to streaming services, nothing paid to Apple, and nothing
| supporting Joe Rogan. The down side to this approach is mostly
| just space for storage.
| rmah wrote:
| I sorta feel the same way as you as I spent a lot of money on
| music when I was younger.
|
| But, that said, those 800 CD's and 1200 LP's cost you around
| 800 * $15 + 1200 * $10 = $24000. That's enough to pay for 200
| years of streaming at $10/mo. And with streaming, you'll get
| 1000x more content to choose from. So I kind understand the
| appeal for the younger crowd.
| siskiyou wrote:
| I understand too. However I didn't pay for a huge portion of
| those LPs, because people gave them away by the box load,
| including a long time subscriber of the Capitol Records club
| who didn't play them. I lucked out and I'd rather keep
| playing them than subscribe to anything.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I am no fan of Spotify and similar services, I keep buying CDs
| and ripping them into MP3.
| paulsmith wrote:
| I honestly thought from the headline before clicking through that
| this was referring to the other CDs, "certificates of deposit",
| which, I imagine, may be more in-demand due to rising interest
| rates.
| midnightclubbed wrote:
| Adele had a huge album launch last year, and sold very well on
| vinyl and CD. That one album may account for the entire growth.
| Maybe her fanbase are of the right age/demo to enjoy or to be
| nostalgic for physical media, maybe a lot of copies bought as
| gifts... Between that big launch and vinyl pressing plant supply
| issues (Covid supply chain issues and huge orders for two album
| releases) people who want the physical object may have moved from
| vinyl to CD editions.
|
| Anecdotally I pulled my CD collection out of retirement for use
| in my home office during Covid. There's something about 'putting
| on' a cd/record that streaming just does not do. A couple of
| weeks ago I caved and bought a vintage technics record player
| (late to the bandwagon), the price of vinyl is shocking compared
| to CD - $30+ for a 28g new release/reissue and quality used
| records are easily $20+. Feels like when I was a teenager and
| carefully deciding what I could afford that week/month and then
| playing it to destruction.
| amerkhalid wrote:
| I never gave up on CDs or physical books. Though I use Kindle
| and a few years ago I subscribed to Google Music and stopped
| buying new CDs.
|
| Lately, it is very rare that people discuss music. So recently,
| I moved my CD (& books) collection to living room and it has
| been good way to start conversations about music. Friends scan
| through the collection, sometimes, they borrow them. Album art
| is another thing that is fun to look at together. It feels a
| lot more social than sharing music on Facebook.
|
| My only issue is I don't have a CD player anymore except in the
| car.
|
| (Same thing with books, any book I buy on Kindle, I assume it
| is a rental. If I really like the book, then I get a paper
| copy.)
| nesky wrote:
| I purchase the physical books as well ones I bought on kindle
| or audiobooks that I think will age well, want to read again
| or want my kids to peruse at some point. Scanning a library
| on a kindle just isn't the same.
| brimble wrote:
| Physical presence of media in one's space is underrated. The
| cost (in space, being a pain in the ass to move, et c.) is
| high but there _are_ significant benefits.
| midnightclubbed wrote:
| Really nice used CD players are super cheap right now. Pick a
| solid model which still has rubber belts available for it and
| you should be golden:)
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Reccommend the arcam cd95 unless you're going for some
| kinda dj setup then cdj's I guess.
| spatley wrote:
| @midnightclubbed love to hear about some models that you
| think are worth looking for.
| midnightclubbed wrote:
| I use a Onkyo DXC390 CD player/changer (going strong
| after 3 years or so). Still available to buy new (albeit
| at a ridiculously inflated price) but should be available
| for ~ $100 used. DAC sounds fine to me though speakers
| but I have a discrete DAC/amp for headphone listening,
| although honestly I can't tell the difference between
| that and the CD player headphone socket.
|
| I used a Yamaha CDX-450 for years, although I dint think
| it had digital outputs. Was built solidly. Dove deep down
| the Sony megachanger rabbit hole but never pulled the
| trigger on getting one - have a huge following though and
| parts/advice are readily available.
| bryans wrote:
| > Adele had a huge album launch last year, and sold very well
| on vinyl and CD. That one album may account for the entire
| growth.
|
| That doesn't hold up under any scrutiny. Adele's album sold
| around ~950,000 physical copies in 2021 in the US. The average
| CD price is $15, and that particular album has been on sale
| since the release, so the absolute maximum that it could
| contribute to an "unusual" influx of CD sales is $15 million --
| and that's very generously pretending 100% of sales were CDs
| and that she didn't sell any copies of any albums in 2020. That
| leaves a minimum of an $85 million (and more realistically >$93
| million) increase that can't be attributed to a shift in
| audience demographics for the year's top seller.
|
| > Between that big launch and vinyl pressing plant supply
| issues (Covid supply chain issues and huge orders for two album
| releases) people who want the physical object may have moved
| from vinyl to CD editions.
|
| Vinyl sales doubled in 2021 and outpaced CDs, and growth
| actually increased throughout 2021, as roughly ~60% of the
| sales took place in the second half of the year.
|
| https://thevinylfactory.com/news/us-vinyl-sales-2021-reach-t...
| agumonkey wrote:
| The ritual aspect is heard in many mouths :)
|
| There's a tiny glimpse of magic of seeing the apparatus that
| turns physical storage into music. Even a CD drive gives you
| some mechanical hints of things happening. Best part is when
| you have an open drive mechanism :)
| midnightclubbed wrote:
| For me the ritual of deliberately choosing what I want to
| listen to from a somewhat limited/curated selection of music
| is the magic. Although seeing a diamond rubbing over a piece
| of plastic and knowing that's how the sound is made is pretty
| cool too...
| kleer001 wrote:
| By about 20% if anyone's interested in the actual magnitude
| natdempk wrote:
| Worth noting that CD sales as a percent of total revenue fell
| from 4.0% to 3.9%, continuing the trend relative to the whole
| there.
|
| From: https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/
| jandrese wrote:
| It is also worth noting that people spent more on Vinyl than
| they did on CDs last year. CDs are a fairly small niche now.
|
| https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/us-music-fans-spent-m...
| goosedragons wrote:
| Doesn't that have more to do with Vinyl being basically a
| collectors format with much higher MSRPs per album than CD?
| In unit sales CD still sells more.
| luhn wrote:
| No, vinyl is the majority of physical sales by unit now in
| the US.
|
| > According to data from the MRC and Billboard, 38.3 per
| cent of all album sales in the country last year were in
| vinyl format, while it accounted over 50 per cent of all
| physical album sales (41.72 million sales out of a total of
| 82.79 million).
|
| https://www.nme.com/news/music/vinyl-albums-outsold-cds-
| in-u...
|
| Billboard source (paywalled):
| https://www.billboard.com/pro/vinyl-sales-new-record-past-
| cd...
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| I have no interest in going back to vinyl and I don't
| have most of my old albums any longer. But if you want
| retro physicality of your music medium, vinyl probably
| has a lot more appeal than the alternatives. I do buy CDs
| from time to time if they're as cheap or cheaper than
| MP3s (or they're something oddball I can't buy
| digitally). But I generally then just rip them and put
| the physical CD in a box in the attic.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Holy hell 38.3% of ALL album sales? I get people mostly
| but individual songs but I would've never guessed almost
| 40%.
| randcraw wrote:
| ...while total revenue of all media formats grew from 12.7B to
| 15.0B. CD revenue rose from 505.9M to 584.2M, but actually lost
| 0.1% of market share.
|
| The big winners of market share among formats were LPs -- up
| from 5.3% to 6.9%, and on-demand streaming (with ads) -- up
| from 9.9% to 11.7%.
|
| (Revenues and percentages are in US dollars after adjustment
| for inflation.)
| modzu wrote:
| i had to look up "CD"
| dpcx wrote:
| Damn Millenials, ruining the digital music industry! /s
| mthwl wrote:
| I wrote a bit recently about why I still collect music on CDs.
| Here are my 3 reasons, which echo a lot of the comments:
|
| 1. To Support the Artist, 2. To Own the Music, 3. To Collect
| Artifacts (which is fun)
|
| I also found a few recent attempts at creating new physical music
| formats, but most of them require Internet connectivity and are
| essentially cloud services that have physical access tokens :( I
| ended up just lamenting that we never got the Sony MiniDisc
| revolution that we all deserved.
|
| The post is here: https://www.matthewhowell.net/notes/2022/on-
| collecting-music...
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I like that you mention "collecting artifacts." I have a pretty
| extensive video game OST vinyl collection. The first thing I do
| when one comes in the mail is open it up, deep clean the
| record, drop it on the record player, and spin it. But while
| it's playing, I actually have the audio routed through a
| recorder capturing it as 96kHz/24bit wav.
|
| I have so far archived every video game vinyl I have and I've
| slowly doing the rest of my vinyl collection. It's been a
| really fun project, and like you said with "artifacts," I feel
| like I've got my own little museum of sorts going on. Plus it's
| fun to cut them into sides (not tracks), compress into 48kHz
| wav, FLAC, and mp3, add the album art, and get them on my phone
| and home server. So I basically can take my vinyl anywhere I
| go!
|
| Is it the most practical exercise? Of course not. But it's
| really fun in its own way. I just like archive diving a lot
| given my history background, so making my own archive scratches
| a similar itch I guess.
| rusk wrote:
| I've been thinking of doing something myself. Any tips on the
| recording end of things? Is routing to a laptop good enough?
| Do computers even have stereo line in anymore ...
| realPubkey wrote:
| For me, collection things that you do not really need, is just
| a waste of scarce resources.
| nicky0 wrote:
| One could say that living at all is a waste of scarce
| resources.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Honestly he's just being edgelord trying to yuck other
| people's yum.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| So you have no hobbies that are non-essential?
| ghastmaster wrote:
| The volume of CD sales grew compared to 2020, but was less than
| the volume from 2019. If you look at the data chart from the link
| in the article (https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/) you can
| see the trend is still down. The revenue per cd in 2019 = $13.28,
| 2020 = $15.29, 2021 = $12.54.
|
| Combined 2018/9 sales totaled 99.3M units sold vs combined 2020/1
| 78.2M units sold. There was a huge drop in 2020. Is it safe to
| assume that sales not done in 2020 were done in 2021?
| emkoemko wrote:
| is this inflation? they don't mention sales volume increase just
| profit?
| durpleDrank wrote:
| When the RIAA went after Youtube-dl I realized I was digging my
| own grave supporting streaming sites. Used CDs, Bandcamp, Flac.
| Anything but streaming sites where the RIAA gets money.
| criddell wrote:
| One of my kids got into vinyl a few years ago and that triggered
| me to get my CD collection out of the attic and I started buying
| CDs again. I really enjoy listening to entire albums.
|
| Lately though, I've been using Apple Music because I got a free
| trial and found I really like their spatial audio and ATMOS
| tracks. Just about everything I stream is lossless and most that
| I listen to are higher than CD quality.
|
| The big question is (ignoring spatial audio), can I tell a
| difference between 16 bit / 44 kHz (CD) and 24 bit / 192 kHz
| (studio master)? The answer seems to be maybe. I've tried A-B
| tests where I switch between the two and I can never notice any
| differences. But after listening to an entire album I can often
| say that the album was CD or studio master quality. I wonder if
| maybe the two formats are mixed differently?
|
| The CD format is trapped in amber and the world is moving on
| (esp. with spatial audio) and I think that's too bad for people
| who like to buy music.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| No, you cannot tell the difference between 16/44 and 24/192,
| unless the 24/192 has enough high frequency content to cause
| non-linear distortions in your speakers.
|
| 24/192 makes sense for recording because the extra bits give
| you more headroom to prevent clipping and the higher sampling
| rate means you can use less aggressive analog low-pass filters
| on your input.
|
| I should also note that your playback solution likely has
| higher THD+N than the floor imposed by 16 bits. 16 bits implies
| a noise floor of -96dB which would be a THD+N of about 0.002%.
| Your playback equipment is probably 11-14 bits equivalent for
| the noise floor (-66 to -84dB). With 16 bits of depth you
| probably won't even be able to tell between a properly and
| improperly dithered CD that was normalized before down-
| sampling.
|
| I agree that spatial audio is long overdue. IMO, Ambisonics had
| the right idea in the 1970s, though it was at least 20 years to
| early for actual adoption.
| digisign wrote:
| I don't find the extra resolution helps at all at playback
| time, although I have older ears now. What it significant is a
| quality master in the first place. With that I downsample to
| 16/48, I personally can't tell the difference at that point
| from higher-res.
|
| For example, I've made mp3/opus from a quality remaster, that
| sound better than the 80s CD, simply because the new master was
| scanned on better equipment.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| neverartful wrote:
| > get my CD collection out of the attic
|
| Yes, please get your CDs out of the attic. Same is true for
| your photographs, cameras, paintings, and many other things.
| pier25 wrote:
| > _can I tell a difference between 16 bit / 44 kHz (CD) and 24
| bit / 192 kHz (studio master)?_
|
| Even under perfect listening conditions (which are very rare)
| 99.99% of people won't be able to tell the difference.
|
| The vast majority of people can't tell the difference between a
| 44.1Khz/16 bits .wav and a 128kbps MP3.
| [deleted]
| boc wrote:
| That's not true. If you said 320kbps MP3 then maybe I'd
| agree. 128 sounds crushed as hell on most decent setups.
| lostgame wrote:
| >> The vast majority of people can't tell the difference
| between a 44.1Khz/16 bits .wav and a 128kbps MP3.
|
| ...are you _kidding_? I think _most_ people could easily tell
| the difference between a CD and a _128kbps_ MP3 if asked to
| listen to it hard enough. That, or play it in a club loud
| enough - and watch everyone cringe.
|
| As the other commenter said - 320kbps - alright, sure. But
| 128kbps? Come _on_.
| saila wrote:
| > The big question is (ignoring spatial audio), can I tell a
| difference between 16 bit / 44 kHz (CD) and 24 bit / 192 kHz
| (studio master)?
|
| Unless there's something different about the mix (as you note),
| it's unlikely that most people in most circumstances could hear
| a meaningful difference.
|
| If someone has high end equipment & speakers and the speakers
| are placed correctly in an ideal room _or_ if you 've got high
| end headphones, then maybe, but otherwise I'm skeptical.
| IYasha wrote:
| Maybe it's just better mastering, but I mostly hear the
| difference between 44 and 48KHz. And because of this, I'd love
| to see more DVD audio selling too :)
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I wonder if that is due to concerts and local artists earning
| money at shows, or if it is a broader trend. Story of one: I have
| been buying physical media from Bandcamp for albums that I like
| and that offer it. Bandcamp is so cool! Actually owning the
| music, even if digitally, is a comforting feeling.
| sdevonoes wrote:
| For me at least the reason is:
|
| - with a subscription model (e.g., Spotify) I enjoy the music
| as long as a) I keep paying, and b) the supplier keeps
| supplying it
|
| - with a "buy a CD" model, I own the music forever. I can copy
| it in another CD to preserve it if needed. I don't have to
| worry about Spotify or Apple Music being up/down or if they
| even increase their base price or not
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Polycarbonate is the new vinyl. Let the dynamic range wars
| reignite!
| beardyw wrote:
| >physical music is enjoying a resurgence
|
| CDs are the children of floppy disks, not vinyl. They are digital
| (it's in the name). Vinyl is actually physical beyond bits and
| bytes.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| CDs are recorded in a spiral (like a record) not in concentric
| rings (like a floppy).
| dsr_ wrote:
| What are you implying by "Vinyl is actually physical beyond
| bits and bytes"?
|
| Are you trying to say "vinyl is analog"? Because that's true.
|
| Are you trying to say "the analog vinyl is superior to a CD
| prepared from the same mix"? That's demonstrably incorrect.
|
| Are you trying to say "the vinyl mixes are often superior to
| the CD mixes"? That's often true.
| uhtred wrote:
| Maybe they are not implying anything?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Everything in the universe is either mass or energy (and
| mass is energy), so making claims about vinyl being
| "physical" doesn't need to be said. I assume they had a
| point to make, and I'm hoping that they will make it more
| clearly.
| beardyw wrote:
| Sorry. I was just saying that a CD is a digital
| representation of sound. If you had a CD with a document
| on it you wouldn't call it a physical copy.
|
| However on a vinyl record the sound is physically
| represented in the grooves. It is as near to a physical
| representation of sound as you could get. Like a physical
| document is on paper.
|
| I have no bias. I listen happily to streaming.
| Jyaif wrote:
| > They are digital (it's in the name)
|
| CD stands for "compact disc"
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| A CD is a physical medium for digital music. I think the
| distinction between a CD and a zip file is pretty clear.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| I hope CD never dies. It's a lossless, DRM-free physical format.
| There's nothing like it.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Listening to cymbals is much better on a CD than streaming.
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