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There Is No CD Revival

dadadrummer.substack.com

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Re: There Is No CD Revival

#91

Post by dhosek »

prepend wrote: post #59
cliffwarden wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was pleasantly surprised recently with Merge Records. I bought a few lps and they came with digital downloads of mp3 and flac!

I like this trend with LPs. You get a physical totem and lossless digital copies. I bought some Peter Gabriel records and they came with a code for downloading multiple formats including huge, lossless. And the site for one wasn’t working because it was too old and I had to email someone. But an actual human responded and send me a code to the new site. Not sure if that’s just for RealWorld or for all Geffen LPs. I t…

I think it might be just for RealWorld. They’re quite amazing when it comes to having a human being actually read emails and respond to them.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#92

Post by dhosek »

Sebb767 wrote: post #38
danjc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to make this observation. Is this what the ethical DJ would do? Adjacent question: what’s the legally correct way to license music for public use (e.g. DJ set)

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.

>Licensing probably depends on your country.

Yep. In the US, it’s the venue that is responsible for the license. Technically, even playing a radio station in a public space requires that license, which is why most stores that have background music pay for Muzak or some similar service which bundles all the licensing costs along with the music stream itself. The license covers not just pre-recorded music but live music. I remember reading an account of a cover band which switched to playing originals because their venue didn’t have the licensing for them to play covers.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#93

Post by softwarebeware »

z3c0 wrote: post #11

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 limit…

> 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.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#94

Post by tshaddox »

layer8 wrote: post #83
throwaway894345 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 consumptio…

Ripping CDs for your own personal use is not illegal, as CDs have no copy protection mechanism that you would be circumventing.

In the United States there are a number of exceptions to the ban on circumventing DRM:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/victory-users-libraria...

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#95

Post by andjd »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #82
Jaruzel wrote: post #45

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 ti…

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 consumptio…

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.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#96

Post by softwarebeware »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #77

Good article except for this part of the conclusion: "The revival we need, urgently, is of recorded music income" For centuries before recording, regular musicians made income without it. And even when regular musicians made money recording, only a few survived solely on recording. I think we need to dispell the presumption that musicians must make money recording.

> "For centuries before recording ..."

Yeah but today there's no live music income without recorded music though. Try putting a tour together without anything released. Try telling people, "We only play live."

The only time that works is if you're playing covers. Which works because the music is circulating in recorded format.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#97

Post by softwarebeware »

There's two separate things:

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.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#98

Post by simondotau »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #86
layer8 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ripping CDs for your own personal use is not illegal, as CDs have no copy protection mechanism that you would be circumventing.

Oh, I didn't realize CDs didn't have copy protection? Why would they not? From the RIAA's perspective, isn't that just a way to double charge customers like the MPAA does?

It seems counter-intuitive, but a red book audio CD really is more akin to a vinyl record than a CD-ROM. The laser locks onto a groove and throws bits directly at a few chips that perform error correction and convert the signal to analog with an absolutely minuscule amount of buffering. Obfuscation isn’t even on the table, let alone encryption.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#99

Post by pwthornton »

iggldiggl wrote: post #68
chrisseaton wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Music and iTunes are lossless, high quality (often higher than a CD as they have multi-channel masters) and work offline, for example.

> iTunes [is] lossless 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.

This may be semantics, and I am not sure what counts as Apple Music versus iTunes these days, but you can download all files for offline listening in Apple Music. I assume if you can download a lossless file from Apple Music that you can also buy that same file in the iTunes store and then download it.

They both use the same app for playback, so this is a tad confusing.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#100

Post by greggman3 »

Jaruzel wrote: post #45

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 ti…

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.

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