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There Is No CD Revival

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Re: There Is No CD Revival

#181
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

Did you notice how tracks and whole albums sometimes disappear from Spotify? If not yet, you're in for a unpleasant surprise.

As annoying as this is, at least it shows you the name of the original track but it's grayed out, as opposed to when YouTube would remove a video you wouldn't even realize it had been deleted from your playlist.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#182
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 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.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ou…

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.

writable DVDs degrade, but a typical DVD won't on its own for a long time in reasonable conditions. I suspect that over the years those library disks have been scratched to hell several times over and ave had to be buffed down to the point where it's causing problems even though they now look clean.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#184

I think journalists are forgetting that vinyl has a distinct sound, also to millennials, they are simply cool as fuck. They come in giant sleeves you can hang in your wall, bookshelf. CDs are just burned digital data. Maybe someday they’ll gain a retro appeal, but for now they have this ugly recursive consumer status. They’re reminiscent of the dial up era where you had no choice but to compress to MP3 to fit on your…

And jewel cases were and are garbage.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#185
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…

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 ou…

> 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!

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#186
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…

> 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.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#187

I think journalists are forgetting that vinyl has a distinct sound, also to millennials, they are simply cool as fuck. They come in giant sleeves you can hang in your wall, bookshelf. CDs are just burned digital data. Maybe someday they’ll gain a retro appeal, but for now they have this ugly recursive consumer status. They’re reminiscent of the dial up era where you had no choice but to compress to MP3 to fit on your…

And jewel cases were and are garbage.

Useless cracked cases, mechanically shrunk plastic wrap. It truly must've felt like the dead end of physical media.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#188
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 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.…

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.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#189
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…

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.

Re: There Is No CD Revival

#190
post #146

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 impossib…

> 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.

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