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CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

consequence.net

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Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#41

Post by teepo »

mrguyorama wrote: post #2

I have subscribed to Spotify since before 2012. I enjoyed finding new music and the convenience of listening to anything, whenever. My consumption habits are not very amenable to buying CDs, because I have no idea ahead of time which songs will "Hit" for me. I generally don't like "Artists" or "Genres" and I enjoy listening to wildly different music from day to day. However, I have watched Spotify destroy my playlist…

I wonder if that is what itunes match protects against? I've paid for that service for a long time, but at this point not certain it has any value.

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#42

Post by idiotsecant »

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #39
throw0101d wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real problem was almost no one had a CD player not even in their car! And here I am driving a 2003 Golf with a tape deck (and CD player).

> And here I am driving a 2003 Golf with a tape deck (and CD player). That sounds wonderful. There was a brief, magical moment in history when cars would come with AM/FM radio, a tape deck, a CD player, and an aux port so that you could plug in audio from every other device that humanity would invent for the rest of time. It feels like the most fleeting of moments, and it was so long ago. Maybe it was just one summer…

I donno Bluetooth is pretty universal now

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#43

Post by throwway120385 »

netsharc wrote: post #33
throw0101d wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real problem was almost no one had a CD player not even in their car! And here I am driving a 2003 Golf with a tape deck (and CD player).

My car reads USB sticks with MP3s on them (I was telling a Gen-Z colleague this and felt old...). There are external BluRay drives that connect via USB, but then to he able to play audio CDs, either the car needs to understand CDDA, or the drive needs to understand CDDA and pretend to be a FAT32 filesystem of some MP3s (or... WAVs?) to the car. Huh I also have Subsonic on my home NAS and Symfonium on my phone (connec…

My truck will actually play MP3s off of a data CD. Maybe I should try that.

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#44

Post by smelendez »

l72 wrote: post #16

A friend in his 40s had a 90s birthday party so I burned some mix CDs as party favors. Those CDrs were 20 years old and have been sitting in a hot, humid attic for the last 10+ years, but still recorded fine. The real problem was almost no one had a CD player not even in their car! Also, I don’t think k3b or any of the other software i tried has been updated since 2005, but it all still worked great! Most importantly…

The most common CD players around now are probably video game consoles.

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#45

Post by cdrnsf »

arthurjj wrote: post #37
cdrnsf wrote: post #18

Buy CDs, buy vinyl, buy merch, go see shows — support artists instead of platforms and middlemen wherever you can. This is a welcome trend.

I try to buy as many shirts as possible from bands I like and this post reminded me to go look again. I listen to a lot of metal and punk and the problem is most the shirts are either black, which overheat you in SoCal, or have designs that are aggressively ugly [1]. I wish more bands hired better designers or at least had shirts I wouldn't overheat in [1] I own and wear this one so it's not always a deal breaker htt…

I have a ton of shirts, but have been sticking to buy limited edition ones or from bands at shows lately. I live in SoCal (north of LA) and end up suffering in the heat. Nothing did some non-black ones for their new album at least https://bandofnothing.shop/collections/apparel/products/esse...

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#46

Post by dylan604 »

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #39
throw0101d wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real problem was almost no one had a CD player not even in their car! And here I am driving a 2003 Golf with a tape deck (and CD player).

> And here I am driving a 2003 Golf with a tape deck (and CD player). That sounds wonderful. There was a brief, magical moment in history when cars would come with AM/FM radio, a tape deck, a CD player, and an aux port so that you could plug in audio from every other device that humanity would invent for the rest of time. It feels like the most fleeting of moments, and it was so long ago. Maybe it was just one summer…

Don't forget the adapters that plugged into the 1/8" jack on your Sony WalkMan with a cassette shaped adapter that went into the tape deck. There are also those weird devices that plugged into the 1/8" jack with a low power radio transmitter to tune your in dash receiver to hear. (A local station I listen is on the low end where these devices operate. The station is lower powered college station with the transmitter located where I'm pretty close to the edge of its range. From time to time at stop lights, a stronger signal will come in to interrupt and disappears after the green and cars separate. I'm guessing one of these is being used)

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#47

Post by dylan604 »

idiotsecant wrote: post #42
q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And here I am driving a 2003 Golf with a tape deck (and CD player). That sounds wonderful. There was a brief, magical moment in history when cars would come with AM/FM radio, a tape deck, a CD player, and an aux port so that you could plug in audio from every other device that humanity would invent for the rest of time. It feels like the most fleeting of moments, and it was so long ago. Maybe it was just one summer…

I donno Bluetooth is pretty universal now

"For whatever reason, humanity achieved a lovely little peak of engineering, and then we immediately abandoned it for worse options." "I donno Bluetooth is pretty universal now"

Your comment does not disagree with GP's in the way you think it does

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#48

Post by ryandrake »

throwway120385 wrote: post #43
netsharc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My car reads USB sticks with MP3s on them (I was telling a Gen-Z colleague this and felt old...). There are external BluRay drives that connect via USB, but then to he able to play audio CDs, either the car needs to understand CDDA, or the drive needs to understand CDDA and pretend to be a FAT32 filesystem of some MP3s (or... WAVs?) to the car. Huh I also have Subsonic on my home NAS and Symfonium on my phone (connec…

My truck will actually play MP3s off of a data CD. Maybe I should try that.

Nearly every automobile MP3 player (USB-based or CD-based) I've used was defective in some way. Usually something stupid like only playing tracks in alphabetical order, or inserting audible gaps between tracks that are meant to flow into one another, or not supporting tags correctly, or not handling UTF-8 text... Car companies don't know how to do consumer software.

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#49

Post by dylan604 »

cdrnsf wrote: post #18

Buy CDs, buy vinyl, buy merch, go see shows — support artists instead of platforms and middlemen wherever you can. This is a welcome trend.

There's a couple of artists that I would absolutely buy their vinyl except the shipping is more expensive than the vinyl. I've done it a couple of times for artists I really like and appreciate, but it is most definitely cost prohibitive.

So it's pay their bandcamp prices for the digitals and streaming, but the physical media is just made in too limited quantities to be affordable by anyone but FAANG employees

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#50

Post by dylan604 »

jedbrooke wrote: post #30
mrpippy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason, the PS4 and PS5 actually cannot play audio CDs

audio CDs use a different wavelength for the laser (infra red) while PS game disks are BluRay (blue laser). Of course, 99.9% of other BluRay players will also support DVD/CD, so yeah it still does seem silly. I also remember my Dad’s disappointment when he put a standard DVD in our Wii back in the day. Those are literally the same physical format as wii disks.

any one less item on the BOM brings down the costs.
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