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CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

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

#191

Post by mypalmike »

jonhohle wrote: post #102
mypalmike wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type of remastering (and remixing) has been happening for a while now. Lots of newer releases of classic albums of the CD era have remasters with less compression. Pretty Hate Machine, American Idiot, Absolution (Muse)…

PHM was released before the loudness war. I’ve actually read the opposite about the 2010 remaster. Significantly more compression making all the layers (one of the hallmarks of NIN) inaudible. I’ve listened to the 2010 version, but never felt anything wrong with the original. Fortunately, the original is extremely easy to find and usually very cheap, for comparison.

True, PHM was not the best example.

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

#192

Post by pibaker »

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.

None of the things you listed are free of middlemen. Record companies were the OG villains of the music industry. Livenation has a monopoly over event venues.

Sometimes you can't just outrun the bad guys. You have to fight them head on.

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

#193

Post by m463 »

herrh wrote: post #107

In order to make my kids (2 and 4) be able to play music on their own without having to use a smart device or screen i bought an old boombox for like 10 dollars a couple of years ago. We buy a lot of records, though exclusively in goodwill-like stores, and they love it. They have a lot of audiobooks for kids but also cd:s with music. A favourite right now is Aquas debut album Aquarium (the one with Barbie Girl) I thi…

I agree on physically exploring.

It is always nice to take younger folks to the used DVD/CD store and let them explore. It is not expensive.

There's also a strange paradox, where the better stuff is cheaper. (technically it is probably popular stuff is cheaper). The dvds of season 1 of Friends is usually $1.

and sometimes you can get 4k UHD disks for cheap.

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

#194

Post by m463 »

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…

[dead]

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

#195

Post by ssl-3 »

grishka wrote: post #115
kalleboo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CD-Rs use an organic dye which fades (or in the worst case the bonds holding it on can delaminate). They hold up much better if stored in a dark place. A spindle on a shelf that sees sunlight is the worst case and they can become unreadable in years.

Also don't CD-Rs need a more sensitive detector in the drive to read? I remember seeing somewhere that early drives have trouble with them

I remember reading about drives/players that wouldn't read CD-R, but I've never encountered one in the wild.

Anecdotally, every time I've tried: A burned CD that works well with one reader works with all others.

It was a hobby of mine at that time. I tried a lot of combinations: I was working at a local hifi shop where we had all kinds of stuff rolling through to play around with.

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

#196

Post by m463 »

piskov wrote: post #38
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…

However if you’ve tried to read those cd-rw after 20-30 years, they would most likely be corrupted. Factory stampted cds are better in this regard

> Factory stamped cds are better in this regard

One thing factory CDs don't do well is spin. I think they were probably balanced good enough for 1x, but trying to rip some of them at 48x is noisy and feels close to explosive deconstruction.

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

#197

Post by m463 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #160
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…

It's hard to buy people media now. You can't really gift people CDs, DVDs, or Blu-Rays because nobody has players anymore.

Send a player too. :)

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

#198

Post by ssl-3 »

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

It's been over 20 years, and Bluetooth audio still usually sounds bad, still evades troubleshooting when it is working suboptimally, and increasingly drops out in some areas as interference increases.

I've never had any of those issues with a short piece of wire operating at audio frequencies.

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

#199

Post by ssl-3 »

ColdStream wrote: post #58
smelendez wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And even then I think it is only up to the 360/Ps3 generation. After that they only play DVD's/Blu Ray as it is a cheaper laser component.

All Xbox consoles can play audio CDs. (Later ones need software added to do that, but that software is free.)

Playstations after the PS3, though: Not so much. (Sony lost track of their "It Only Does Everything" schtick[1] somewhere along the way.)

[1]: https://blog.playstation.com/2009/08/27/it-only-does-everyth...

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

#200

Post by maccard »

dylan604 wrote: post #183
maccard wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not seen a case where shipping was more expensive than vinyl but; I made an album and sell the vinyl on our website. The sleeve to ship the vinyl safely in was somewhere between £0.5 and £1 depending on where we bought it from. Actually shipping it cost £5. So the £30 vinyl came with £6 in shipping fees. Lots of people complained to us that it was expensive, but that's just what it cost.

> I've not seen a case where shipping was more expensive than vinyl but; Maybe you have the fortune of being on the same continent the item is being shipped. Your use of pounds is a big clue there. Shipping it across the pond is routinely doubling the price of the album plus taxes on top of that

Ah - shipping pretty much anything transatlantic is expensive, doubly so if you want it to actually survive. It’s never going to be worth shopping a $40 item from the US to the UK unless it’s tiny.
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