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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

#211

Post by maccard »

dylan604 wrote: post #205
maccard wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It’s never going to be worth shopping a $40 item from the US to the UK unless it’s tiny. That's bold. Who are you to say what is worth something to someone you don't know. I've already stated that I have done this, but it is a limiting factor on how often I do.

Sorry - only a sith deals in absolutes. I didn’t mean “literally never under any circumstances” I meant “on the balance of probabilities it’s unlikely that the financial cost of shipping something small is worth it, unless the item has some value that is not financial”

But that was wordy

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

#213

Post by nephihaha »

HackerThemAll wrote: post #124

Sorry but vinyls don't offer anything but nostalgia for "old, good times", and approach to the audiophile crowd of insane people. I don't buy into these crackles. I stopped using MP3. A high quality OPUS file format is the way to go for me. I can take the whole music library in my pocket to the places with no internet, listen through good enough in-ear headphones, or with a small speaker (if for more people), and cha…

The best thing about vinyl is the covers. The artwork and sleeve notes look great due to the size. Cassettes and CDs don't work as well that way.

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

#214

Post by beenBoutIT »

localbolu wrote: post #85
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've been turning back to radio. So many talented DJs playing great music around the world.

All we really need is a solid system for adding all of the 100k+ internet radio stations to a synthetic radio spectrum that can be easily navigated with a rotary dial just like local radio.

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

#215

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

criddell wrote: post #171
BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be stating a general rule when this concerns only a very small amount of cases (not the loudness war itself, but when the vinyl uses a different and drastically better master) that's also quite dependent on genre. And omit that a lot of music sounds a lot worse on vinyl due to its lack of dynamic range and poor LF capabilities (classical, electronic). This isn't for nothing that the first recording presse…

> You seem to be stating a general rule I was trying not to. I thought saying "it might sound better to you" would make it clear that it's a subjective matter of taste.

I meant "general" with regards to the material, not the listener.

I have myself digitized a few rare cases like Celtic Frost's Monotheist because the CD was horrid and I know pop and rock suffered much more from the phenomenon, but unless the music was released first as a vinyl then got later butchered on CD (so before '85~88), it's very rare to have a situation where the vinyl is objectively better.

One such case I encountered was Unknown Pleasures (https://world-playground-deceit.net/blog/2025/11/music-revie...) but I finally found a CD worth the change. Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode were also bands that gave me much trouble when navigating their haphazard CD master landscape.

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

#216

Post by kevstev »

mk_stjames wrote: post #173
21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone else remember the superb manuals that used to come with games? The starcrat and warcraft manuals. Drawings and lore. Diablo. Those old games came with books.

Nothing was worse however than getting a game used and not getting the manual included, when the manual contained very necessary information to progress through the game, and in an era where 'The Web' still wasn't really a thing.... I'm looking at you, 1993's Journeyman Project....

Journeyman Project... that brought back a deep rooted memory. Its still not clear to me if my Packard Bell came with a full version or a demo, because I remember being stuck about an hour in and could not figure out how to progress. I also was mildly interested in the game, but had better ones to play- Myst, X-Wing, etc.

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

#217

Post by kevstev »

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

So I actually had a use case for this last month. My NAS is too weak to run immich well, so I dusted off my old sandybridge core i7 laptop from ~2011, and it actually benchmarks about 4x my nas, and has 8GB of RAM. But it was still loaded with windows. Long story short, its actually kind of difficult these days to install linux on such an old box, distros have become massive. I searched around in my closet and found my old spindle of burned CDs- and I wanted to go on a nostalgia trip, and every one I tried worked! I used Kodak Golds, which have lived up to their hype.

I even burned a CD of the smallest ubuntu distro I could find, and its happily running linux and hosting Immich, among other things.

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

#218

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

dylan604 wrote: post #93
Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I import a lot of stuff from Europe and the shipping is rough. I save by bundling items.

If only I could get the artists I like to release at the same time

My guy holds stuff for me. My current order started last year.

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

#219

Post by asciimov »

xienze wrote: post #133
asciimov wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factory stamps are still not immune to bit rot, even when stored in ideal conditions.

Maybe not, but I think the concerns are a bit overblown. Just like the other poster, I've had CDs and DVDs that lived for over 10 years in an attic and a fair number of them are 25+ years old. No problems reading them!

Nearly a decade ago I digitized my families cds and dvds. The stamped discs had about a 10% failure rate, which was higher than I expected.

Fortunately the vast majority of discs people own aren’t particularly rare, so if they loose a disc from a top 40 artist, they can easily get a replacement.

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

#220

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #128
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…

Anyone else remember the superb manuals that used to come with games? The starcrat and warcraft manuals. Drawings and lore. Diablo. Those old games came with books.

Even if those books were to come back now, they would be AI-generated slop. I am sad for the future of creative works.
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