Yes, it is. It’s a way to play your downloaded music in your car if you can’t play your smartphone on your stereo system. What’s your point? You don’t have to buy CDs to make use of your car’s CD player.
Yes, the sound is much warmer than from a thumbdrive. 
it’ll be fewer than you think.
I’ve bought probably 30 CDs this year alone [2 this week]. I listen to obscure* (and not so obscure) Japanese bands that I can’t find on Amazon or eBay. In Japan physical media is supreme, so no CD, no listen (there might be a song or two on YouTube, but not albums).
Plus, at the remaining national book chain, I can buy classic CD albums for $5 or $6, cheaper than buying a download.
*some bands are so obscure I imagine 99.9% of the Japanese haven’t heard of them (using 125,000,000 as population) If they have 12,500 fans I’d be surprised.
Yeah but that is a fad. There was a time 40 years ago when vinyl was the best technology available, but now it isn’t.
Supposedly 3.2 million vinyl records were sold last year, an increase of 53% vs 2015.
By comparison, 251 billion songs were streamed in 2016.
So streaming and playing digital media you own (legally and illegally) are the most common forms of music.
For me, I haven’t bought a CD in at least 10 years.
I bought a CD just this week, because my favorite album (Ok Computer) was remastered and if you want a full sound lossless version that’s portable, you buy a CD.
My brother bought a cd a couple weeks ago for the same reason. They remastered one of the Chicago albums and we wanted to hear it in “full glory.”
Most new music I do buy as a download, though. I don’t need it to be so sonically perfect to please my ears.
I did go buy some vinyl copies of the Courtney Barnett songs I bought to download. Because I had a feeling that her stuff would sound pretty great on the “warmth” of vinyl.
I can’t remember the last CD I bought and the new car I just bought doesn’t even have a factory option for CD. It’s got aux and blue tooth, and that’s it for playing my own tunes. One of the other models had an option for an SD card but still no CD.
I still buy them, even though I rip almost all of them to AAC, I like having the actual physical media for when the zombie apocalypse occurs (aka my HD dies.)
I even started occasionally buying vinyl again, probably because I’m a dumbass.
Probably not dumb. More like:
Serious question: Why rip as AAC versus some other format? What’s the benefit and what’s the downside? As I mentioned in an earlier post I’m thinking of (finally!) ripping my entire 400 disc collection and I’d like to do it the smarter way the first time, not the third.
I strongly advise against AAC. Whatever advantages there are must be balanced by the format having built-in DRM and being proprietary to apple.
Brainfart. I meant ALAC (Apple Lossless) not AAC.
AAC is a lossy compression format, like MP3, but more advanced. It will sound better than MP3 but not as good as the actual CD.
ALAC is a lossless compression format and will sound just like the original CD. (Because it decompresses to the exact original PCM stream.) The resulting files are bigger than a MP3 or AAC, but smaller than a raw CD rip. FLAC is also a good format for lossless ripping.
Nobody else has said it yet so I will: “Are CD’s what dead yet?”
I assume you made the same mistake **friedo **did and are referring to ALAC, not AAC.
I’ve since learned that AAC is an MPEG / ISO / IEC standard. Advanced Audio Coding - Wikipedia
For reference, ALAC is open source and royalty free, and does not have any DRM.
Cute…but MP3 files really don’t sound the same as CDs. Like JPG vs BMP for images, most of the time the MP3 format is “good enough” - but I recognize certain passages in certain songs where the lossy compression of the MP3 format results in degradation as compared to the original.
Wrong on both counts. Although AAC is Apple’s preferred format, it is not proprietary to them. Rather, it was developed by a consortium of companies.
And iTunes hasn’t used DRM since 2009.
In some ways I envy people who can hear a difference between MP3 and anything else, but on the other hand I rather like the fact I can’t, since it’s one less thing for me to worry about when sourcing music.
CDs are my preferred medium. Just bought 2 Billy Strings CDs after a show on Sat (and got them signed by the entire band!) Try doing THAT with your download! 
Just bought a new car w/ a CD player, so I’m probably good in THAT department for a decade or so. Unfortunately, the player is somewhat inconveniently in the glovebox. 
Car also plays USB or some kinda cards which I had never heard of before. I’ll learn about using those when I have to. I suspect that will occur when I get a new computer. My old iMac is getting creakier and creakier, and I imagine when I go to replace it, I’ll find my choices limited should I require a CD drive.
I tend to be a very late adopter. Unless I perceive some clear advantage, I basically adopt new technology when I HAVE to, when my old, preferred tech is no longer supported.
Classical music fan. I buy CDs exclusively.
1 - I like the idea of having a something to look at, hold and store.
2 - CDs usually come with booklets that can be extremely informative and are almost compulsory for operas.
3 - This is probably irrational but I don’t trust cloud storage for music and pictures. I know that it works, that it’s extremely convenient and that lots of people wouldn’t want to go back physical media. And I do have some music backed up in the cloud but it’s just that : a back-up in case something happens to “the real stuff”.
Street musicians often have CDs for sale. The last one I got was this same year.