I still buy CDs. My typical behavior is to subscribe to a music streaming service, which ends up being my usual way to listen to albums and find new bands that interest me. If I like an album I’ll buy it as a CD off Amazon.
This has one practical benefit that affects me on a day to day basis: my car automatically rips CDs to its hard drive, which is a convenient way to listen to music in the car. That isn’t a huge deal, because I can just as easily plug my phone into it’s USB port, but it is a minor convenience.
I think the main reasons I do it are: (1) a vague sense that I’m more directly contributing to the artists than just listening to their albums as part of a streaming subscription service and (2) I’m a little uncomfortable with the concept of digital ownership. The principle seems a little murky to me (although in practice I’ve never actually sold a CD). I know what it means to sell a CD I’ve purchased. I don’t think there is a good mechanism or legal clarity regarding reselling a digital download. I don’t really know what it means to “buy” a digital album or movie. Is it really mine forever, or just while Amazon, etc. says it is or the format is easily playable because the related companies are still around? Seems more like a long term rental to me. I may as well stick to a monthly subscription service.
It is still a fad in my view. I’m not trying to be offensive, but when hipsters find something else to investigate and propagate, vinyl will die off again.
Generally there is a trajectory with technology. Newer technologies are cheaper, higher quality, more portable, more options, more reliable, etc. People generally do not pick technologies that are more expensive, lower quality, less portable, fewer options, less reliable, etc. unless there is some other reason (nostalgia, culture, etc).
Vinyl really doesn’t have any of that. A remastered vinyl record sounds good, but is it better than a remastered FLAC file? It is more expensive and less portable. For some people the idea of having a physical record player in their living room is a nice feeling, but that is a small % of the population who desire that over something cheaper, more reliable and more portable.
According to Dr. Wikipedia, in the US about 13 million vinyl records were sold in the US in 2016. But in 2010 only 3 million were sold.
Of those 13 million vinyl records, did 13 million people all buy 1 record in 2016, or did 1 million people each buy an average of 13 records that year? I’d assume the latter. That is a small niche market.
Most MP3s are recorded with all the very very high pitches completely filtered out. Those above 16 kHz or very roughly 6 octaves above middle C. If you’re young enough and your ears are good enough, you might notice those very high highs are missing from an MP3 but are present in other, better encodings.
As a practical matter, almost all music has almost zero such notes, and darn near anyone over 30 or who ever listened to loud music or cars or lawnmowers can’t hear those notes anyhow. So the notes being missing is immaterial to that audience.
Music does not generally have fundamental notes that high, but it certainly has harmonic overtones that high. They do contribute a small but distinctive element to the timbre.
if you’re worried about hearing those harmonics, then you’re not interested in the music. you’re just interested in knowing you can hear those harmonics.
I prefer to listen to music on Youtube because it’s free (yes I’m a cheap bastard)
and because it has the most diversity of any service.
Like a song by the Beatles? You can listen to the Beatles peform it. You can also listen to dozens of cover versions of the song by both professional and amateur artists of varying quality. I’ve found some of the covers quite good.
The last CD I bought was a Prince CD because for years his music wasn’t availableon Youtube.
Agree with friedo. Now, I’ve got a tin ear, and I can’t really make out those harmonics and other graces. But I can tell an oboe from a clarinet, even when they’re playing the “same note.” It isn’t just about “the music.” Little things add a lot of richness.
.midi music files are okay, if all you want is “the music.” They’ve also recorded Christmas carols performed by barking dogs, or tuned electric motors…
(Antonio Vivaldi liked to invent “virtual” musical instruments, by having two instruments play the same tune. The combination of instruments created a “new instrument” – sort of like an 8-stringed violin! Some of the effects, such as the “tromba marina” of his celebrated Concerto in C for Diverse Instruments, are really magnificent.)
If you think that those overtones don’t matter, then listen to an operatic soprano at the top of her range, sometime. Clip off the overtones, and you end up hearing beeping instead of singing.
We’re not talking about hearing differences between an oboe and a clarinet, I’m talking about stuff above 16 kHz where a heck of a lot of people above a certain age can’t hear anything anyway.. And where there isn’t very much content from natural instruments anyway.
When I’ve been following an artist for decades and have all their releases, it hardly enters my mind not to buy the new cd!
And buying at smaller gigs means that you can often get them signed by the performers, if you want. I’ve also got cds I like by support acts that, if I hadn’t bought the cd, I’d have only a fuzzy memory of as I doubt I’d have looked them up later.
Tres cool. Thanks. But I don’t recall ever hearing any floppy drive make those sorts of noises. So the overall effect (for me) is fake rather than amazing.
The issues you guys are describing with MP3s only really applies to lower quality ones. The 16khz lowpass is only for 120-150kbps. The now “standard” is 170-210kbps, which has an 18khz lowpass. And, of course, if you take it up higher, you get to the point where there is no lowpass at all. The encoders (well, LAME) have gotten really, really good.
And that’s just for MP3s, which are less efficient than AAC, Ogg, or Vorbis. I find it weird they have such a stranglehold when pretty much everyone listens to music on a device that is more than capable of better quality.
Things have improved a lot since the Napster days with those fixed rate 128 kbps files. Lossless is generally overkill for anything but audio editing.
That said, audiobooks tend to be much lower quality, and so I buy those CDs. As for concerts, I’m all for replacing selling CDs with a code or micro-SD card.
