# Not necessarily CD's
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-necessarily-cds/5795
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 5, 2000, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-necessarily-cds/5795 "2000-01-05T19:01:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@PaulYeah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PaulYeah)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2000, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-necessarily-cds/5795/1 "2000-01-06T06:38:00Z")
What’s the generic term for a musical recording that doesn’t refer to its medium? I like to call it an album (using definition 2.5):
[http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=album](http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=album)
But if I ask a Young Whipper-Snapper what the number one album in the country is, he’ll say something like “They’re not albums, they’re CD’s, dEwD!” I’m not looking for the number one CD, I want to know the number one **recording** , regardless of medium. But the word “recording” seems so… formal.
What do **you** call a musical recording, without referring to its medium?
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### Author:  [@pluto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pluto)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2000, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-necessarily-cds/5795/2 "2000-01-06T06:44:00Z")
## I vote for album. But do they keep records (no pun intended) of total album sales not broken down by medium? Where’s **Satan** when we need him?
_De gustibus non est disputandem_
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### Author:  [@aha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aha)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2000, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-necessarily-cds/5795/3 "2000-01-05T19:01:00Z")
When a musical work is memorialized on tape or cd it is “recorded” so just go ahead and use recording and tell the young whipper snappers to cram it.
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“Look honey, there’s the little dipper, I’d show you the big dipper but my zipper is stuck.”
-aha
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### Author:  [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2000, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-necessarily-cds/5795/4 "2000-01-05T19:08:00Z")
\*pluto: Where’s Satan when we need him? \*
Just draw a pentagram on the floor and chant. 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Everybody got to elevate from the norm - Rush
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### Author:  [@Perderabo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Perderabo)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2000, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-necessarily-cds/5795/5 "2000-01-05T19:11:00Z")
Just tell the whipper-snapper “Learn to use a dictionary, dude!”. Mine says:
album 2: one or more recordings (as on tape or disk) produced as a single unit.
Singles, ep’s, albums (aka lp’s) indicate the quantity of music. Tapes, records, eight-tracks, cd’s, mini-discs, etc indicate the media.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2000, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-necessarily-cds/5795/6 "2000-01-05T19:17:00Z")
Since “album” was coined to refer to multiple 78-rpm disks (which originally came in something resembling a photo album), I don’t think the change in media requires any change in name. “Album” has come to me “multiple tracks of recorded music in one format.”
* * *
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. [www.sff.net/people/rothman](http://www.sff.net/people/rothman)
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2000, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/not-necessarily-cds/5795/7 "2000-01-05T19:22:00Z")
Billboard magazine calls them albums. That’s good enough for me.