On the other hand, what with cheap high-volume digital storage there is no overriding reason to use mp3 instead of a standard like FLAC.
As for vinyl, I already mentioned one case where the CD was badly mastered but the vinyl wasn’t. Beats me why.
Strictly in terms of “practical loss in quality”, there have been no significant advances in MP3 compression since the method was first popularized. In the 1990s, as today, it was possible to encode a track such that no listener could reliably distinguish the original and MP3 versions in a blind test. (Of course, the use of variable bitrate encoding and newer psychoacoustic models have allowed for smaller files without a perceptible reduction in sound quality.)
Having been vinyl-only into my mid to late 30s, nuts to vinyl. They take up a lot of room, they’re more difficult to store safely, there’s only 15-20 minutes of music on one side of an album, the list goes on.
I’ve got a huge legacy vinyl LP collection from back in the day, so I still have a turntable. (I keep saying that one of these days, I’ll turn all my LPs into digital files via digital turntable.) But there’s no way I’d buy music on vinyl that’s available in digital format.
The one thing I’ll miss about the eventual death of CDs (which I’m sure will happen, even if it hasn’t yet) is that the death of used record/CD stores will follow, though I’m sure it’ll lag it a bit. Browsing used record stores was always a lot of fun, even if I haven’t been in one in ages. A lot of my record collection is from used record stores.
Phoenix metro has a lot of great used places. There are at least 5 Zia records, and each one has a YUGE collection. And the staffs knows their stuff, even about music made before they were born. They also sell vinyl. They were originally a used record store, back when it was only one location serving ASU, down the street from Tower (RIP)*. Now they are sellers of used CD/DVD and old stereo gear, as well as records.
There are other independent used places that seem to be thriving as well. One benefit from living in a large city. We got a lot of music and movies from them.
Since they still sell vinyl, I’m sure they’ll be selling CDs until after I’m dead.
*and next door to the local psychic Mrs Rita’s place.
Tho it has been coming for a long time, I’m not happy about it. All my life, playing music has involved some type of physical medium. CDs suit me just fine. Happy the car I bought last May has a CD player (tho inconveniently situated in the glovebox).
My personal preference is not to have to manage music (or photos) on my computer or other device. Just on the lengthy list of how I’m increasingly out of touch.
I have my kid’s old iPod mini, and a ton of music stored on my computer. But I tend to just dump music on there, and then not MANAGE it.
The day is coming nearer and nearer that I will have to change.
I will miss buying CDs at live events, and then getting signatures ont he liner notes.
Huh. Looking at numbers online, it looks like around 2008 is when vinyl started making its comeback. I’m a bit surprised, as I remember it being kind of the hip format to buy in the late 90s/early 2000s, but sales were still declining to a nadir around 2005-2007 (depending on the source) before kicking back up.
When I last replaced my car stereo I seriously considered going “mech-less” as CD player-free ones were called. But didn’t. Lightly used since then. And if used it was with a MP3 disc . Use the USB port with a micro SD card and a tiny USB adapter. One folder alone has >120 songs. And there’s a lot of folders.
That was 2013.
It’s 2018 now, CDs are dead media.
+1…I agree with all of this.
Do I understand this: Phoenix has a chain of 5 similarly named stores plus other used record stores too? Arizona, or Earth 2? Good for you. I can only think of 3 and I’m in a top 10 or 15 city.
I wasn’t arguing CDs are obsolete.
That said, the freedoms you want to preserve are all there with any purchased track from any major vendor since none of them use DRM for purchased tracks anymore.
If you’re paying for a subscription service (in particular Apple Music since they appear to have the most generous terms), you still get virtually all those freedoms to a reasonable degree. I mean, it’s a no-brainer that you shouldn’t expect to be allowed to sell tracks that you yourself are only renting.
While it might take hundreds of streams to make up for the sale of an album, streaming can vastly increase their audience size. Because I use the iTunes streaming, I’m constantly listening to bands I would have never, ever stumbled across otherwise.
I have a little over 3,000 CDs and about 1,200 vinyl records. I like mostly indie/punk/garage/underground stuff, and at least a quarter of the bands I own don’t show up on streaming services. Also, I already own the music. Why would I want to pay someone else to get access to it, whether through cloud storage or streaming? Not to mention that I’ve had two desktops and three iPods go belly up over the years, and if I hadn’t had physical copies of my music, it would have been gone forever. Hell, I’ve got a relatively new ipod (only a couple of years old) that the newest version of iTunes refuses to work with. I use digital music, but I don’t trust it to be permanent.
Been collecting music all my life. I prefer vinyl for the cover art; I prefer digital for the ease-of-use. The only real benefit to CDs is the lossless format, which is a marginal benefit at best.
Apple Music (which is, IMHO, superior to Spotify if you are a music collector and not just a casual listener) is saving me mountains of cash just because I have instant access to more albums than I could ever afford. The few things I’m desperate for I can get from iTunes. (Also, mp3s I personally ripped using EAC and LAME that are matched I can download now in high quality DRM-free AAC files.)
I suspect CDs will live on in providing legal access to rarities as second-hand purchases. But that’s it. They’ll be a niche collector’s format.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but I think you still answered your own question here. If you had a cloud storage thing, you wouldn’t have lost that music forever because they’d be safely tucked away in the cloud. Which means you ostensibly wouldn’t have had to then laboriously re-rip 4,200 albums. And ripping vinyl is a realtime experience, right? What’s that take, like literally a thousand hours? Yuck.
In addition, you don’t have to have that gigantic collection take up space on your iPod or phone or whatever, yet you still have the ability to play what you want when you want.
Yep. Five Zia Record Exchanges in Phoenix/Mesa/Chandler/Tempe, one in Tucson and two in Vegas. It really is incredible the availability! And all seem well stocked. They may not have everything, but I’m constantly surprised at the obscure stuff they do have. Should I mention the prices? Truly used (as opposed to discount new) CDs can be had for as low as $3! DVDs under $7. (Prices for popular, newer, or great condition are higher, of course.) They have rock/pop, rap, hip hop, metal, country, spoken word, easy listening, classical, jazz, local music, and world music sections.
And they buy and trade.
House of Used is another place that has two locations in Mesa. They rent CDs and movies as well as sell, and they carry vinyl and 8 tracks!
It’s a good time to be alive!
One cannot overstate the need to keep good backups. I have three music and photo backup harddrives, one located outside of our home. There is no way I am reripping all that music, let along redigitizing the vinyl.
I’ve got an external backup and several portable drives just for music, but putting all of my digital eggs into one or two baskets makes me nervous. They can fail just like my computer. And with the cloud, I’m still stuck paying for access to music I already own (plus I’ll need wi-fi to be able to use it). I’m not against any of these things. I can see where they can be convenient. I just don’t trust the permanence of anything I don’t own in a physical format.
Plus, I really enjoy the physical aspects of digging through my crates and shelves and slapping something on the turntable. I have a harder time remembering and connecting to music that I can’t connect to a cover and a place on a shelf.
I used Google Play to upload all of my personal music years ago. When I buy a new device, I can listen to it and download it for free. No computer needed, and I can use 4G when I don’t have a wifi connection. I believe they now let you upload up to 50,000 files of your personal music.
Buy stickers or a t-shirt or, best, a record (which almost always come with a download code these days). Or buy their digital album then and there – depending on how they are selling their music, that may have the lowest overhead.
CDs have had a good run, but Spotify and iTunes have changed the game on how people find and share new music.
Agreed. CDs are 1/2 the physical “niceness” of LPs and 1/2 the convenience of digital. They were amazing during their heyday, but they’ve been made completely obsolete now.