In defense of the CD-from a cultural view.

The Grateful Dead certainly caught on pretty quickly to the advantages for the CD format.
The exhaustive sets they have released are incredible.

 

I remember spending many long, lonely months in the 80s searching for a copy of Family's Music In A Doll's House. Never did find it, until I picked it up on a trip to New York. Never managed to get hold of Tim Buckley's first album; to this day, I don't think I've ever seen a vinyl copy.

 

Many nice responces here to my OP . I think the impact of CD I pointed out is seriosly overlooked. I mean -who could have dreamed of complete Dylan, Elvis,Cash-sets or all the other similar stuff released over the last decade. Or Bille Holliday complete Columbia or vast sets with Miles or Colthrane. None of this possible without CD
My only problem is to find time to listen trhrough everything. And that s not really a problem

 

My 12 year old son didn't want books or physical music media for his recent birthday. Those are pretty much the only things I have wanted for my birthday since my 12th one!!

Not just minor acts. I was a huge Bee Gees fan growing up and had this one book with a discography in the appendix. All but the most recent 4-5 albums at the time had "(currently not in print)" next to the album title. Until the entire catalog came out on cd!

 

I bet you tell all the girls that!

So today folks, I will be your CD-Based Philosopher! There seems to be a lot more threads on this topic lately.

 

Listening now to George Harrison ATMP on cd.

I still believe in this format.

You can shuffle tracks or program a cd.

Not with vinyl.

 

You'd need two people to pick up a 101-LP box. If any record company was crazy enough to release one,
maybe $10-$15 per disc, $1300 on sale ....

 

Many thanks to @Bemagnus for this thread - definitely needed, and well-said!

Agree, especially on the last point: Joining up here in 2010 inspired me to revisit and refresh my CD collection, and one of the greatest benefits was that it reminded me how much I enjoy listening to albums all the way through - something I'm more inspired to do with a CD than with my (also beloved) computer music server and its song-by-song shuffle abilities. Listening to albums again has increased my enjoyment of music - when I was almost exclusively listening from my computer-based system, I wasn't listening as often, and I didn't realize it until I started spinning discs again and noticed I was listening every day.

Great point - CD is in decline generally and might never be "cool" again even as a retro thing (because it lacks some of the physical charm of LPs, 8-tracks, etc - not IMO but seemingly in the opinion of many). But its impact on the culture, the market, and availability of music often is forgotten these days. I think with the passage of time, its value in those respects will be acknowledged more, just as cassettes' value to the culture and to getting people into music is now widely recognized far beyond the relatively small cassette revival culture itself.

The only small note of dissonance I would offer is that while 95% of CDs are available very cheaply now as used items or bargain box sets, it's amazing how expensive that remaining 5% of rare or collectible discs still is, even in this period of decline.

 

Without CDs aging Beatles fans would have to discuss their medications or grand-kids instead of endlessly debating about these.




But seriously folks, I'm looking over at my classical CD box sets and wondering how much space they would take up if they were on vinyl and also how many meals of tuna and ramen noodles I'd have to eat.

 

Every current artist is still available on cd as is every other one.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Are their current acts who you can't order on physical disc?
Even if so the option to put them on cd one day is still there.
The kids that haven't been born yet will find the format intriguing one day and the concept of owning your music will be appreciated again.

 

I notice at small venues all the artists (even the new ones) have cds at their swag table. The fans cannot put a download in their hand and albums need too much care to just be thrown into the van.

 

Cd's were the great 'equalizer', during it's hey-day.
Lots of out-of-print records came back, AND, were priced for a poor-boy like me!

 

Loved it

 

CDs being out of favor and often being ridiculed during the current vinyl resurgence doesn't at all affect my attitude toward them. They're great. In my world, vinyl and CDs both have a place along with whatever comes next. I was never a CD hater and I never stopped buying vinyl. CDs will have their resurgence too. Now's not the time to sell your CDs, but rather, it's the time to buy those you've been seeking. Plus, the new CD releases have never been cheaper.

Why is everyone suddenly doubting the format we've all been enjoying for the last 25 years?

 

CDs were great in their time. I bought a lot of them, and discovered a lot of great music that way.

 

Pre internet days, the saw-cut and bullet hole bins, cassettes and compact discs were a cheap way for discovery. Kissing The Pink (KTP), So, bands I'd never heard of

 

Some of the indie bands I've seen sell USB sticks at their merch table.

 

Same here. This was huge for people of a certain generation. That style of music was hard to find, rare, foreign to people who were young in the 80s like me, but very interesting. CDs from the libraries, public and in college, got large of catalogs of jazz, rock, classical to borrow. I spent years of exploring music. A lot of classic rock was old for my generation, but I really like it and reissues on CD helped with exploration.

The other thing that helped were the record clubs - BMG/RCA and Columbia House. I bought many CDs I would have never tried due to the price to take a chance on. I have a much larger collection as a result.

LPs are nice, but they were, as mentioned, hit or miss to find for catalog items to explore and take a chance on. Just random finds in libraries or friends, vs. tons of CD coming out new, used, or club, plus library. It was a great time for someone to discover music.

This one of the reasons I donate both used and new CDs to the library here, I would like to see them have a core, essential jazz and rock collection. Their classical collection is already quite extensive and comprehensive.

They did a lot for me, good to enable for others.

 

That is another way to do it that I haven't seen myself. Did they have cds too?

 

Depends on the band. Some of them only sell CD, some only USB, some both. Small storage USB sticks are so cheap now, and an album even in lossless usually takes up less than 1 GB, that it may be even more cost effective and efficient for bands to throw the files into drives than to burn to disc, package, etc.

 

One thing that bothers me about Spotify, Apple Music and the other digital services that have succeeded CDs: Those services are far from comprehensive. The sheer variety of music, leaving aside the box sets... just regular albums, available on CD is staggering. And, unlike Blu Ray, which is hobbled by regions, a CD from anywhere will play in your deck and mine.

While it isn't a hard metric, any album that I have listened to and enjoyed at least five times, I am likely to buy a physical copy of said album if I can. And that means I still buy CDs and vinyl willingly.

 

I've offered to donate to our library for the same reason, but they don't accept CD donations

 

I had given my Dad a few hundred country CDs over the years. He recently got an Amazon Echo or Alexa one of those voice activated services so now he just says 'play Willie Nelson' and it does. He tried to sell all the CDs but the local store wouldn't take them. The library on the other hand was happy to have them.

 

Now and forever I love CDs. I just got a new car and was thrilled that it still had a CD player (in addition to Bluetooth and a USB port, etc.). The salesman actually kind of gave it a bit of a shrug and a hand wave as he was showing it to me ("And it does have a CD player, but you may not even know what a CD is ha ha!"). Of course, I'm almost 29 so of course I know what a CD is. I grew up with them.

I have noticed that lots of middle-aged and older people (he was probably in his 60s) seem to think "under 30" = hipster streaming millennial that has no idea who Bob Dylan is and was raised with downloads. iTunes didn't even exist until I was in high school. My great love for the CD format is probably very influenced by the fact that they were THE format all through my youth.

 

CD's are going nowhere, so many of us own thousands of them, we will be buying them until our dying days. No chance of me purchasing downloads I've had too many hard drive failures over the last twenty something years whereas I have only had ONE CD fail in twenty five + years of purchases.