CDs Are Dying Three Times as Fast as Vinyl Is Growing

I like the vinyl trend. It turns people on to lots of cool music from the past. And the new stuff that goes out on vinyl has a lot of thought and care put into it sometimes to try and make it special. Which is always cool. And people savour what they are hearing which is the opposite of phone based listening many times. Eventually this ultra trendiness will pass and there will be lots of cool stuff for cheap out there.

I'm still mostly a cd buyer. But, for things that are easy to get on vinyl, i bought two June Christy lps, or something special that appeals to me, Judas Priest Rocka Rolla rsd, i'll jump in. But, the cost of just regular new vinyl is not for me.

 

The other day I suddenly realized it has been 10 years...TEN...since I packed my CD collection numbering in the many hundreds up in boxes for a move to our new house.

We have since moved again and I didn't have to repack them because I never unpacked them.

A decade ago I had an iPod and had been ripping CDs to the computer. It was also the vinyl rebirth era, so I started buying LPs again. I never intended to abandon the CDs, I just never got around to unpacking them. There were some I certainly missed but obviously not enough to dig them out and organize them again.

Then came online streaming and I honestly don't know why I still have them. Eventually I'll go through and keep the special ones (audiophile, rare, etc) but I'd guess 95% of them are useless now.

Crazy.

dan c

 

You are correct!

 

Valid points. I try to support labels and artists directly as much as possible but it can be difficult. I tried to purchase some items on bandcamp and the postage rates they quoted to Canada was $25. Might as well just stream it at that point. The US has an advantage on that front but it's still a cost that needs to be considered.

 

There's no excuse for that at all. It has nothing to do with enjoying music. I don't understand how anyone who claims to be a music fan can actually get joy out of declining sales and a format that, aside from bad mastering, often gives near perfect sound and doesn't go downhill with multiple plays as well as can have great booklets & packaging, disappearing from shops and becoming very unpopular. There's nothing to cheer about that.

I understand the benefits of streaming & downloading, but it's just another way of doing things. It doesn't appeal to everyone though. Especially people who like to collect records and CDs.

 

Conspicuously omitting CDs but including vinyl is a total hipster move. Enough people are still buying CDs to justify carrying them, if you claim to be a music store. I buy vinyl, but I also buy CDs, and I would be less likely to shop there if I lived in the area. I believe I have bought from the online; looks like I will be buying less from them now...

I'll never forget the day Green Apple in San Francisco decided to stop stocking classical LPs because "no one bought them" (even though a token classical LP section would take up such a small amount of space); at the time their classical LP section was 15% of the reason I even shopped there.

 

They got in a huge modern Latin cd lot, when I was in last week. And, rock cds were still healthy.

 

What I find surprising about this is that I bought about a dozen autographed CDs from Newbury's website just a couple months ago, many new releases. Are they going to stop cold turkey in having artists sign CDs for them and make it vinyl or nothing? Or will CDs (signed and unsigned) be available online only?

 

Three of the four formats you mention carry some sort of DRM.

Unless you rip them in some fashion, and store/burn them DRM-free, then it is likely that your robust, non-degrading physical media will outlive roaches, Cher, Keith Richards, and your ability to hear anything off them.

If you DO rip/mix/burn, you have a digital media preservation problem on your hands.

 

This is probably just because Amazon sells most of the CDs now and not because CDs are actually dying.

 

I'm not so sure about the roaches. And Keith of course. He might even outlive Chuck Norris.

 

I honestly don't know anyone cheering for the demise of CDs. (Well, maybe my wife since it would save us a lot of money, but I don't think she thinks about it much.) Everyone I know who is buying a lot of vinyl is still buying a lot of CDs. Maybe not as many as they were, but still probably more than the average American does, even leaving out the spend on vinyl. Since I am not tech-savvy enough to do my own needle-drops, one of the things I factor in when deciding between a record and a CD is "How am I going to listen to this in my car or in my office?" If there is a download card, great; if there is a CD included, even better; and if neither but it's on Apple Music, that works for me too. If none of the above, I often choose the CD instead. I generally would rather pay a little extra to get the vinyl, but I'm pro-CD as well.

 

Really? Their main store is always so crowded, it is impossible to walk around the place. But even if that does happen, they have many locations throughout Boston alone, so it is unlikely to be a major disaster.

To be fair though, music has never been their main focus.....but I do agree that for a while there they had quite the large CD and used CD selection. With Boston being a large college town, Newbury Comics is well positioned to capture the in-fad, pop culture trend right now.

I will miss the many signed CDs and live performances though.

 

The whole streaming thing baffles me.

The argument has been that people are buying subscriptions, which baffles me even more.

A subscription to Spotify costs £10 a month. So let's suggest that the new generation come along and start subscribing aged 20. They continue subscribing (they have to as they OWN no music) until they die, aged 80. That costs them £7200 if subscriptions don't rise over their lifetime. That's the cost of over 700 CDs, assuming they are £10 a pop and never discounted.

How many people's music collection in the past would have stretched to 700 CDs? Well, in 2005, at the height of the CD era - and when CDs were indeed about £10 a throw (their price really hasn't changed much), the BBC reported that the average CD collection for worth just £1500. According to the article, men owned an average of 178 CDs, and women owned an average of 135.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Music collections 'worth £1,500'

So, the wonderfully convenient, can-get-everything-I-want streaming service is actually costing the average consumer around £5500 more that buying the music they want on CD - which they then own, of course.

 

I'm going to guess that people who own 135 to 178 cds will never pay for streaming. They'll be fine with the ads on the free tier. Or they'll just listen to the radio or YouTube or whatever other free with ads service comes along.

 

If streaming is seen strictly as a replacement for disc acquisition, then it is baffling. If, OTOH, a streaming subscription brings added value in other ways, then it is not so mysterious.

Hearing music before you pay for it is a big one for me.
Hearing what a brand-new album sounds like at midnight without waiting for delivery.
Using it as basically a cloud-based access to your physical collection (if a big chunk of what you already "own" is available on the service.)
Cloud-based, so one don't have to load up a portable device with playlists before leaving the house.
Listening to that hyped-to-death new album everyone's talking about, and deciding you'll pass.

 

For forty years music and movies were a central part of western kid's lives, which us why we have people with 20,000 albums and cds and DVDs. They're really just another stimulant to kids now, and I don't think anyone is going to care about pressings and masterings or curated complete collections anymore. Other than libraries, all that stuff will die with the boomers.

 

So if you spend £10 a month on CDs, after 2 years you’ve amassed a library of 24 albums. On day one of subscribing to a streaming service you have access to an absolutely enormous library of music.

 

That's a good thing of course, but I'd rather have 24 well chosen albums in that time that I know well, than a gigantic amount of music that I barely know any of. There's only so much time to listen to it all.

£240 can get more than 24 CDs nowadays.

 

In addition there are also access advantages vs owing a collection. There's also economies of scale (perhaps not the best description) but if you have a family plan, say 2 adults, 3 kids, that's a lot more cd buying you're not doing. It won't be $10 a month for a family plan but it won't be $50 either.

Telling someone that streaming means they won't own their music isn't going to mean anything if the other person is thinking "I don't care about owning cds"

 

Those people are probably the ones who catapulted Adele's record sales intro the stratosphere. You're right they probably won't stream, they'll probably buy those 1-2 cds they usually buy every year or so.

 

I didn't say they won't stream, I said they won't pay to stream. Whatever is free will be fine. They won't be buying any cds because that will be something their parents or grandparents did.

 

I have a big CD and record collection, and I didn't stream music at all until a couple years ago when my wife changed her Apple Music plan to a family plan so our kids could listen, so I could too. By the way, it was only a $5 increase, to $15. Now I listen via streaming on occasion, mostly to hear new music. It hasn't reduced my CD and record buying--it may have increased it, actually, because if I find something I like, I tend to want to buy it. But my wife and kids essentially buy no physical music, which they did do on occasion before streaming came around.

Anyway, I am a person who likes to own physical media, but if I only had $120 a year to spend on music, I would spend it on a streaming subscription. Fortunately, I have a bigger budget.

 

It appears to be the average buyer who IS streaming - it's certainly not people with 500+ CDs going from people I know, because people that serious about music don't want it to disappear from their collections overnight.

I don't agree that there is a benefit of having every album available to you from the start - and I would be very interested to know just how much music the average streamer listens to. My guess is that most of it will revolve a relatively small group of artists in a relatively small amount of styles. This notion that streaming is opening the floodgates to a world of music people would never have access to, and they are flocking there in their droves to hear obscure music they would never normally listen to seems exaggerated at best, and downright ridiculous at worst. People listen to what they like - Ed Sheeran fans are not going off and discovering punk. Lovers of Handel are probably not listening to Berio just because they have access to it. And I doubt fans of 1920s jazz are listening to Miles Davis on a trip for twenty minutes.

As has been stated earlier, people like to get to know their music - not listen to something once and then never hear it again. Sure, there are uses for streaming for all music fans. If I'm off to a classical concert and don't know the main work then I don't have to go out and buy a copy before hand. Great. But am I going off and listening to things that I wouldn't normally? Nope!

 

But they have a spare room in their house they can rent out