Do You Care if CD Comes Back?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Cyclone Ranger, Jun 22, 2019.

  1. csgreene

    csgreene Forum Resident

    Location:
    Idaho, USA
    Well, considering that I see myself as a music lover and not an audiophile, I've pretty much quit playing my LPs, CDs, and cassettes in favor of using my Spotify and Pandora accounts as well as a few selected internet streamed jazz stations. And the horror of it all is that I use an iPad or Roku (depending on the room) to stream. My main system, a modest Marantz PM8004 and CD6004 with NHT SuperOne speakers, allows me to connect my iPad into the CD player's USB port and stream through its internal DAC. As I have subscriptions to both services, I stream at their highest rates. If it sounds lousy, I don't hear it because, to me, it sounds at least as good as CDs. With Spotify, I can listen to albums (and more) and with Pandora, I can set up genre radio stations. I'm good. I get discounted subscription rates which total less than an LP a month. If things ever go south with streaming, I have hundreds of LPs, CDs, and cassettes.
     
  2. bluesky

    bluesky Senior Member

    Location:
    south florida, usa
    I love CDs.
    And LPs.
    and rare cassettes
    and... RtoR
    & specific 78s.
    &... live concerts too.

    But that's it - that's where I draw the line.
    :)
     
  3. schnitzerphilip

    schnitzerphilip "Modern Dad" Unlocked Award

    Location:
    NJ USA
    Same here. Except I don't have a component system anymore and I do 95% of my listening through HomePod smart speakers and CarPlay in my cars.

    Compared to CD, sound quality is the same and the amount of song, playlist, and mood options are incalculable. Like, literally, incalculable. 45 million songs at ones fingertips can do that. Turns out that the next exciting horizon for an audiophile isn't sound quality, it's sound quantity.
     
  4. csgreene

    csgreene Forum Resident

    Location:
    Idaho, USA
    Well, I have four systems here so I'm not going to powered speakers or making any changes. I have a couple turntables, three CD players, and one cassette deck. I still keep a VHS recorder hooked into the home theater system as well but I simply prefer streaming these days. Pure sound, no maintenance, and simplicity (unless we lose our internet connection...).

    I should add that I carry an Anker BT speaker in my camper van and use it with my phone when stopped for the night.
     
    schnitzerphilip likes this.
  5. Big Blue

    Big Blue Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    Deluxe boxes like that are a good use of CD. I’m not really interested in listening to studio outtakes sequentially on LP, but wouldn’t hate listening to specific tracks. That’s one of CD’s strengths, no question.
     
    thetman likes this.
  6. Record companies are in business to make a profit and no longer put out something which they don't think will sell. Often, CD or any other format physical releases are put out on a limited basis, often by independents. Some LP's I have purchased came with CD versions of the albums not available for purchase separately. Many LP's come with free downloads as Amazon often supplies for any physical format they sell.
    Many times, I had to wait for years to get something I wanted on CD. Often, they were only available as imports. But, I can't think of anything that I've ever wanted that hasn't been available on CD, including the newer releases. Something which comes to mind are the long-desired releases from the old Cameo-Parkway labels. The original masters were owned and controlled by ABKCO and were withheld from the U.S. market. From what I understand, recordings from 1963 and older are fair game outside the U.S., which includes most of the Cameo-Parkway recordings, so, they came from Canadian and E.U. sources. As the Cameo-Parkway fan base is shrinking, and after the death of Allen Klein, ABKCO finally got in gear, while there were enough baby-boomers around who would gladly buy them and started releasing those recordings. Being busy controlling the Rolling Stones and other British Invasion recording, Allen Klein refused to do anything with the Cameo-Parkway recordings. ABKCO also controls the Phil Spector catalog on the Philles record label and is sitting on most of that, also. They are still sitting on the stereo masters. Most of the C-P material was only in mono, but their were the leased recordings and the native ones which had overdubs made on multi-track. Eventhough Phil Spector is in jail, he still has some say over the recordings he was behind, so, if they appear at all, they are in mono. Of course, some material has appeared in stereo, but it has mostly come from sources outside the U.S.
    Now, for releases available only on download, everybody and their dogs can burn their own CD's, if they want it on CD, so why would they make them available on any physical format? A CD is easy to copy, so it is safer to release something in a lower level format, like mp3, or in a higher level format like hi-def, which is hard to copy onto CD, but can be copied, in whole, to DVD's.
    In short, almost everything has been available on CD if they wanted to make it available that way. If you haven't found it, you either missed the train or are looking for something which few others are. With many of the millennials, and even the old-farts, listening to their music on smart phones through earbuds, why would a company want to put something out on physical media?
     
  7. Tim 2

    Tim 2 MORE MUSIC PLEASE

    Location:
    Alberta Canada
    Don't like to see any formate go down, even those noisy old LP things.
     
  8. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I'm talking about new release in 2018, 2019. When Decca released this year Hilary Hahn's new recording of the solo violin pieces composed for her by Anton Garcia Abril, they released it on streaming, download and vinyl. No CD edition.

    When Beyonce's Parkwood Entertainment released the debut EP of young phenom sister act Chloe X Halle, Sugar Symphony, in 2016, it was released for digital download and streaming, no physical edition was released then or has ever been released.

    Neither of these were particularly obscure records. Chloe X Halle were getting a huge push, covering magazines, they're appearing as actresses on the Blackish spin off, they actually made an appearance at the White House. But no physical edition. Hilary Hahn is obviously a major star in the world of classical music. Decca and Hahn did a lot of advance social media guerrilla marketing for the Abril album, very contemporary promo campaign. But Decca had no commercial interest in releasing the album on CD.

    Now, no physical release is common, and no CD release but maybe a vinyl release is also not unheard of. When there is a physical release its also something like a limited edition release out in small quantities for a few weeks -- as with the new Tool album. No standard CD edition. No continuing in-print CD edition.

    And older music that had been in print on CD is pretty much being allowed to go out of print on CD. That's the new state of affairs in the record industry at the end of 2019. CD is increasingly not being supported by retail, and less and less by record labels.

    It doesn't make a difference to me. I'm perfectly happy streaming the music if I can stream in in at least 16/44.1 FLAC. But CD is slowly but surely falling by the wayside in terms of label and retail support in the US. (Download sales are declining even faster, but if the labels are prepping the material for streaming maybe they feel like they also might as well offer it for download.)
     
    MackKnife likes this.
  9. Hilary Hahn's latest album is available in digital format as a FLAC 24 bit/96khz. As I said, if you want a CD, burn one. You've got a good source file.
    This doesn't mean that CD's are falling by the wayside. What it means is that the market isn't there to support the availability of a CD. Those companies, like Decca or UMe have choices too and they don't choose to lose money. For those preferring an analog format, their is the vinyl version. For those wanting something more high-end, they've got the digital version which they can download quickly and be tired of listening to it before the vinyl version even ships.
    As I stated earlier, companies ain't in the business of losing money.
     
  10. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Of course CDs are falling by the wayside -- they are disappearing from the marketplace as a format for the release of music. And of course its because the demand for CD is declining (the demand for downloads is declining at even a faster rate). That's what we've been talking about for two and a half months -- the declining market for CD and do we care if the market comes back. I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make, other than to restate what we've all been talking about -- that CDs are disappearing from the marketplace because the demand for them is declining.
     
    MackKnife, Eigenvector and Big Blue like this.
  11. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient

    Location:
    new york city
    You are correct. I'd say 2018 was probably the true "beginning of the end" of the CD (in the sense of some major bands not supplying them).This has continued in 2019. Probably in just a few years, the majority of new releases by new mainstream acts will not be available on "regular" CD. If they get on CD at all, it will probably be some kind of Tool-like specialty item.

    The market for that stuff isn't music fans, it's fanboys of the particular artist.

    And with respect to the response to the limited specialty Tool release, we're talking about a very internationally popular cult band who went 13 years between albums and has been teasing a new album for a number of years now. I would not use their fans' response to the limited edition CD package as some kind of barometer for the health of the format.
     
  12. Big Blue

    Big Blue Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    It seems like you are saying CDs aren’t falling by the wayside and then describing exactly how they are falling by the wayside...
     
    Cyclone Ranger likes this.
  13. bluesky

    bluesky Senior Member

    Location:
    south florida, usa
    Just bought two M- Jazz CDs today.

    :bdance:
     
  14. tubesandvinyl

    tubesandvinyl Forum Resident

    But what happens when streaming gets to $25 a month or higher?
     
  15. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I pay $15 a month for Spotify family now, and $20 a month for Tidal Hifi, so it's already $35 a month for me. We'll find out what happens when prices go up, as they inevitably will, for one thing to satisfy the Copyright Royalty Board's ruling earlier this year, but also because streaming companies today are operating mostly unprofitably. Netflix's prices keep going up. I don't follow the company, so I'm not sure what kind of impact that's had on subscription retention or growth.
     
  16. Carl Swanson

    Carl Swanson Senior Member

    CDs regain a bigger share of the market, 'cause they're not gone.
     
    George P likes this.
  17. I guess that it must be a regional thing. The big department stores like Target, Best Buy and WalMart shrunk their music departments years ago, before digital downloads and streaming was popular. They have added vinyl though. The dedicated music stores like Rasputin are expanding their CD selections. Barnes & Noble, traditionally a book seller, has a good sided music department plus an online presence. If sales weren't good, they would drop music. Other music stores have fallen by the wayside. Competition and rising costs seriously cut the profits and they closed. Most of the competition is from online sources like Amazon, who has had record CD and vinyl sales. They even opened a DC in my area and it has a huge music department. From what I was told, Amazon's North Las Vegas DC has been so overwhelmed with their music department, they needed some relief from another DC.
    And, as I think I stated before, the companies making the CD's aren't just standing around, but they are working at capacity to get the new orders out. I am sure they are not doing it for fun, so someone must still be buying CD's.
    Personally, I have never paid for downloaded music and I would never waste my money on a streaming service. Why should I? I have practically every recording I want and when something new comes out I want, I buy it. I have 1,000's of records, CD's, tapes, etc. and when I want to hear something, I grab it and play it.
     
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  18. antnee

    antnee Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Union KY
    No...
     
  19. Big Blue

    Big Blue Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    If they follow the Netflix model, they’ll do it a couple bucks at a time so people kind of notice but don’t mind enough to cancel. Before you know it, you’re paying twice as much as you originally paid, but you rely on the service so you let it go and eventually forget it was ever lower. If they raise prices too fast or wait too long and then do it too suddenly, they’ll probably lose subscribers.
     
    Cyclone Ranger likes this.
  20. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    More likely these services will fragment (which is where video streaming is headed right now). New release from Big Label 1? Only available in their streaming service etc.

    We may look back on the 2010's as a golden age of music consumption, in one place, at a decent price point.
     
    Juan Matus and Big Blue like this.
  21. Laibach

    Laibach Forum Resident

    Our company is in the business of selling CDs and our employees make a living of it. I'm not worried about myself, I'm sure I could find work elsewhere, and I've actually toyed with the idea of becoming a language teacher. Problem lies, I believe, with our employees. They've been with us since the golden age of CDs (the 1990s) which means they're either well into their fifties already or pushing fifty. In other words, it'll be hard for them to find a new job. Then there's the few retail outlets who work with us (our customers) and in our absence they'll find extremely difficult to have access to and acquire new releases and catalog CDs that we carry exclusively. Some of them will reconvert, will adapt, I've no doubt, but a few, the less well adapted will eventually disappear or turn to selling other non-music products who knows what. So, our disappearance will provoke changes and trigger consequences far beyond our immediate circle (and we're only a very little company, so imagine this happening on a much wider scale).

    The death of music distribution is inevitable it'll happen sooner of later. When I think of it's ultimate demise, I often think of other blue collar industries that have already disappeared. Say coal mining, manufacturing, car making, and I think of how very large suburban, downtown communities have decayed and stagnated as the jobs were axed or shifted overseas. I'd like to think the same with music and CDs disappearing. Our old retail customers have been forced out of their rent locations by huge pizza delivery companies, by ipod or smartphone distributors or (as in the case of one our stores) by real estate corporations that sell apartments to low to middle class families. Every time an industry decays it's the whole semblance and the whole appearance of neighbourhoods, cities, regions which change. Some might reconvert, thrive and adapt, but others won't.
     
    MackKnife and Cyclone Ranger like this.
  22. Big Blue

    Big Blue Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    As annoying as this is for video streaming, it seems like it would be so much worse for music streaming. Maybe it’s because we’re already kind of accustomed to associating a TV program with which channel it is on, while not being nearly as dependent on knowing which label an album is on in order to play it (I doubt many of us organize a record collection by label). Having to switch among apps to play different artists could potentially be very cumbersome, and surely makes it harder to keep music flowing (which is one of the benefits of streaming as opposed to physical media).
     
  23. chaz

    chaz Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    IMO this is horse hooey. When CD's first hit the scene in the early 80's everyone said they sounded better than vinyl, without all the hassles of vinyl, ticks, pops, warped records blah blah blah. If vinyl was so superior back then compared to cds then what magic elixir brainwashed the world into dumping vinyl for cds? Sure some sounded like crap but others are among the most coveted sounding versions of music around and could be played without the shortcomings of vinyl. Digital and cds are all about the mastering and the dacs. Early cd players had **** dacs. State of the art players in recent years with state of the art dacs with good cd masterings are hard to beat, even by vinyl. Look at the bs nowadays, vinyl costs a fortune with hit and miss quality. CDs are cheap and abundant. Keep drinking the vinyl cool aid. Keep giving me physical formats with high resolution or red book audio impeccably mastered from the best original sources. And keep improving thoses dacs. TTFN.
     
  24. Cyclone Ranger

    Cyclone Ranger New old stock Thread Starter

    Location:
    Best Coast USA
    1) The generally low to ‘meh’ quality of mass market analog front ends, which is what most ppl had back then (and still kinda do today, if they’re into vinyl).

    2) The music industry and stores pushing CD in a very big way, because they knew they could double the prices overnight, compared to vinyl or cassette.

    Of course and ironically, this set up the music industry perfectly to get reamed by music piracy/illegal downloading, just a decade and change later. The greed boomeranged. :oops:

    Ah well.
    .
     
  25. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    Agreed and I certainly hope I'm wrong about this.
     
    Big Blue likes this.

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