Are CD's coming back?

It's been like this for over 10 years already. CD pressings now by independent artists and labels are smaller than they ever were. One artist I follow that used to move tens of thousands of copies of each album during the 90s now does CD pressings (real CDs, not CDRs) of 300 copies per album. The majority of the revenue for his record label comes through Bandcamp.

 

It really, really did.

For instance, there's is an outstanding documentary about the rise and fall of the legendary Tower Records chain, and the upshot is that CD had a lot to do with it. Going from LP/cassette to CD, prices doubled overnight, and Tower (and much of the industry as a whole) all but killed off the single, so that you'd have to buy the whole album and spend lots more money.

Problem with that, of course, is that it priced most of the kids out of the music market. So, they were oh-so-ready to pirate music once the opportunity came along, which it did in the form of Napster, et al. Sowing the seeds of Tower's destruction, and the music industry as a whole making a LOT LESS $$$/profits.

Tower made a lot of other mistakes besides, such as some very unwise expansions overseas (aside from Japan, which was profitable) and being overly dependent on loans/debt. But if their core business, which was selling physical media, had kept being profitable, they could've weathered the storm. But it wasn't, and they didn't.
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Ain't that the truth. I don't want copies of Smash Mouth, Puddle of Mudd, and Nsync or whatever the local thrift store has. Many of the OOP discs I want cost $$$ and I buy them when I can or they stay on my wishlist for years until I find a cheaper copy or a reissue comes out.

 

That is very interesting documentary. If you want to hear things from a different side, there is a guy on YouTube that talks about his experiences as a middle manager at HMV before the music industry meltdown.

The whole pricing out thing really only applied to vapid top 40 crap. I was in college when Napster hit and I had zero interest in it at the time. Myself and many people I knew that cared about music kept buying CDs and LPs as our budget allowed. I don't recall paying $18.99 for too many brand new CDs back then either. Throughout the 90s and early 2000s the pricing was about the same as it is today. Around $10 or less for many back catalog titles and around $15 for upper end single disc new releases at indie stores. Mall stores had high prices but only the truly clueless spent a lot of money there. Imports from the UK and Germany were sometimes a little more even at indie stores, up to $24.99 or slightly more in some cases. If you were willing to wait up to six months or a year, often those would get a domestic release that was a little cheaper.

 

I used to feel that my needle drops from clean vinyl were a temporary stop-gap fill-in until I bought the real tin disc.

Then a couple things happened.
1) Click Repair software turned my drops from very nice to absolutely perfect.
2) Brick-walled mastering made my drops sound (comparatively) even better than I originally rated them.

Now I have come to value my better needle drops as being documents of recorded works more authentic than what the labels have often offered up.

I'm becoming more satisfied with my collection and I crave less. It's a good feeling to not always want want and want more.

 

Based on my buying habits I didn’t know they’d left

 

Personal mileage will always vary (and say what you will, but vapid Top 40 crap sells), but I don't think there's any minimizing the impact that internet piracy had on music industry revenues.

Sure, it was just one piece of the puzzle in the destruction of Tower (and the drubbing of the music industry as a whole), along with physical media pricing going up from the LP days, minimizing the single, vicious competition from the major big box retailers, and lots of bad decision-making... but piracy is inarguably a big piece of the puzzle.

And they really did set themselves up perfectly for it.
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It's not even internet piracy so much as bedroom CD-R burning. Downloading tunes and burning full albums is two areas of a death spiral, not sure any industry could fully survive.

But you know what, nobody likes to talk about it but, quality of music played some part in the decline. We need not get into that right now - but there is some factor there.

 

The idea is to have both, a killer LP collection, massive CD collection, and a server loaded up with HD, surround, rare and needle dropped files for easy access when you want that.

The best of all worlds it best if you can pull it off. I did it. It took work and effort but I did it.

 

Right, it sells and the industry built itself on a house of cards, especially during that time. No surprise that people stopped wanting to pay for disposable fluff.

 

Well, not for nuthin' but speaking of CDs, I'm listening to Frank on CD this evening from the four CD The Reprise Collection. I do still enjoy playing CDs, records much less, but streaming from Spotify much more. I love my records from the old days (many are 50 years old now) but they're so much work compared to CDs or streaming.

 

I have profited by selling some of my well engineered vinyl and buying audiophile CDs/SACDs and vice versa. I'm grateful to own a very good turntable/cartridge and a high-end CD/SACD player. All my equipment I've purchased used and it took me years to get to this point. I have yet to consider the risk of purchasing a high-end DAC due to the high cost but mostly because of the unknowns of buying downloads. I have some but have stopped buying them because I don't fully trust the quality of the engineering/mastering of the music. Until that changes I'm still all-in for physical media. I'm happy with vinyl and CD/SACD (& some Blu-ray/DVD) and don't plan on changing soon. My ears are my guide and sound quality is my drug. Right now I'm still thrilled to be able to buy well engineered CDs at a discount. For me, streaming is fine for background music but not for serious listening.

 

I find myself buying complete sets of classical composers these days. Often times they are selling for a couple of dollars per disc for quality orchestras. To me, this is a perfect time for buying music on CDs.

 

Napster did not kill/hurt the music business.

The music industry was already in decline and the trend continued. With Napster as a foil, the music industry attacked and disenfranchised the next generation of fans. Do you really think having the now old men of Metallica accuse their 12-14 year old fans of being douche-bags helped future sales? I guess they just couldn't wait the extra month for the gold shark tank.

And Apple, not Napster with it's one track at a time, who cares about albums, here is what is on the front page of iTunes, lack of compatibility with other formats and devices, and near total domination of the market, decimated the old music model. Entire generations of music consumers have no idea what an album is or why you would want music to be anything but your favorite singles.

And streaming is a new twist on the decline, where you own nothing, music changes or disappears, labels pull entire catalogs unannounced, quality is a low priority, and fancy algorithms program the same 10-20 items over and over automagically.

No wonder people rediscovered the LP. Bringing back a big beautiful album cover and giant delicate record; that you have to take care of. And the linear format not so delicately asking the purchaser to listen to the album in its entirety, made the experience of music wonderful again.

Rest assured the "industry" will always find a way to strip music of everything that makes it moving, important, beautiful, or relevant.

But honestly I really don't have an opinion about any of this.

 

I am buying more CDs that every. I usually look for specific labels or specific releases. I am collecting the 4AD pressings of Cocteau Twins and Dean Can Dance and stuff like that when I find it. I dont really buy CD's of newer artists. I just listen on Spotify. The newer music seems more disposable -- to me at least.

 

The answer is Yes. Moreover, when Neil Young pulled his library for a period of time the albums I had downloaded disappeared.

 

How do they do that if the album is downloaded onto your device? What if you backed it up to a thumbdrive? That's some serious voodoo. I'm looking at Spotify Student Premium as a rental service so I'm not overly concerned but still, once downloaded onto your device, how does it disappear?

 

In the case of Tidal the software keeps track of what's in the download folder.

I guess you can transfer the file elsewhere to a location that isn't monitored, but then you won't be able to play it with Tidal so it wasn't something I was concerned about until my whole collection of Zero 7 albums went *poof*.

 

Well, that just sucks if you thought you were getting something real (permanent) from these services. My guess is that streaming in one form or another is here to stay but, like many here, I do like having physical media as well even if I'm not adding to my collection much anymore. Most of my listening is streaming but having popped back onto this forum the past couple weeks has gotten me dusting LPs and playing CDs as well.

 

Well, I certainly agree that the music industry suing its own customers was akin to them pulling out a huge .44 magnum revolver, pointing it squarely at their own foot, and pulling the trigger. Just an incredibly stupid thing to do.

That said, Napster and piracy definitely did hurt the music industry. I haven't heard any serious analysts say otherwise. Lost sales are lost sales.

But I do think that laying it all at Napster's feet is overplaying it, too. To me, it's more like music industry greed and practices dating to at least 10-15 years before Napster led to conditions being perfectly ripe for piracy to take off like it did. Which would be the music industry shooting itself in its other foot.

If you look at the latest RIAA sales report, downloads revenue is split almost exactly 50-50 between singles and albums. Albums never really went away, they just became less dominant.

And if they are less important today, it's more because music itself drifted away from the album concept... and not in a good way. As in, "Hey, let's just put a big effort into the 1 or 2 tracks that are gonna get played on the radio, and rest of the album can be filler."

A far cry from the cool 'album-oriented' concept rock of the '70s, say.

Can't really argue with any of that.

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I only buy CDs of albums where AAA original or Reissues don't exist or are too expensive. Ex The Black Crowes

 

That's the nice thing about physical media... once you own it, no one can take it away from you.

Unless they break into your house. In which case you get to do bad things to them.


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No, they are slowly becoming obsolete. They are nascent digital technology, in many ways going the way of the 78. Fewer will be made, pressing plants will close, etc. They will exist primarily in the used markets. The explosion of high priced box sets seems like a final cash in on this type of media.

IMO the biggest problem comes with CD players. Is anyone still making a good CD laser/transport anymore? I've read of so many problems with new production mainstream players (Marantz, Yamaha, Denon) that I have to wonder how long quality players/transports will be available as the older ones fail without repair options.

 

I think I'm going back to cassettes...

 

What's wrong with 8-track?

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