Are CD's coming back?

. . . then you'd have to look at the number of Tidal subscribers compared to all streaming services.

 

What we have here is a race down a mountain. While someone will be the winner, there will be another one in 2nd place, close behind.

I doubt there are new music lovers that are lining up to buy download's.

I see them as three main groups.

One, would be like people who buy physical media. These are the core of the existing "downloader's", who will just continue now as they have done before, but their time on earth downloading is coming to an end with Middle Earth.

The second group are mainly those who are purchasing hi-res files that are not available on records or CD. This is the viable way at present to source these digital files.

Lastly, are those who are seeking out the smaller indie bands, on sites like Bandcamp, who don't have contracts with the labels.

Other newcomers will do the YouTube thing. It has worked for a lot of new talent.

 

wonderful!

 

In prior years downloads declined faster than CDs. Also we have to be careful since some sources cite revenue and others unit sales; two very different things. Since the vast majority of downloads are singles to the mobile etc they are an entirely different market than CDs. Only a sliver of downloads are high res albums preferred by this Forum. What they do show is that the dominance of streaming has little to do with convenience per se over physical media. Downloads are highly convenient but are cratering just like CDs.

 

Glad somebody is. But that is one manufacturer from the UK whose products are hard to find here in the US and are a bit pricey. They do have a great rep but finding a dealer here is difficult. If OEM parts are no longer made will Cyrus and others be able to? There are many high-end CD players that became doorstops when the laser/transport they were based on went out of production.

Turntables didn't did die completely and they can be more readily repaired than a CD player. A lot of companies did stop making them at one time.

I hope CD players stay in production by more than a few high-end companies. I just have my doubts.

 

Not coming back in new production, but millions exist used.

 

I think this is a very good point and its something people tend to forget. With Streaming you dont own the music, And neither does the streaming company. If they decide not to license artist X or label X, and you happen to like that artist, you don't get the music. It does happen on the rare occasion.

 

I can vouch for this. One of the reasons I use streaming for sampling only. If Tidal had their act together they would lower the prices of lossless albums in their store. Even though I'm a hi-fi subscriber and mostly like the service, I don't have a lot of hope for its longevity. One of the big dogs is going to acquire it and/or put it out of business.

 

So, you are predicting that all of the streaming companies are just going to disappear?

So, if physical media goes away and streaming companies disappear, then except what we are left with in the used bins, will be all of what is remaining of music in the world?

So, someone removes a piece of music that you listen to from their server's. Can't you listen to something else?

If it happens that you just cannot be without that particular piece of music, couldn't you just buy a download or the CD or the record?

Or is the end of the world as we know it (see below)?

Quite the optimistic outlook, I would say. I remember reading about other comments that were just as optimistic as yours, but they were about nuclear weapons. Real end of the world stuff, ect...

See above posts.

Seems like a good bit of drama over streaming.

Before streaming, we listened to the radio. Never owned any of the music that I listened to on the radio. When the radio stations stopped playing a song, it was as good as gone.

Of course, by that time, they had overplayed the song hundred's of times, so if you never heard it again in this lifetime, that was usually OK.

I don't know how money that I would have spent to buy all of the music that I have listened to since the age of fourteen, a half century ago?

Or, how many warehouses I would need to store all of the 45's, LP's, R2R tapes, 8-Track's, Cd's...

If artists expect to derive an income from their creative works, I imagine that, somehow, they will find a way to make them available to the public, somehow?

 

Seems to me that if you just view these streaming services as a lease, no worries. Someone posted upthread that streaming was horrible. Well, not my experience. Spotify Premium quality is excellent and their catalog is deep. Depending on what deal you can get, it's the price of two or three coffees a month (if you're dumb enough to buy your coffee out )

 

I read that just 1% of the song titles available at Spotify, Apple Music, etc., account for 99% of the actual streaming activity.

That tells me that it is just a matter of time before these companies realize that they can seriously reduce their operating costs without bothering the vast, vast majority of their customers.

It is just a matter of time before they start severely cutting back on the number of titles offered for streaming.

I expect that streaming will be very different 5 years from now. The availability of millions of titles for streaming will not last.

 

This thread makes me feel better about the $300+ I spent on deluxe CD box sets of my most favorite music in the last month. I don't like to spend that amount all at once, but, if time is running out, I may as well take advantage while I can.

 

FYI, the RIAA report does cite both unit sales AND revenue.

Also, according to the report, the vast majority of dloads are not singles (revenue-wise), rather, it's split about 50-50 between singles and albums.

Assumptions are great (I do them too ), but you do have to check out the actual data sometimes.

RIAA-Mid-Year-2018-Revenue-Report-News-Notes.pdf

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I said some sources ie not only RIAA. And I have posted such data for several years.

 

Excellent. The reason why CDs will never come back, is because they will always be more a more cumbersome and less convenient way of playing the exact same digital file than getting the feed directly.

They're a storage medium.

 

You quoted my post that said in part "Check out the RIAA sales report". The assumption that you were referring to the RIAA report was thus very natural, as you did not specify.

Kudos to you for keeping the forum informed in years past.
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Well, I dunno. Do the less popular artists get a big cut of the revenue pie, or, as is more likely, a much smaller piece... as in, even smaller than in proportion to how often they're listened to, since presumably Lady Gaga and the like can cut better 'deals' with the streaming services? Are less-listened-to artists in effect, a 'good deal' for the streaming services, despite the logistics?

And if they are, is it only to a certain point, i.e. your scenario is partially true, but will affect not the bottom 99%, but maybe, say, the bottom 50%?

I don't know, I'm just throwin' stuff out there. I do that occasionally, even though it's not always wise of me.
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No problem. I did not express myself clearly. Here is Nielsen from 2014 on digital downloads:

In the first half, the number of individual songs downloaded fell 13 percent to 593.6 million, and the number of digital albums downloaded fell 11.6 percent to 53.8 million.

Note that if we define an album arbitrarily as 10 tracks we would get the equivalence that you cited but that is not reported here. However refreshing my memory from several years ago the way that various sources report or classify these data are very confusing. Some aggregate single tracks into album equivalents and it is often unclear what they mean by albums. The digital realm is murkier than the difference between a 45 and an LP. Suffice to say downloads and CDs are racing downhill and some years CDs fall more and some years Downloads fall more. But the fall of Downloads cannot be explained as an aversion to physical media which is a key finding. Regards

 

Are CD's coming back?

Nope.

 

Sums it up.

.

 

The answer is NO..But there are more old CD's out there than anyone can ever listen to in their lifetime.A massive archive of past music.More than on any other format ever created.So CD will never die.Even if new music on CD will become very rare.

 

Odd, isn't it. Call them PVCs and everyone will soon realise LPs are made out of one of most toxic plastics that is hard to recycle (and gives off dioxins when incinerated).

 

They haven't gone away completely. So, it will take awhile for them to come back.

 

Oh dear! This means if my house burns down it will poison the whole neighbourhood.

 

I wouldn't laugh. PVC is nasty. Everybody would be wise to stay clear. Disposal requires proper incineration, often at very high temperatures, and where gases are collected. Unfortunately, PVC is very versitile and is used in all sorts of applications, such as the plumbing in your house.