Cds demise, or not?

Hey Gaslight, could you recommend a portable CD player or advise what you use? I've decided I DO want a CD player for the car but can't seem to find one locally and when I go online I'm concerned they wont's have a power connection or they will depend on AUX connection which I no longer have.

 

And mini-disc!

 

Good point. I don't personally use one in the car, but would suggest looking at something with an AC connector that would have a car adapter accessory that's compatible.

Most cars, even newer ones, will have the old cigarette lighter-type power port that can be used.

 

The figures speak for themselves...

Is this the end of owning music?

 

It's also a generations gap. Lots of older music lovers do buy physical releases (reissues of Bowie and the Beatles as well as the new McCartney showed up in the charts for CD and vinyl) but also get nearer to completeness. As long as this generation buys music there will be CDs but only for releases that are aimed at this group.

 

I agree, but the change in CD quantities is staggering. I never understood why reissues of say Bowie made the charts...don't older people have that stuff already?

I'm 40 and stream and buy vinyl. I don't buy CD's but wouldn't want them to go.

 

The Bowie boxes are a nice way to have most of his work and usually have extras. And there is a thriving second hand CD market. Because a lot goes to charity shops if people switch to streaming you can get a lot of back issues.
I am 50, the generation that gladly switched to CD because of the horrible sound of vinyl.

 

Ya, add to that tape and laserdiscs for me.

 

I'm sick of reading all this crap about the demise of CD. It's a self fulfilling prophecy instigated by the bean counters within the industry. They told us CD was the ultimate when they couldn't sell crappy quality vinyl in the 80s and home taping was "killing music".

Now they have lost out to illegal downloading and streaming they want to convince the last generation of us who actually care enough to buy music to start buying vinyl again at inflated prices and variable quality.

Personally I'd rather buy a lot more very well mastered CDs than less music on vinyl of uneven quality. Used vinyl and new vinyl is a crap shoot at best. I say this as someone who has sunk over £3000 on a turntable and probably close to £10,000 on new 'audiophile' LPs over 10 years. I do resent being stung all over again just to buy the occasional superior mastering.

 

Vinyl at inflated prices??? 1976 a $5 new LP - adjusted for inflation today is about $23. It’s about the same cost.

 

Granted, but the demise of the cd is real. Not much to do about it.

 

I wish I could say the demise of super hero films is real instead of CD’s, but Asian markets won’t let go of them.

Why Japan has more music stores than the rest of the world

 

I agree. The thing is, most die-hard vinyl folks ( I was one ) spend a lot of time and money setting up a good vinyl playback system , turntable, cartridge, phono-stage, isolation table, cables, cords, etc, etc, then spend lot's of time adjusting and setting up, but those same people will plunk down a CD player and say there's no comparison.
Thats only the half of it, when I was head over heals into vinyl my whole system was purchased and tuned to work well with vinyl.

 

well I'm glad to keep the format going. bought a new CD player and two channel set up in 2018 and probably around 50 new CDS. I also have a good collection digital files either downloaded or ripped from CDS. Thought about diving into the whole vinyl thing but at this point I believe I will pass. Cost, fuss, storage etc.

 

Thank you, that was interesting. Fascinating people.

 

Yeah, appreciated, but I was thinking more about pricey audiophile labels selling the 10th reissue of a legacy album more than a standard catalogue release.

 

Exactly and they'll buy a cheap CD player at that and state that all CD players sound the same.

 

Not as long as original out of print non remastered CDs costs a small fortune.

 

Pricey first generation CDs are a rare commodity, most are worthless - few people outside this forum and certainly not everyone within it would pay high price for an 80s CD, which by the way, was remastered. By definition all albums when reissued on CDs are remastered.

 

This is the key point that seems to get missed with these discussions. I see a lot of "CD's are dead? I just bought <insert boxed set of older artist> so looks healthy to me!"

And that would be accurate, in that context - CD's and even SACD's are still being created for that older demographic. But the article mentioned that two of the the records nominated for album of the year at the Grammys weren't even released on CD in the US. I've actually seen either a download / vinyl release only on certain titles and increasingly even just a download only.

It concerns me only in that I enjoy some newer titles and I'm not certain where things will end up, in that market, in 5 to 10 years time. Hopefully we'll at least have a lossless option.

 

The availability of Spotify/Tidal/Qobus makes a CD purchase a tough decision, at least for me. I recently bought the Studio Ghibli/Joe Hisaishi CD box set only because I couldn't stream the contents.

I think the popularity of vinyl has more to do with the vinyl release being very different from its streaming counterpart (large art work, different listening experience, different mastering, etc.), rather than superior sound. So, my guess is that unless CDs are released with distinguishing features over the ones from Tidal etc., its general popularity will continue to decrease.

 

Any "audiophile" reissue, including the audiophile CD, will not be cheap (think XRCD24 of Blue Note albums, MoFi Gold, etc.).

 

Indeed it was. Wonderful people.

 

It will be interesting if there are albums only released on vinyl and streaming in the future. I stopped buying vinyl for the most part, but I'd have to start again if that's the only way to get a physical copy of things.

 

If record companies are stupid possibly.

Why would they release a physical copy on vinyl, but not on CD, when the latter still drives more revenue?

Might get some vinyl snob like Jack White doing that, but I can't see a vinyl/streaming only model being remotely sensible.