CD's Gone By 2020?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Fannymac, May 22, 2019.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. ClassicalCD

    ClassicalCD Make audio great again

    Location:
    Bogotá, Colombia
    Back then they lacked the means of imposing their agenda that they have today. Then the market resembled more the 'selling things' model you referred to originally. When I cared about movies and TV and collected DVDs, a format appeared based on rented discs that you needed to validate via an internet connection. I don't remember its name, but everyone on forums said it would fail miserably out of privacy concerns - which it did. How the world has changed.

    Incidentally, I'm listening to my Grumiaux CD of Bach's accompanied violin sonatas from 1990. Now that I have my laptop on, I decided to compare it with Tidal's version, on the same DAC and using exclusive mode. I can swear my CD sounds perceptively better, and I definitely enjoy listening to it more. The audio CD is a marvel of a consumer product and a veritable treasure.
     
    Pouchkine and Howard Bleach like this.
  2. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    It was called DIVX, and it didn't fail due to privacy concerns.

    It failed because you needed a phone line directly connected to the system (not an Internet connection btw), and you needed special hardware to play the proprietary media. Which was more expensive than a regular DVD player.

    But when rental stores like Blockbuster stared carrying DVD's, it was the death blow to the format.

    I'm sure it does. I'm sure there's a lot of CD's that sound better than the Tidal variant and I suspect there's some albums that are the reverse.

    From where I'm standing though it sounds like you're just picking and choosing the good guys from the bad guys here. In this thread or another one recently I had read about how the industry used CD's to try and kill off a"better" forrmat aka the vinyl record, so from their perspective CD has more of a tainted history. Perhaps that's true - or perhaps you're right. Or perhaps it's just a grey area.
     
    Norco74 likes this.
  3. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    There are certainly outliers such as DCC and Audio Fidelity discs, and certain out of print classical titles, but most used CDs are being given away. I recently won the five-CD Deutsche Grammophon Karajan Beethoven complete symphony set for $5. It was up for bid starting at $5.00, I bid $5.02, forgot about it, then won whenever the auction ended. That CD set probably listed for $30 or $40 when new. Deals like that abound on eBay. Unless it’s a crazy rare CD, people don’t get in bidding wars on used CDs. Even for rarer titles, if you spend five minutes on eBay, you’ll see one person asking $50 for a rare CD, and another seller asking $8 for the same title. There are always going to be crazy sellers: I was in a thrift store the other picking up CDs that were being given away for $2 or $3, and saw some deluded seller asking $125 for trashed vinyl copy of Meet The Beatles. That doesn’t mean that that record was worth $125 or sells for $125 in the real world.
     
    laf848 likes this.
  4. Norco74

    Norco74 For the good and the not so good…

    Perhaps it’s only technical evolution/devolution but at the end having many options is a good thing.

    Just received some funny newsletter from RSD. Who still owns a car tape player?

    It's road trip season, and that means it's time to stock up on car tapes!
    Stores like ********** have all kinds of physical summer fun. Pack your bags and let's hit the road!
     
    Gaslight likes this.
  5. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    One of the great benefits of the digital/streaming era is the ability to leave my CDs at home and not have to expose them to scratching in the hot and dirty car environment. Or not to have to waste hours burning CD-Rs to use in the car for the same reason.

    Don’t even get me started on the “good old days” of 8-tracks and cassettes getting baked in the glove compartments of hot cars.
     
    Norco74 and Gaslight like this.
  6. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    More options, and competition, is certainly beneficial to the consumer. I wouldn't be particularly thrilled with a streaming-only offering in the future, for new releases. But I don't exactly want to go back to the just LP's or just CD's either.

    Many may disagree but I'm pretty pleased with the way things are right at this moment...I can go to Amazon today and you've got four different formats + a streaming offering for many new releases. That's pretty incredible.
     
    RSteven, Norco74 and Spencer R like this.
  7. Bonddm

    Bonddm Forum Resident

    Deleted CD’s by Australian artists must be the exception to the rule then!
    I have spent years looking for some titles across discogs, ebay, Amazon, etc, without being able to purchase copies for a reasonable price.
     
  8. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    I’m sure in niche markets like that there exceptions. Most mainstream US, UK, or European CDs can be bought for pennies on the dollar these days.
     
  9. Vaughan

    Vaughan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex, UK
    Of course, they have reduced music to being an app, rather than a product, capitalizing on a generation of listeners who do everything through their phones, tablets, and computers. Casual listeners won't then buy CD's, since they get the music they want through the streaming service. All perfectly normal and predictable.

    However, what they also did into the bargain is destroy the physical CD market. All this talk of how much they make via steaming is well and good, but what they're gaining there they're losing on CD sales. Don't forget, they've been spoiling the CD market for years prior to Streaming by giving us horrible masterings primarily done for that mobile market.

    The music business has a history fo shooting itself in the foot, and this is just another case. For the $'s they gain from person A, they'll lose from someone like myself. They don't seem bothered by that at all, which is par for the course for an industry as myopic as they are.

    Still, CD will have a place. Look at recent releases of box sets from Tangerine Dream and Bob Dylan. Both were properly released on CD - which was necessary because of the grand scale of the sets - and both sold out in double-quick time. Do you think that won't be happening in a years time, two years? I think they will still happen. Streaming doesn't work on the scale of those sets, imo. Neither does Vinyl. For new recordings, they may opt not to do a silver CD - they idiotically seem to believe we'll mass adopt CDR's - but that just means they're leaving money on the table. Again, something they like to do.

    All of that said - I don't need CD to be the choice of the masses. I just need there to be CD's. People get all worked up about the numbers, but the truth is some leveling is going on based on a new paradigm. Just as Vinyl sales went down when CD's came on to the market, so CD's go down as Streaming hits. There are far too many people forgetting that we've been here before. For all of Vinyl's increased sales, for a good while it was a dead market. It's still not what I'd call huge. Still, it would have been easy to suggest Vinyl would never come back back in the day - and they'd of been wrong.

    IMO.
     
  10. Vaughan

    Vaughan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Essex, UK
    This is an example of the leveling I was referring too. It's changed your music buying habits, but it's not a zero sum affair. As I just mentioned, those huge box sets are another case where physical wins, imo. You can't beat the Dylan books and packaging, or the grand scale of the recent Tangerine Dream box, you really can't. There are even small boutique labels that are making money, and headlines, with these types of releases. Be thinking the likes of Dust to Digital.
     
  11. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    Not sure how Blockbuster killed the DVD. In fact, Blockbuster's problem was the fact they held onto it. The DVD killed Blockbuster.

    It was streaming companies like Netflix that killed DVDs. Of course, Netflix is not without its past controversies. I got the offer of a free month's rental as part of a class action lawsuit against Netflix. It probably had something to do with the fact their unlimited rentals (they only had DVDs at the time, no streaming) were not actually unlimited. They slowed you down by putting your requests lower fown on the queue and holding up the processing your returns.
     
  12. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    It has a three digit median average price on discogs. In my experience, triple digit CDs on discogs are both very rare and very much in demand. Admittedly, I wouldn't pay that much for it, but I'm cheap.
     
  13. DRM

    DRM Forum Resident

    I'm looking forward to a day without physical possessions.

    Oh happy day.

    The cloud will suffice.
     
  14. Howard Bleach

    Howard Bleach Imperial Aerosol Kid

    Location:
    green bay, wi
    This is exactly correct. As I have said before on this forum, as a diehard fan of the Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, King Crimson, and the ECM label (and Dust to Digital!) I can tell you that in 2019 I am buying more CDs than ever and couldn't be happier about it. Many of the contemporary albums and box sets by the bands and labels I like don't really work on any other format; vinyl and streaming simply aren't practical for large scale archival releases (which is proven by the fact that a lot of the recent archival releases by legacy artists have been CD only; see above). Another example: The annual Dave's Picks subscription series--CD-only since its inception--sells out every year.
     
    laf848, RockRoom and Pouchkine like this.
  15. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    The numbers don't bear this out, at least not in the US. The gain from streaming is so substantial it's far outpacing the loss from declines in CD (and downloads), such that overall recorded music industry revenue is growing for the first time in decades, and has been, by double digit percentages for the last three or four years as paid streaming has taken off.

    If what the industry were gaining from streaming was the same as what it's losing in CD sales, overall revenue would be flat. It's not.

    During the download era, growing income from downloads was insufficient to offset declining physical media sales. And during this whole period of the vinyl revival to date, revenue from vinyl has not been able to fully offset loses from declining CD sales -- despite vinyl's growth, income from physical media as a whole continues to decline.

    But streaming now is generating so much money and growing so quickly that its more than offsetting losses in other parts of the market and the overall pie is growing for the first time this millennium.
     
  16. loudinny

    loudinny Forum Resident

    This is essentially what I said in my initial post, streaming has replaced the CD as the digital format of choice. Whether it’s evolution by the consumer or by record company design ... it’s kind of irrelevant. Personally I think it’s a combo with it being somewhat generational in nature.

    My only point (and the topic of this thread) is that the CD is a format in severe decline.
     
  17. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    Not DVD....DIVX.

    Not disagreeing but the DIVX discussion you replied to was pre-Netflix, this was back in the late 1990's.

    At the time, Blockbuster hadn't switched over to DVD rentals (yet) - when it became more prevalent this alternative rental solution stood no chance.
     
  18. scobb

    scobb Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    But it’ll be very cold in winter and eating will be a very messy!
     
    DRM likes this.
  19. Eliminator Jr.

    Eliminator Jr. Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ohio
    Gave me a good laugh. Had to check my ignore-settings in order to see who this jab was aimed at. Might've guessed just as well :doh:
     
  20. siebrand

    siebrand music lover

    Location:
    Italy
    from May 23 of this year, in this thread 3D, there are over 51 pages of comments.
    This is message nr. 1245
    How many CDs have died in the meantime? I only bought 18 this month. It's not much, but it's because I've been on vacation and holiday....... :p
     
  21. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    Oops, I misread your post. Yes, that makes sense.
     
    Gaslight likes this.
  22. OhNotHimAgain

    OhNotHimAgain Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    As a younger person who understands the value (historically, materially, monetarily) of CDs and LPs, I can say that streaming has done a substantial amount of good for sharing and appreciating music. For example, I’m in Japan and just stocked up a ton of great 90s powerpop for pennies on the dollar. Stuff that costs a lot more in the states / is harder to find. I appreciate the bonus tracks or exclusive content in a lossless format that I can pay over my stereo.

    On the other hand the people I hang out with love music but don’t have the space, means, or desire to invest in an excellent stereo system. That doesn’t mean they exclusively listen on earbuds or AirPods, but they’re not worried about bitrates or mastering, etc. Streaming allows us to trade music back and forth in a few taps, which has helped me sell people on bands they may not have heard of.

    Instead of asking them to track down a CD, or burning a copy for them to listen to at home (or rip onto a computer and transfer onto their phone), I can say “hey, I think you’ll really like this song” and be done with it. And because major streaming services all have access to the same giant library, I’m more than likely to find exactly what I’m looking for. Deluxe editions and box sets appear the day they’re released.

    Heck, The Beatles White Album super deluxe box set is all available on streaming, so I don’t have to go through hoops to send the demo version of Long, Long, Long to people who really appreciate music. I understand many people give millennials a bad wrap for destroying the very fabric of society, but we love music, and the geekier ones among us share it with more people.
     
  23. Guy E

    Guy E Senior Member

    Location:
    Antalya, Turkey
    SO, IT'S YOU WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS MESS!!!
     
    HominyRhodes and onm3rcur7 like this.
  24. siebrand

    siebrand music lover

    Location:
    Italy


    the streaming problem, which I know, like tidal and Spotify, is that ...
    OK, let's do this. I recommend a record that, in my opinion, is beautiful. maybe unknown to most.
    Give you a hard record, not a bit outdated.
    What do you do? once, if you were interested, you would come, you would have come to my house, we would have listened, once, twice, three times, we would have drunk some nice beer, we would have discussed music, probably, then, you would have gone to buy the disc.
    Now what happens? you hear me recommending this nice record. or, read it here in the forum.
    Then ... take your smartphone, listen 1 minute (but even less, unfortunately ...), let's hear ... madonna, what a mess, and move on.
    No good talk with friends, no beers, you and me. and above all NO beautiful new music at home.
    Streaming is the worst thing that could happen, to or beloved music.
     
  25. SoporJoe

    SoporJoe Forum Resident

    Location:
    British Columbia
    I can listen to Spotify with my friends and talk about it too. Imagine that!
     
    ARK likes this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine