Golden Age Of CDs ?

What year would you say was the best year for cds? Releases that is. Sheer abundance.

 

Best in what way?

 

I've still got thousands of them, but I rarely buy them anymore unless they're in box sets.

 

Around 1989-1990. Earlier CDs sounded good but looked like crap, later ones (say, post-1994) looked great but sounded like crap.

I’m referring mostly to reissues, btw.

 

2019

Used - 50 cents to $1 each for M- !

 

In some ways now. So many awesome vault releases coming out

 

Sound wise prefer the first pressings ( well most).

 

Cheap as chips.

 

Not around here....

 

Sales peaked in 2000, but the albums selling were discs like No Strings Attached by NSYNC.

The '90s were the golden age of the CD. Hard to pick a year. I'd say either 1994 or 1995--so many brilliant albums released in those two years and their definitive format was CD. They may have had small runs of vinyl at the time or reissues in the last few years, but albums like Superunknown, Vitalogy and Jagged Little Pill belong on CD, IMO.

 

Mid 90’s when everything was in print- long gone releases you had to mortgage the house for we’re showing up for $10

 

My collection in the nineties cost me a pretty penny. Local stores : Virgin : Tower Records, spoiled for choice.

 

Interesting that CD sales didn't peak until 18 years after their release.

I'm 24 and I love CDs, I'm having a lot of fun buying them right now (new CDs can be as cheap as 5 dollars, too).

Seems like CD culture peaked between 1995 and 2005

 

Wow, damn near 1 billion in 2000. Has any other physical format been that successful?

 

I bought more in 2018 than any other year besides the 90s.

 

I support charity shops as well.

 

Nice chart. If it was a stock price chart, it was telling you to sell a long time ago.

 

New and full price?

 

I was still buying in abundance till around 2003/2005.

 

looks like the decline corresponds to the rise of the CD-R

 

Napster started in 1999...

 

3/4 or more new, I usually wait for deals for new but I've bought many new releases at full price or even more than full price if the artist sells direct from their website.

Note I don't think classic rock is the be all and end all of music nor do I listen to it much anymore.

 

The mid-90s. Various artists comps everywhere!

 

Depends on whether you mean whether you could get 'em cheap, get what you want, get the best versions you want, or get 'em at all.

Since I'd been on a search-and-discovery quest, this past decade has been a blessing (up until shipping rates skyrocketed, and Amazon started tinkering with their Marketplace dealers). I could find out about an Ethiopian EDM artist one day, and find their extended versions used for a nickel in Finland the next. So at this point I wasn't too focused on what Mr. Hoffman or Mr. Wilson were working on, or which overpriced Beatles set was in the pipeline.