Are CDs Making a Comeback? A Statistical Analysis (statsignificant.com)
- Reference: 0180771286
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/02/11/1640236/are-cds-making-a-comeback-a-statistical-analysis
- Source link: https://www.statsignificant.com/p/are-cds-making-a-comeback-a-statistical
Google search traffic for "CD Player" has ticked upward over the past 16 months after two decades of near-continuous decline, and a May 2023 YouGov poll found 53% of American adults willing to pay for music on CDs -- ahead of vinyl at 44% and online streaming at 50%. Respondents under 45 were more likely to express interest in buying physical formats than older cohorts. But on the supply side, Discogs data shows vinyl remains the dominant format for new physical releases; artists have not meaningfully shifted back toward CD production.
[1] https://www.statsignificant.com/p/are-cds-making-a-comeback-a-statistical
Multiple rug pulls (Score:5, Informative)
The streaming services have already done multiple rug pulls, rights-stripping acquisitions, and bankruptcies to take away "purchased" streaming rights and force people to pay a second time (and a third, and a fourth...). But yeah, the people who have CD players with analog outputs and who buy CDs are the dumb ones.
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I pay for an Amazon Music subscription and I have yet to not be able to find something that I wanted to listen to. Music streaming has gotten better in recent years. Video streaming has gotten worse. I miss being able to find anything on Netflix. Now I have to buy a month of Disney+ if I want to watch the new Tron movie.
CD + Sound Engineering for the win! (Score:2)
Simply fix the horrible sound engineering that undermines any rich format and you'll win. Records sound better for many people because they are engineered for a crap format that limits them; so while they ARE low quality, the limitation has them better engineered than superior formats.
Convenience won already..... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a Gen Xer who still really values the concept of holding onto my own music. I don't like paying for subscriptions to music streaming services that can get rid of a given album or even artist at any time, or who is likely to only offer their greatest hits, vs deeper tracks.
But I resorted to ripping my entire CD collection and hosting everything on a file server at home, with a second copy of my music on my Apple Mac.
The physical media takes up a lot of space and is subject to scuffs/scratches -- not to mention a dying popularity of CD players themselves.
I have very little interest in buying music on vinyl at this point in my life. I've been there, done that -- and the whole format is just inferior. Records wear out with each play and needles on turntables get dull over time. The format doesn't lend itself to listening in a moving vehicle either. Just a technological step backwards that's only popular to be retro and trendy.
But yeah, at this point? I'd buy digital tracks or albums and put them on my server/computer ... copying to thumb-drives for in-car use as needed. I don't think physical music CD purchases are necessary anymore, really.
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I'm in the same boat.
I still buy music, on bandcamp and 7digital mostly. The difference in price between digital and CD is a quid or two, but it's the shipping that's the killer. I always look to see if I can get the CD somewhere cheaper than digital, which still happens sometimes, especially for older stuff that was popular and is still floating around on eBay.
I've slowly been moving my CDs from jewel cases to DiscSox sleeves - I'm not sure why really, as it's quite pricey, but I can't yet bring myself jus
Same (Score:3)
I spent the better part of a year ripping my CD collection, circa 1998 or so. It just made sense at the time. It was like 800-ish CDs.
That has served as a sort of gravitational center of my music; everything I would seek out to listen to, I already own, so that only leaves "discovery". And I don't have mainstream tastes, so consent-manufacturers like Spotify are useless for that. I'm also older and less in to random new music, so I tend to be old-school there, too, and depend on friends for new music.
I st
Re: Same (Score:2)
If a band's website or YT has a Bandcamp link, I'll almost check it out and follow or buy something if it seems cool. That's been my path to discovery.
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Completely agree. Bought a bunch of songs on iTunes. Also downloaded some music videos from YouTube, and have quite a collection. Previously, I'd create a playlist in iTunes, and then using that, load up the purchased songs to my iPod
These days, though, I'm more into podcasts, so don't listen to much music in the first place. But if I did, that's how I'd do it.
Oh come on now. (Score:4, Funny)
Can we really have an article about the death of Blu-Ray and the rebirth of CDs on the same day?
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On Slashdot? Sure. What's more, we'll probably get to have at least one of them twice!
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Oh my word... How could I have forgotten!
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To be fair, no one has claimed the death of bluray. The article was about the end of the recordable bluray settop box, something that I'm not sure I've ever seen in the west, though they apparently existed in Japan.
When CD's were established--they price gouging! (Score:2)
I remember when the $10 CD rose to $17--just before Napster hit. To many, Napster was problem solving.
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Sorry for the cut-paste spelling non-correction. Sigh.
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Also, very often an album or a double album just had 1-2 good songs. Essentially, one was paying anything from $5-17 per song for those few songs
Need more releases on cassette (Score:2)
My cassette collection is getting old. Need something new.
NO, they aren't (Score:2)
NO, CDs aren't making a comeback. Give me a fucking break.
How desperate are journalists to come up with something worth reading that they have to stoop to spewing out filler text like this 'article'?
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Small data point:
I have been selling used records and CDs at record shows and via the mail since the mid 90's. When first I started, LPs were about 20% of the game and CDs 80%. That changed with the advent of Napster (I still remember the Boston record show in September 1999 when the CD dealers all looked at each other and gasped at the crash in demand for CDs from college kids) and from then on LPs became more and more or our business.
Three years ago the percentage was probably 90% vinyl and 10% CDs. Last
Can cars start offering CD players again? (Score:3)
Did they take them away to sell more Sirius XM subscriptions?
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At least some new cars don't even come with the satellite antenna for Sirius anymore
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That's fine: anyone w/ a subscription and the app on their phone can listen to their Sirius programming on the road, courtesy their wireless data connection. If they don't want to burn that, they even have the option of downloading a show in advance back home, and then setting out while playing it for their trip
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Sirius XM? Is that like a shit version of Spotify? /sarcasm No CD players disappeared from cars because consumers largely stopped giving a shit about CDs. When every guy on the road connects their phone to their car not only are CD players obsolete, but largely radio is taking a back seat to endless subscription media, podcasts, music streaming, playing files from your phone.
Honestly I stopped listening to CDs in the car in 2000 when I bought a car with an aux jack.
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My car has a CD player AND a mode to play Sirius XM radio. Currently, I'm not subscribed to it, but when I was, I'd log in via my phone and listen to it that way. Yeah, it was consuming my wireless data, but on the flip side, if I was listening to a show, I'd pick up where I left off after I returned to the car, as opposed to be at the mercy of whatever was live at that time
Sirius XM has nothing to do w/ car CD players any more than FM or AM radio does
SA-CD or DVD-Audio is where is at. (Score:2)
If we are going to rescue a digital physical disc format:
Why not rescue the ones with better audio quality?
Problem with SA-CD is that it uses special players. But DVD-Audio? Come on!
Please music labels, make it happen!
careful when searching for DV-DA (Score:2)
Typos aside. I think higher than CD quality format is an audiophile luxury. I suspect it is difficult to get consumers to pay for the higher mastering costs to make a worthwhile high quality release. It's mostly because to actually play it with any noticable improvements, you need better equipment at home.
Add to that that DVD-Audio is so poorly supported on desktop PCs and requires a little bit of third party software to get working. Seems like a hassle for something that most people don't seem interested i
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Unless you're talking about surround sound, the only meaningful difference between SACD and CDs is that the formers were usually remastered for production. Even so called "experts" can't tell a "HD" audio source apart from a CD because ... well.. human ears are just basic.
All you're paying for with SACD is a lot of additional noise in ultrasonic frequencies that your equipment filters out during playback.
the economics make no sense (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, I like physical media, and I like owning things. I will never "buy" a piece of digital media unless it comes in an unencumbered format that I can download and keep. "Buying" the right to stream something from Amazon or whatever is not owning anything. There is no guarantee that you'll still be able to watch/listen to whatever a year later, so what is the incentive versus streaming subscriptions?
But there are two huge differences between music and video streaming. First, it is still po
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> First, it is still possible to buy downloadable unencumbered mp3 files, and sometimes even flac or ogg
Really? Please advise source for this.
To me, "buy" implies "own". Thus, if you "own" something, you should be able to sell it. Can you sell me one of your purchased FLAC, OGG, or mp3 files?
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>> First, it is still possible to buy downloadable unencumbered mp3 files, and sometimes even flac or ogg
> Really? Please advise source for this.
0.2 seconds of googling says that both Amazon and Google allow you to download purchased music as mp3. How are you posting on slashdot if you cannot perform a basic search?
> To me, "buy" implies "own". Thus, if you "own" something, you should be able to sell it. Can you sell me one of your purchased FLAC, OGG, or mp3 files?
Sure. Just like I can rip the music off of a CD and then sell it to you. Neither action is legal, but nor are there any technical barriers against either
CDs were bad, they are still bad (Score:2)
I hated CDs the moment they came out. Floppy disks had a metal cover that protected the film. CDs had over 600 MB of data that can easily be corrupted with scratches on the exposed surface. It doesn't matter how careful you are with them, they always scratched.
conspriacy (Score:2)
I always figured since the hype was that they would last 100s of years that the execs purposely sabotaged them!
The Jewel cases are nice; however, they are brittle and the hinges break easily. They never tried to fix that because it was not a mistake.
In the early days, CD-ROM caddies were needed for computer players and burners. Important CDs lived in a caddy but naturally those were not cheap. They were quite similar to 3.5 Floppy cases! A cheaper case could have been made; one that was not removable from t
Re: conspriacy (Score:2)
Caddies were a great invention and should've been how CDs were distributed. Good luck finding a car stereo that accepts CDs in caddies. What's even crazier is they invented DVDs with even more storage that can be corrupted with a swipe of a needle
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I'm not sure what you do to your cd's, but I have maybe 500-600 and they all still play. Keep in mind some of those cd's were purchased in 1983, so over 40 years old. The jewel cases on some are busted, the cd's are fine. And scratches on the plastic side are not a problem unless very very deep. It is the aluminum side you need to be careful with. The laser focuses on the aluminum.
And how do I know, because I ripped them all about a year ago into a massive collection on a pair of redundant HDD's so I could
Are CDs Making a Comeback? (Score:1)
I have some of my money in Certificates of Deposit.
The interest rates aren't that great at the moment, but its a lot safer than BitCoin
My daughters love CDs (Score:2)
It's hilarious that my younger daughter has 12 CDs and thinks it's a large collection. I don't know why they've taken a shine to them, but when I was a teenager 25 years ago (sad to think), we were really into vinyl, I guess it's the same effect all over again.
why buy in the cloud (Score:3)
When you can rip your own CD? And places like Amazon will sell you physical media and "autorip" much of their catalog (but not all)
For people that only buy one track, it makes sense to drop $1-$2 for a song. And ignore the whole album. That's perhaps the way popular music works. But for fans of certain bands, we buy the whole album.
Re: why buy in the cloud (Score:2)
I haven't had a PC with a CD drive in like a decade.
Also, a digital album is often cheaper than a CD.
And tons of shit isn't even released on albums any more anyway. And singles are WAY more expensive on CD.
Re: why buy in the cloud (Score:2)
Yea. I can't imagine that singles are selling on CD all that well.
I have a desktop for the massive (but old) graphics card, so having a Blu-ray/dvd/cd-rw in it is relatively cheap compared to the whole system.
Laptop only users seem unlikely to buy an external drive. Even though they are cheap.
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I keep my media on a NAS, too, so even went so far as to buy an external 4k drive to be able to rip those while they are still commercially available. I can sync the NAS to my phone, too, so it's my own personal spotify/netflix. The Samsug TVs we have can natively stream from the NAS, as well, its really flexible.
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There's nothing stopping you from backing up digital files onto new media.
The physical CD can become damaged or degrade, rendering it unreadable. The readers will also fail over time and need to be replaced, and while they're still being manufactured today there will eventually reach a point where readers are not being manufactured and you have to rely on old stock or refurbishments.
Older media formats are becoming increasingly hard to use these days, even if you still have the physical media and it's not d
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USB CD drives are plentiful and cheap, so far.
Ripped files are so durable and so much easier to manipulate for listening that I don't care what vinyl sounds like.
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Floppy drives and blank disks were plentiful and cheap once too, now they're getting harder to find and a lot of the used units available are in poor condition. It will happen sooner or later.
But yes digital files are easier to manipulate, and you can periodically transfer them to newer storage devices so you don't get stuck with obsolete and unreadable media.
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Precisely. I once bought one of those Costco 100-CD packs, and it worked well for various things: not just music, but also files that I wanted to store as backup. But when I got to the last bunch, there was always a CD here or there that just couldn't be burned. That's a risk one incurs while going for disks, that one doesn't have w/ flash based storage
Re: why buy in the cloud (Score:3)
There was a story recently about flash media degrading much faster than you might think the longer it is unpowered.
Re: why buy in the cloud (Score:2)
My PC doesn't even have external drive bays. However, it does have USB ports, so when I want to rip something it's not a problem.
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Why buy at all? $2 for a song? That sounds expensive. When you compare it to something like paying Spotify for your life:
78 years * 12 months * $12.99 = $12,158.64 lifetime dollars.
Spotify library is 100 million songs.
I just looked it up and $12,158.64 turns out to be less than $200,000,000.
I don't see the advantage of buying physical.
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I have tried Spotify. Convenient as that is, it does require, among other things, an internet connection, and it runs ads after a bunch of songs, particularly if one is using the unpaid version. $2 for a song, otoh, enables one to save it in a digital format, and then play it on an MP3 player or any player of one's choice
One thing I'm not getting is this return to gramophone records, cassettes and CDs. In my life, I've been through all of them. For the first, there was zero mobility: one generally lis
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> When you can rip your own CD? And places like Amazon will sell you physical media and "autorip" much of their catalog (but not all)
> For people that only buy one track, it makes sense to drop $1-$2 for a song. And ignore the whole album. That's perhaps the way popular music works. But for fans of certain bands, we buy the whole album.
Or better yet, have your own MP3 player. Download the songs - yeah, pay the $1-2 for a song, arrange them in a playlist of your choice and copy them to the MP3 player. Then play it all you want, w/o bothering about the internet connectivity anywhere, or ads b/w songs after you've heard a couple or more (like in Spotify)