In a heroic humanitarian effort, Target and Borders are sending their rows of unsold, overpriced CDs to Zimbabwe so they use them instead of their $100 billion dollar bills. Listen to music or buy a loaf of bread. Your choice.
It’s official: Audiophiles are over CDs
The end is near, another war seems imminent, oil prices continue to rise, the dollar is in free fall, and now audiophiles have abandoned the CD.
Don’t get the wrong idea: they haven’t all dumped their CD players for turntables (I wish). Instead, they’ve bought music servers of some kind or another. How can this be happening?
I read the sad news on the Stereophile July 6 voting feature (scroll down to see results).
That week’s question: how do you listen to digital music? The poll says 34 percent still use CD players as their primary digital source. Yikes, I would have guessed much higher, more like 70 percent. Thirty-six percent use a computer-based server, and 10 percent use dedicated servers such as Sonos or Squeezebox. Another 4 percent use iPods! I felt a little better that 11 percent use a SACD or DVD-Audio player. Another 3 percent voted “other.”
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Sirius…I’m a subscriber…have never listened to Howard Stern, but they have three classical, four country, many pop, jazz, Latin, etc. channels…quality is good enough for computer, car, casual listening, and three subscriptions (my kids have two) costs $25 a month or so…
i still buy and use cd’s, i still play them in my truck even though i have an mp3 player hook-up. I don’t really know why.
juzten
Daily Free Software
“Does Anyone Buy/Use CDs Anymore?”
Sure, there are lots of titles that aren’t available via on-line music stores.
Why would anyone be sad to see CD’s disappear. They were a horrible format.
# 14. Back in the old days, before my Rock revolution, I got the Garth Brooks box set. Shhhhhh. Don’t tell anyone!
I buy new/used CDs to put in iTunes, to go into my iPod. I save the CDs for future use (higher fidelity music players).
I don’t play CDs directly in my car radio; instead I use an iPod connected to the radio.
I still sit down and listen to music as a priority activity and of course it’s on sometimes just in the background. There is much to be said for the ultra-limited, totally un-dynamic sound of too many CD’s these days – all of it bad. As a F/T musician and recordist I really appreciate the amazing quality of reproduction found in DVD-A and SACD discs and also in well-mixed and mastered redbook CD’s. These are what I listen to when I just listen to the music.
I do have a mess of AAC’s and MP3’s on my Macs and for convenience I certainly do listen to them while computing but the quality gap between these small files and the 24 bit/96k SR 5.1 mixes on many of my SACD’s and DVD-A’s is as apparent as the difference between a Ford Focus and a Mercedes – they will both take you somewhere, but the experience is nowhere near the same.
Yep, using LALA.com.
Actually I believe there have been studies which have shown a steady increase in record sales, and cd sales have been in sharp decline.
People I know generally have been using their computers to have large libraries for their cars and ipods and such, but for communal and personal meditative listening, analog I believe is very much on the rise.
the wave of the future! (5.1 surround record cubes! 😉
I bought CDs because they gave me a back up and no DRM. I got so hacked at DRM that I stopped buying any music and no I don’t steal it either. I have a decent sized collection on my hard drive ripped from my CDs. However since these people don’t like me to buy second hand…I think I just might start buying again but used only. I will of course rip it to my hard drive. ?8^)
It’s the end of the music industry as we know it. Everyone is so cut-throat now, just so they can have their free downloads. The problem is THE ARTIST WON’T GET PAID ANYMORE! But I guess there’s more than enough music already out there for the consumer to rip off.
btw, I’m a music-aholic and I have thousands of albums – on Cassette!
there’s no discernable difference between any of the formats. All this new crappy music that people listen to can be had for nothing – and that’s what it’s worth.
I do. best way to get around the whole DRM BS. But I also know a lot of Dj’s and musicians who give out free music so I get some of that.
I love old CDs. I hang them in my cherry trees to keep away the birds.
Some year back I saw some recording industry executive’s office on Tv, and he didn’t have a single CD either. Instead he had some weird piece of audio gear that accessed music over a phone connection, and the songs were just dialed into a blue florescent dislay, a bit like how XM radio works now. I’m betting it was that Sonos or Squeezebox system. The executes had it long before the average joe could get it. And right after that little tour, the whole Napster thing blew up. I’ll bet the service to the exec is a job perk too. They’re not going to pay for music like the rest of us. So all they’ve been doing for that last 20 years, is trying to figure out how to keep the technology that the execs enjoyed, from becoming wide spread in the public sector.
It’s still all I buy. It’s the cheapest way to get 320kbs audio. I buy used CDs on amazon for $3, new doesn’t matter, the bits are the same, rip them all into unprotected mp3 and I’ve saved a ton plus have better quality than if I used one of the online mp3 stores.
All those mp3 are stored on my computer and listened to on my ipod, and the CDs go into a box in the closet for storage. I feel much safer buying a physical CD than just buying bits online.
Rider wrote on July 23rd, 2008 at 6:10 pm:
> Why would anyone be sad to see
> CD’s disappear. They were a
> horrible format.
One of the reasons I will be sad to see CDs disappear is that the likely replacement formats will be so locked down with DRM (I would not be surprised to see the disc tied to a single player, and if you want to use a different player you will have to rebuy the music) that they will be of little use to me.
Compared to the previous audio formats (including LP, 45, cassette, 8-track, reel-to-reel), CD was a great improvement over all of them. Among the improvements were: no needles to replace; no discs to clean, no tape heads to clean and demagnetize; smaller size over the previous formats; the ability to quickly and accurately jump to any track; the ability to shuffle and repeat the tracks; and just the act of playing the music doesn’t damage it.
As an example of the last point, one of the reasons the album “Dark Side Of The Moon” by Pink Floyd stayed on the charts for more than a decade was due to people regularly replacing their worn-out copies. After CD was introduced, there was no longer a need to replace worn out copies of the album and it dropped off the charts.
It is true that compared to new music formats CD looks a bit old fashioned and bulky. But as said above, it is was a vast improvement over what preceeded it. It is unlikely that future formats will be as freely usable as CD is.
DRM? What DRM? Since I’ve been buying a lot of digital music from Amazon (and now Rhapsody), I haven’t been plagued with any DRM. There ARE alternatives to iTunes you know.
#44 “I love old CDs. I hang them in my cherry trees to keep away the birds.”
Does it actually work?