back to the future: buying CD's again...

[dholl]

...largely thanks to discovering this site! I've always been an album-lover, even if an album with no weak songs is rarer than seeing the dark side of the moon.

I had well over 500 CD albums back in 2005, plus hundreds of cassettes and some LP's. I moved country back then and had to abandon the lot. Thanks to the internet I've since then been enjoying albums on youtube-streams, MP3-playlists and the like...but something(s) was missing:

- audio quality.
- the ritualistic process of putting on an album with the intention of listening to it properly.
- the satisfaction of having a physical collection.

So 13 years later I discovered BEA and see it's something like an IMDB for albums, I made my top 40 and not long after had the urge to rebuy[.de] as many on that list as possible. They're quite cheap nowadays in online 2nd-hand shops, I was averaging paying about €3 per CD so not bad at all! These started arriving at the weekend, so far been enjoying Music For The Jilted Generation & Felt Mountain...appreciating them anew even.


So to the point of this thread: do you still buy CD's or have you rediscovered their value inspite of everything being so easy to access online & on hard drives?

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EDIT: a 4th reason why CD's are better...many of my favourite albums have no breaks between songs (many Floyds, for example). Online streams often ruin these vibes by having a half-second silent gap between each track. Or if you have MP3's your player may struggle to play them as gapless as intended.

[Jimmy Dread]

Why does preferring vinyl make you a hipster?
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[davidhuret]

Whatever the format but my preference still goes, easily, hands down, to cd's for that unique balance of convenience, ritual, audio quality and durability: some of my cd's are 35+ years old and still in pristine condition, and not because thay've been forgotten on a shelf. Quite the contrary.

[Patman360]

Like 99% of my music listening these days is online, I just travel too much for work, though I've still got a decent collection of CD's and vinyl filling up space in parents house...
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2023
2022

[baystateoftheart]

Digital music is best at one thing, and vinyl is best at another. CDs are an unsatisfying compromise.
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[Norman Bates]

I do still buy a lot of CDs - used only, mind you. I never pay more than €1 per CD, 2 at most if it's a Normcore item I don't already own. Generally I get them at my local charity shop for 50c on the CD.

I do the same with my vinyl records as well, mind you. Except I pay them €3 tops, the only exception being if it's gonna be a present - such as my Valentine present this year, a Talulah Gosh compy on vinyl.

[RoundTheBend]

Oddly enough I just recently saw the prices of CD and thought 1) Damn, why did I get rid of my CD's in 2011ish, and 2) jeez, I could buy like 10 albums for the price of one if I went CD again (not always). I haven't done it because my desktop and my car are the only things with CD players now and then I thought about the difference of having to carry around CD's vs just having them on my phone.

But yes, CD's do deliver a standard of quality you just can't get from Streaming services 100% of the time. If you don't have a great connection or pending on stuff with things, your stream isn't guaranteed to be at a high quality, even if you have a premium service. They'd prefer to drop the quality of the song than make you wait for it... especially since 50% of the time you won't even notice. At least this is my theory on why the exact same song from two different streaming services or played from digital collection all 3 sound completely different at times.

Sometimes I'm not the most careful with my hands so sometimes I'll get a scratch on my vinyl or cd by having the case of the butterfingers. Somehow moving my record player to another location in my house has made that true with my vinyl. I think it's because the record player is higher so it feels more a balancing act to get records in and out of the sleeve. So this is the beef I have with maintaining the physical thing.

But then if I'm strictly digital, I do loose some kind of value to the music. I'm not sure what that is or why that means that. Strictly streaming devalues the musical experience somehow but I can't really put my finger on exactly how.

[Jimmy Dread]

Surely a lot of the 'audio quality' part of this debate would rest on what equipment you're playing your stuff on. A crappy 128kbps mp3 is not going to sound anywhere near as good as a FLAC file, which I'd imagine given the right set-up would easily rival CD quality. But if you listen to any digital file on crappy Apple buds or some sub-standard PC speakers then it's never going to sound as good as even the cheapest CD player.

As for the 'ritualistic' side of things, it's true that getting off one's arse to stick a record on or a CD in a tray requires more effort than pressing a couple of icons on a touchscreen, but if you want to listen to an album from start to finish how it's consumed shouldn't really matter. The only difference I can see is that with a physical format you could flop on your beanbag, read the sleeve notes or whatever, and get swallowed up in the experience. But who's to say that you couldn't do something similar (i.e. check out reviews, Wikipedia entries, etc.) when streaming something off your phone.

No, the issue for me is that with streaming/digital media there is far too much temptation to flip before the album's done with, i.e. listen to something else to interrupt the flow. It's like having the TV remote in your hand - the urge to hop about is too tempting, especially when streaming services churn up a load of recommendations for you to check out based on your current listening choice. That said, streaming is great for discovering new things, and without it (and sites like this) my record collection wouldn't be anywhere near the size it is. But if I love it enough I have to own it - maybe a generational thing, I dunno.

I think the importance of having a collection, especially for those of my age, can't be understated. The first thing I remember doing when I was a student to suss someone out was to flick through what records or CDs they owned. It was almost like a window into their soul, or little signposts in their life and the experiences they'd had along the way. I could probably tell you where I bought every single one of my records from, and there's nothing more satisfying than showing off your collection to like-minded music nerds.

I'm likely far too old to be a hipster, but since a fair bit of the music I love was only ever available on vinyl when I first bought it that's my format of choice. I can't see me dashing back to CDs in a hurry, despite having hundreds of them sat in a box and a pretty decent CD player to spin them on. They just don't sound the same as putting a record on, the sound of which I much prefer. I'm not saying vinyl's better than CD - I just dig it more.
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[Yann]

[Jimmy Dread]