Will Anyone Else Miss CDs When They Are Gone?

Leswes on 31/10/2017 - 21:59

I've always enjoyed listening to CDs (pop and hip-hop mostly) and have found them to be a good compromise between form and function. Smaller and much more portable than vinyl but still with excellent sound quality. I also really enjoy reading liner notes and love CDs with great artwork. However, they seem to be on the way out (though vinyl is making a resurgence) as more people opt to stream music or buy/store music electronically.

Will anyone else miss CDs once they are gone?

Do people who've gotten rid of their CD collections in favour of streaming or owning music electronically miss having liner notes to read or something tangible to hold/admire/throw into a CD player?

Poll Options

  • 16
    What are CDs?
  • 78
    Nooooo, please don't leave!
  • 189
    Good riddance!
Entertainment

Comments

  • Diji1 on 31/10/2017 - 22:15
    +6

    much more portable than vinyl but still with excellent sound quality

    CD is a much higher sound quality format than vinyl. It is in fact the best sound can get, the human ear is incapable of discerning better sound reproduction.

    They'll probably become popular in 20 years time like vinyl :p

    • Sage on 31/10/2017 - 22:22
      +14

      That's debatable.

      • pjcook on 01/11/2017 - 07:31

        No it is not….. Unless of course you are able to pass a blind test between Vinyl and CD……

        • Ryanek on 01/11/2017 - 10:49
          +11

          It is indeed debatable. Vinyl is analog whereas CD is digital so the waveform of vinyl can be a closer representation of the true sound. See here

          There is a reason why some of the worlds most expensive setups use turn tables.

        • macrocephalic on 01/11/2017 - 16:23
          +7

          @Ryanek: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist–Shannon_sampling_theorem

          CD's sample at 44khz, so can faithfully reproduce signals up to 20khz with no loss. If you're lucky then you might still be able to hear sound at 20khz, but there's a decent chance that you can't.

        • trongy on 01/11/2017 - 20:28
          +3

          @Ryanek:

          The stair-step diagram is misrepresentation of a digital signal before it's converted to an analogue signal.

          If you want to understand why that viewpoint is completely misleading, try watching this educational video by an expert in digital audio.

          D/A and A/D | Digital Show and Tell

        • Nuggets on 01/11/2017 - 23:10
          +1

          @macrocephalic: yay Nyquist..

        • Cluster on 02/11/2017 - 00:35
          +17

          @Ryanek: Vinyl is indeed analog and potentially (but not really) smoother than digitized audio, but with vinyl you also have as a bonus:

          • hiss
          • pops
          • much lower dynamic range (this is often ignored)
          • fragile media
          • degradation after each playback
          • no error correction. Got a scratch? Record ruined.
          • wow and flutter

          CD and higher sampling technologies solve all the above problems.

          The image you linked to is also a gross misrepresentation of what digital waveforms look like coming out of a CD player. Hook up an oscilloscope to a CD player made after… 1990 or so. That sine waveform will be nice and smooth and not the ridiculous representation of a broken staircase in the image.

          Just because people with a lot of money (probably too much money) choose vinyl over CD doesn't mean those people are thinking logically or correct in their assumptions. They may actually prefer the distortions vinyl inherently produces. That doesn't mean CD and above is worse.

        • idonotknowwhy on 02/11/2017 - 11:04
          +3

          I can pass such a test. Vinyl introduces surface noise and popping, very easy to hear vs cd.

          CD is a superior medium to vinyl, but in some cases, vinyl can sound better because often, the metering is different, and less compressed than the cd master.

          I have been known to purchase vinyl for this reason, then rip it to flac.

          Idiots like Rick Rubin who say "louder sounds better" are to blame for this, not the cd medium.

        • AustriaBargain on 02/11/2017 - 22:04

          It's very easy to tell the difference between vinyl and CD. Are you thinking of an AB test of CD quality and HD audio?

    • [Deactivated] on 31/10/2017 - 23:21
      +12

      Vinyl is about the ritual, not necessarily the sound quality. I don't bother arguing about sound quality because I think after a certain point you get diminishing returns on what most people could distinguish.

      Thumbing through your collection, retrieving an album you can listen to from start to finish, opening the turntable lid (especially if it has a satisfying hinge), sliding out the record, placing it on the mat, and watching the record begin to spin as you carefully place the stylus onto the groove. It's fun. It's effort, but still fun.

      Personally, I still buy CDs, rip them to FLAC and then store the discs. I just like the control and information you can have when you buy stuff yourself. Some remasters of albums are shit. Some remasters are better. Some come with great booklets or cool art.

      Buying CDs locally is a rip off, though. I get all of mine from import-cds on eBay. They've been pretty dependable so far.

      • eswes on 31/10/2017 - 23:29
        +1

        Agree that vinyl is about the ritual. Also nice to see good artwork on those gatefold covers!

        Yep, also get a lot of my CDs from import-cds but I still buy a fair few from JB-HiFi. I'm alarmed at how quickly their CD departments are shrinking.

      • afoveht on 01/11/2017 - 00:10
        +3

        Another part of the ritual now missing is the anticipation for a release here way after it was available OS, trekking across town with mates to get it, getting home and pulling the vinyl out for the first time, checking for warp, and chilling out in front of the stereo for the first listen. Sure, the convenience of music on demand is great but there was something special about the long drawn out process it used to be.

      • Thrawn on 01/11/2017 - 07:34

        Ritual and mastering. Vinyl has different mastering process as it has more limitations as to what it can do. Plus the target audience is different, which means it might be mixed differently as well

    • airal3rt on 31/10/2017 - 23:35
      -1

      the human ear is incapable of discerning better sound reproduction.

      I'm not an audiophile so I'm unsure if this true or if it's like that "human eye can't see more than 30/60 FPS" meme that gets tossed around by console scrubs.

      • trapper on 03/11/2017 - 12:10
        +1

        Yeah it is true. 44 KHz sampling captures all frequencies that the human ear can hear.

        In the same way a photo only records visible light that the human eye can actually see.

        There is no point in capturing any electromagnetic radiation outside this range (radio, infrared, UV, x-ray, gamma, etc) because it's not visible.

      • edwardcr on 01/11/2017 - 01:23
        +15

        FLAC cannot be replicated on a CD and is many times better than CD quality.

        But FLAC is CD quality!

        • iDroid on 01/11/2017 - 13:10
          +5

          FLAC ripped from a CD is CD quality.

          FLAC from a higher quality source is higher quality than CD.

          Now, I'm not arguing that we can perceive the "higher quality" but on paper, the numbers are better!

    • Jamie007 on 01/11/2017 - 01:20
      +1

      Could not disagree more. Vinyl is an analog format. As is real life sound. When you listen to a live band, the sound is analog. And listening to a vinyl record makes the music sound much more like its really there, like you’re listening to real live instruments and a live human voice. Digital music sounds different. Colder and more distant. The quality may be higher on a technical level but that doesn’t mean it sounds better, any more than digital film looks better than real film.

      • pjcook on 01/11/2017 - 07:33
        +3

        SO when did you partake of a blind test between Vinyl and Digital.

        • Jamie007 on 01/11/2017 - 13:32
          +3

          I've listened to many of my favourite albums on CD and Vinyl hundreds of times on the same audio equipment depending on whether I feel too lazy for vinyl. Personally Id go as far as saying anyone who cant hear a huge difference between the CD and Vinyl on an album like The Doors' LA Woman in favor of the vinyl version should get their hearing checked.

        • pjcook on 02/11/2017 - 07:46
          +1

          @Jamie007:That is not a blind test. You will still have confirmation bias as you know which one is playing.

        • idonotknowwhy on 02/11/2017 - 11:06
          +6

          These tests are easy. Listen for popping, tempo changes and surface noise, and you know which one is the vinyl immediately

      • ThirdRonnie on 01/11/2017 - 09:40
        +1

        digital film

        lol

      • iDroid on 01/11/2017 - 13:17
        +7

        That's the mixing of modern music, not the format. Mostly due to the loudness war :(

        An analog is "similar to the original", not "the same as the original".

        There are frequencies (especially the really low ones) which are impractical on vinyl.

        Vinyl is fun and can sound great, but superior accurate reproduction of the performed work? naaa..

        Conjecture: I'd suspect that most modern vinyl is mastered from a digital studio recordings that are mixed and mastered in the digital domain and then pressed to vinyl.

        • Jamie007 on 01/11/2017 - 13:22

          Im not really talking about modern music made using digital recording and made for CDs/streaming. Im talking more music recorded using analog equipment made for vinyl. No amount of remastering will ever make, for example, Led Zepplin IV sound better than a pristine vinyl.

        • iDroid on 01/11/2017 - 13:35
          +2

          @Jamie007: I'd still argue that the reason why you think the Led Zepplin IV vinyl sound better is due to the mastering. If modern music was mastered with similar loudness levels as was used "back-in-the-day" then it'd probably sound pretty much the same (maybe a bit better due to it's reliability and improved studio equipment )

        • Jamie007 on 01/11/2017 - 13:41
          +2

          @iDroid: You could very well be right, Im no audio engineer so I wont disagree, but in the end its still the vinyl version sounding best regardless of the reason. I remember in the early days CD versions of old albums just sounded abominably bad. Flat, tinny, just awful. Then came all the Remasters to fix them and they sounded a million times better. But imo they also sounded overly produced, modern and digital and lost that rawness that the original recordings had that made them sound like the band was in the room with you playing. So if its a case of needing the vinyl to capture that original mixing, than thats good enough reason to listen to vinyl to me.

        • trongy on 01/11/2017 - 21:49

          @Jamie007:
          From the 1960's onward studio recordings have typically started with each instrument and voice being recorded separately. The mixer then adjusted the volume of each individual track when combining them into a master recording. Sometimes the timing of individual tracks is adjusted and effects are added in the mixing process.

          Preferring one master over another is simply an aesthetic choice like preferring one colour over another colour. There's no reason to resort to pseudo scientific explanations to explain your preference.

        • Jamie007 on 02/11/2017 - 00:03

          Ive been playing in bands for 20 years so Im fairly familiar with the mixing process. And its not "pseudo scientific", an analog recording is the purest and most faithful way to capture sound there is, it is an exact imprint of the sound wave. And listening to it back is organic and the closest thing to the sounds of the real world. Digital conversion and turning that into a bunch of 1's and 0's will always lose something.

        • iDroid on 02/11/2017 - 11:41

          @Jamie007: "exact imprint", hmm, not really, remember the origin of the word "analog" is "one is comparable to another", but does not imply "exact". I'm purposefully being pedantic here since it's most certainly not an "exact imprint", it's something similar to what was observed by the recording equipment.

          For a digital recording, yes the shape of the wave "looks different when graphed", but how much difference is there once it's gone through the DAC and into the analog domain? The output wave is FAR more important than what happens during the processing.

          IMO the largest quantifiable difference between the output produced by an analog vs digital recording is that the wave is quantised in digital but is susceptible to noise when analog (the processing can introduce (and does) noise at all steps of the recording, mastering and reproduction stages (while in the analog domain).

          A good DAC (for example those based on delta-sigma modulation) takes the quatisied digital signal, smooths it to make it closer to the source signal (an analog if you will). This is the signal that should be compared with the original analog signal. How it looks before it's reproduced is academic, it could be converted into some quantum state inside a water balloon - as long as that gets converted into a wave that is similar to the original wave, then it's of no concern. We don't really listen to the quantised signal, it's converted back to an analog wave which is no longer quantisied.

          Caveat: digital reproduction can and does also introduce noise during the reproduction stage (mostly in the DAC and amplifier - ie, when it's back in the analog domain). But again, this is an artefact of the analog domain.

          So you have, digital=quantised but consistent and remains at the same quality (with regard to noise) or analog, constant non quantised wave, but with lots of nasty noise and lots of variation in the output from different devices.

          On paper I'm leaning strongly towards the output from the digital representation being closer to the original.

    • casho on 01/11/2017 - 10:06
      +1

      I know people already buying up CD's and CD players prepping for the "CD hipster" future

    • [Deactivated] on 01/11/2017 - 14:17
      +3

      If the recording is done in high quality studio, a CD will compress it to 44.1khz/16bit (aka Redbook). This may be fine for hip hop music as most of the sounds are synthesized from a low quality recording and rerecorded and encoded with CD quality in mind.

      Some recordings such as orchestral or purist musicians (tends to be jazz artists, don't know why), record at a much higher bitrate and then mastered to 192/32 for SACD. This cannot play through a Redbook CD. In Vinyl format, it doesn't have to be compressed whatsoever. The differences in most parts of the music is imperceptible but there are moments where the music is very soft, or a crescendo where CD compression becomes a glaring fault.

      I do not think CD will ever make a comeback because CD is digital and so is streaming, whereas Vinyl is analogue. Very different in nature.

    • Volt on 01/11/2017 - 14:17
      +1

      "best sound can get" ? High-res downloads, SACD, DVD-A ?? And of course SACD and DVD-A can be multi-channel.

    • revo on 01/11/2017 - 19:46
      +4

      From what I've heard, CD has the capacity to sound better than a Vinyl Record, but Vinyl Records often sound 'better'. Apparently it is attributed to the mixing. A lot of modern day music is mixed and compressed so it sounds better on radio and that's the version they generally put on CDs. Whereas, Vinyl Records might use a different mixing/recording method, based on a differing target audience. Again, what I've heard.

    • payless69 on 01/11/2017 - 22:23

      grrr. CD is an acquired sound quality. They can be detected by 10% of the population as compromised. Use pre and de emphasis that result in non recoverable losses.
      They do corrode in the wet tropics. Still the quantity made will see them around for decades to come.
      Just keep a friend who strives for the celestial jukebox…

    • Andym on 01/11/2017 - 22:45
      +2

      High end Vinyl, DSD, SACD and FLAC files are better than standard CD's. Most people don't have the quality gear to notice the difference though as a lot of the modern gear is full of IC's as opposed to transistors and valves, so their ability to generate great sound is not there, so they say CD's are just as good as any other format. If you had an all transistor high end amplifier with some good speakers you can easily tell the difference. I've owned over 40 transistor and valve amplifiers some of which are nearly 50 years old and they wipe away most of the modern gear for sound reproduction. Also Vinyl and other high end sound formats carry a certain sound ambience which is beyond just hearing in a certain frequency range, it is more of a feel, like an aliveness from the album that you have to experience for yourself to know what it is. I remember playing a SACD track and CD of the same album, after playing the SACD track for a while then moving to the CD it felt like something had been removed and it was flatter.

      Also HD Vinyl is due to be released soon which will have double the fidelity of current LP's.
      https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/03/15/high-definition-…

    • johnno07 on 03/11/2017 - 18:50

      They'll probably become popular in 20 years time like vinyl :p

      Unlikely. We're hitting a point where a lot of early CDs are starting to decay (and nobody is releasing music on longer-lasting archival-grade optical discs). PVC, on the other hand (if looked after) has a much longer shelf life.

  • [Deactivated] on 31/10/2017 - 22:31
    +1

    Been digital only for a good few years now.

    I miss the artwork on vinyl covers along with all the cool gatefold stuff and notes and things. I don't miss lugging boxes around.

    CDs were a bit too small for as much detail but more robust. Useful, but I didn't shed too much of a tear when I got rid of all of mine a few years back.

    Tapes can go DIAF. Still got a few tapes for sentimental reasons, mostly old demos but they were digitised as soon as I could.

  • Bonsaichop on 31/10/2017 - 22:56
    +3

    They'll come and go just like how vinyl ebbs and flows every decade or so. However this will be what finishes them off, check your older discs I know a lot of mine, even DVDs went this way: DiscRot

    • eswes on 31/10/2017 - 23:30

      Thanks, didn't know about DiscRot. Should look into digitising my collection at some stage.

      • [Deactivated] on 31/10/2017 - 23:51

        I wouldn't worry about it too much. Commercially pressed discs usually take decades to fail unless exposed to extreme heat, cold, or movement.

        I would still recommend ripping your CDs but data rot is a problem for all media. CDs might be more safer in the long term if correctly cared for because they have no moving parts to damage like a traditional hard drive & depending on the size of your collection, storing all your music on an SSD might be too expensive.

        • edwardcr on 01/11/2017 - 01:29
          +1

          I have around three thousand CDs - both copied and originals - many going back to the mid-1980s, that I haven't yet got around to copying to my hard drive.

          I also have another four thousand or so that I've copied to hard drive over the last couple of years.

          I've never yet found ONE instance of so-called Disc rot.

        • havebeerbelywillsumo on 01/11/2017 - 02:57
          +2

          @edwardcr:

          If you bought at the cheaper end of the burn yourself CD's scale then you will be a high risk candidate IMHO, I have scatterings of see thru pinholes on some of my DIY CD's.

          Yet to have a commercially released one failed no matter how bargain basement it was.

        • PJC on 01/11/2017 - 06:46

          @havebeerbelywillsumo: I used to get cheap blanks at Strathfield Electronics. One I burnt about 10 years ago looked fine but audio was greatly distorted despite constant storage in its own jewel case.

        • iDroid on 01/11/2017 - 14:10
          +1

          @PJC: The audio was distorted?

        • PJC on 01/11/2017 - 14:25

          @iDroid: Just unattractive loudish noise. My CD player was and is fine.

    • Cluster on 02/11/2017 - 00:40
      -1

      I recently looked at some of the first CDRs I recorded way back in 1997. 20 years ago. All files can be retrieved perfectly. Disc degradation was a problem in the early 1980s, but not anymore.

  • coxjon on 31/10/2017 - 23:00

    I worked in a truck years ago (2008) with no aux input - 80 minute CDs just don't do it for me any more! (Good riddance vote!)

    • Cyphar on 01/11/2017 - 00:07
      +2

      My old car used to have an MP3 compatible CD player. I was able to have hours of music on one CD

  • airal3rt on 31/10/2017 - 23:42
    +4

    As a 90's kid I'll always have a soft spot for CDs, taking out and reading the paper insert/booklet with the song lyrics and various art was always kind of cool. There's probably some loose association with PlayStation games that were also on discs with the same-looking CD case. So yeah, modern mediums for convenience and CDs for nostalgia, I still have a few kicking around that get played every now and then. Last time I bought a CD was probably 5 years ago though.

  • bobbified on 31/10/2017 - 23:46
    +26

    Bet no-one misses the $29.95 price tag!

    • [Deactivated] on 01/11/2017 - 00:34
      +2

      and that's the main reason why I started to pirate, you rip someone off for so long there's going to be repercussions.

    • eswes on 01/11/2017 - 08:46
      +1

      Definitely don't miss $29.95 cds but part of the reason I still buy cds is to support the artist. I had the impression that streaming only paid a pittance but I guess there is probably a higher profit margin selling music electronically.

      • afoveht on 01/11/2017 - 10:12
        +5

        My understanding is that most artists usually make a lot more from touring than music sales. There's plenty of artists of which I've never bought their music but I've gone to see them live, sometimes multiple times.

        It's 2017 and way past the days of needing others (esp. big companies) for reproduction and distribution. IMO artists need to embrace new monetising models such as increased touring and merchandising.

        • eswes on 01/11/2017 - 10:35
          +1

          Yep, I've heard the same but it is much easier for me to buy CDs than to attend concerts these days!

        • PJC on 01/11/2017 - 11:15
          +2

          Yes, for years and years you can't get 250,000 Americans to pay US$17 for the latest Rolling Stones album, but you can get many more to pay US$80 for their concert tickets and then US$30 for a T-shirt made in Bangladesh for 80c.

        • eswes on 01/11/2017 - 11:40

          @PJC: One might argue that $80 to see an artist live is a better value proposition that $17 for a CD?

      • bobbified on 01/11/2017 - 11:27
        +2

        part of the reason I still buy cds is to support the artist

        I remember seeing pie charts of how the revenue from selling a CD is divided up and the portion to the artist was always quite small compared to the actual music company.

        • eswes on 01/11/2017 - 11:41

          I'm sure it is very small but I figure it is still more than they would get if I streamed their music.

        • macrocephalic on 01/11/2017 - 16:05
          +1

          Yes. I recall that Radiohead did an experiment in about 2008; they released their new album as a download only - pay what you want. Two thirds of people paid nothing - just downloaded it. Of the one third who did pay something, the average was $1. Radiohead made much more doing this than if they had released it through their record label. Radiohead are not a small band, and this wasn't their first album, smaller bands or new artists will get less - or possibly have to pay the record label for the privilege of having them sell their music.

          I know Spotify doesn't pay much, but a tiny fraction of something is more than the 'nothing' I had been spending for many years prior.

      • smpantsonfire on 01/11/2017 - 16:20
        +1

        I support the artist by buying the Vinyl, and then downloading the album. That way, they get their money, and I actually have a nice display piece, especially if its beautiful artwork.

    • payless69 on 01/11/2017 - 22:11

      and the nasty sticker accusing you of piracy before you even thought of it…

    • cannedhams on 02/11/2017 - 20:01

      which is about $50 in today's money. Seems insane when you think about it. They were basically taking advantage of the fact that there were so few other entertainment options in Australia back then.

  • PJC on 31/10/2017 - 23:50
    +1

    Many technologically challenged people will stop purchasing music.

    • Binchicken22 on 01/11/2017 - 07:16
      +1

      If they can't work out how to use spotify or similar they just aren't trying, its very simple. Also any people who are that tech challenged are probably 80+ and are only listening to public domain music lol, so the music industry doesn't see it as a huge loss.

      • PJC on 01/11/2017 - 08:07
        +1

        My 74-year-old neighbour died this year without ever touching a computer or ATM or credit/debit card. About 8 years ago I taught her to use a CD player. Someone else I know is a veteran housebuilder who will not attempt switching on a computer.

        • kahn on 01/11/2017 - 12:55
          +1

          Sounds like Pearl Burton.

        • PJC on 01/11/2017 - 14:15

          @kahn: I seriously doubt she used the CD player after the first week. I installed 3 TVs for her, and she only ever used the buttons I taught her about. If anything didn't work as expected, she called me.

        • kahn on 01/11/2017 - 14:18
          +1

          @PJC:
          Yeah, I know what it's like.
          http://i1.pudelekx.pl/13d93d89c107e4e1e378a8063cd4642f022dd1…

        • PJC on 01/11/2017 - 14:35

          @kahn: Near enough. She experimented with nothing, but she was a good neighbour who always watched our house if we were away, and she knew if she had a problem she could call me even if the clock said 3.17am.

        • kahn on 01/11/2017 - 14:39
          +1

          @PJC:
          And she always put the price and vendor in the title. She will be missed.

  • Cyphar on 01/11/2017 - 00:10
    +3

    I spend half my year in Japan. Surprisingly, CD is still king over there and is the reason why there's no serious streaming program for Japanese music.

    • payless69 on 01/11/2017 - 22:12

      of course, you can buy music from Eric Crapton there…

    • ItsMeAgro on 02/11/2017 - 10:06

      There's a couple of things at play there:

      1) Japanese companies are even more paranoid about piracy than western ones; they claim they can't sustain their Japanese language original content unless they charge crazy high prices for it: here's the blu-ray for Totoro selling for $80 - and that's online! http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/VWBS-1355

      2) due to the inventers of IBM/Mac PCs being American, they didn't consider other countries at all until many years after US release. So PCs didn't get support for Japanese character sets for years. As a result, they never really became as ubiquitous in Japan as elsewhere; during the 90s and 00s Japanese people had phones and tablets that could do most of what PCs do. So less iTunes and therefore less iPods, slower adoption of iphones. Their own mobile phones where more advanced than ours for ages and filled that gap somewhat. I never saw a mobile phone with a colour screen until I got there in 1999 and saw that in Japan, almost ALL of them had colour screens.

      3) Japanese people live longer due to much better diet and exercise (and stay active and healthy longer) so the average age is much older.

      4) Japanese people don't all dump old technology just because it's old; I walked in to a video game shop in 1999 to check out this brand new N64 game called "Smash bros" they were selling, well into the N64 era, if you remember… and was very surprised to see big sections of the store devoted to selling brand new games for both the SNES and the NES. This shocked me; new SNES games were gone from Australian stores by then. I hadn't seen a new NES game for sale in about a decade, IIRC.

      All of these have contributed to slower/smaller uptake of streaming/piracy and longer life for CD/DVD/etc.

      • idonotknowwhy on 02/11/2017 - 11:18
        +2

        3) Japanese people live longer due to much better diet and exercise (and stay active and healthy longer) so the average age is much older.

        Not that simple. There's a fertility crisis in Japan. Weirdly (and I can not understand this, I think they're totally insane), a large percentage of Japanese MEN aged 20-40 aren't interested in having sex!
        Additionally (but less of a factor), young Japanese women are starting to rebel against the tradition of getting married, then quitting their job when the first child comes along and become full-time mums.

        4) Japanese people don't all dump old technology just because it's old; I walked in to a video game shop in 1999 to check out this brand new N64 game called "Smash bros" they were selling, well into the N64 era, if you remember… and was very surprised to see big sections of the store devoted to selling brand new games for both the SNES and the NES. This shocked me; new SNES games were gone from Australian stores by then. I hadn't seen a new NES game for sale in about a decade, IIRC.

        Next time you're there, you need to hit the second-hand stores ("Hard-Off" chain. Plenty of mint-condition N64s, games, accessories being sold for a couple of hundred yen. They really look after their stuff. Second-hand clothes shops have good quality clothes too :)

        • ItsMeAgro on 02/11/2017 - 11:21

          Yep, fewer kids contributes to the higher average age, too.

        • idonotknowwhy on 02/11/2017 - 11:24
          +1

          @ItsMeAgro: Yeah, you can really notice this when you look around there. I hope they resolve this issue as it's a wonderful country and I'd have to see it decline. I read somewhere that at this rate, the population will halve within the next 40 years.

        • Cluster on 02/11/2017 - 19:23

          "Weirdly (and I can not understand this, I think they're totally insane), a large percentage of Japanese MEN aged 20-40 aren't interested in having sex!"

          Have you seen their anime, manga (doujinshi/hentai) and sex videos? I suggest men are taking measures into their own hands a little too much and rejecting the company of real women.

      • cannedhams on 02/11/2017 - 20:04

        Not quite.

        The biggest reason by far is that the Japanese authorities are very serious about even non-commercial file sharing. I used to try and download stuff off Winny, WinMX and other Japanese P2P networks but I have given up now. Since there were a few high-profile cases where people were arrested for P2P, a lot of the users simply vanished. You can't find much stuff on there any more, no matter how hard to try.

        Remember, there would be no iphone or ipad without the ipod. The older Apple iPods cost hundreds of dollars and there initially was no itunes store. It was basically a blatant piracy device. You could rip your friend's cd collection and keep it in your pocket. Otherwise there was no justification for it, why spend hundreds of dollars when you could buy a cd walkman?

        Also, the second hand trade. This may be because Japanese tastes, perhaps, are less disparate than Western ones, so therefore second hand shops can be more confident about what will sell. People are happy to shell out for CDs and physical books (ebooks are still pretty non-existent in Japan) knowing that they can shop it to the second hand chains.

    • obses2ion on 02/11/2017 - 10:42

      Yes! I just returned from a trip to Japan and surprisingly enough, CD resale stores were constantly packed with people scanning for CDs to buy. There's something exciting about sifting through the 250yen reduced shelves - I picked up some stuff that I wouldn't have otherwise considered. That, and I like the artwork/covers.

      In saying that, moments before reading this thread I pulled out a CD. I'm meeting my favourite artist over the weekend and I'm bringing it along in hopes of getting it signed. Can't do that with digital music.

  • Jamie007 on 01/11/2017 - 01:06
    +22

    I already do. Streaming is convenient but it’s pretty much ruined music for me, I used to get a CD, listen to the hell out of it and know every song inside out. Often it was the albums I didn’t like much at first that would grow on me to become my favourite albums. Ever since I started streaming Spotify a few years ago and as good as it is, it’s also kind of made music disposable. I’ll scan quickly through an album and if I don’t like it right away I’ll just go onto something else never listen to it again.

    • havebeerbelywillsumo on 01/11/2017 - 02:59
      +6
      • this……..there are so many favs that I didn't like at first.
    • eswes on 01/11/2017 - 08:23
      +4

      Same here! Had a trial subscription for Google music recently and found myself doing the same thing - not really giving albums much of a chance. Too much choice maybe?

      • mavis30551 on 03/11/2017 - 17:29

        Im the complete opposite, i will often hear a strange band/album on a spotify/streaming playlist at the gym , mark it and listen to the whole album next time I work out.

        I never browse music stores, ever.

    • PictureMeBroken on 01/11/2017 - 15:39
      +2

      God, finally somebody got it right. This!

    • [Deactivated] on 01/11/2017 - 20:12
      +7

      This is a really good point, albeit a bit of a depressing one.

      Come to think of it, some of my favorite albums of all time I didn't like at first. Some albums I can listen to from start to finish now I didn't like at first.

      Maybe it is fair to say that streaming is a convenient way to hear music, but not to listen to music.

      • gazza the great on 01/11/2017 - 20:29

        your right Juddy,the best memories (I'm 62) were listening to a Dylan record with a green ciggy.

        • Jamie007 on 02/11/2017 - 00:08
          +1

          Oh man, Im a HUGE Dylan fanatic and it saddens me to think that if I grew up in the streaming era I would never have liked Bob at all. I wasnt impressed at all when I first tried getting into him. It took a lot of listens before something snapped in my brain that made me go "Oh wow, now get it! This guy is amazing!" If it was today I probably would have listened to a Dylan album once, gone "meh" and moved on.

  • edwardcr on 01/11/2017 - 01:47
    +3

    I don't find the lack of CD artwork to be a problem with my ripped CDS.

    Once I've ripped them to HD on my HTPC I then scan all the artwork in high quality, then view the images on my IPad if I feel the need to do so. So it's a good sized, readable image

    I usually only find that having access to the artwork is only important for my classical/opera CDs where the info in the artwork is much more detailed.

    For other stuff once I've read the artwork a few times it usually sinks into my brain!

    Regarding CD sound quality - it's really hard to comment. There are many CDs that sound like crap, and some that sound wonderful!

    I'm rapidly building up my collection of high bitrate downloads, and on my system (which is an expensive one) there's a definite difference in quality.

    But having said that, I have a lot of blues, jazz and band music from the 1930s - 1950s. With these its all about the music - the sound is usually crap - but the sound isn't what it's about with this music!

  • Godric on 01/11/2017 - 08:34

    Haven't used a CD since 2008

  • shaybisc on 01/11/2017 - 08:38
    +1

    It is my understanding that you don't own your digital content, you lease it. When you die you can leave the devices you have downloaded the content to, but when the devices die, poof, music collection, book collection, gone forever.

    • eswes on 01/11/2017 - 08:42

      I also thought this was the case, hence my preference for cds.

      • shaybisc on 01/11/2017 - 08:47

        But can you transfer your entire collection from device to device, so in effect you can keep the collection alive forever?

    • pantsparty on 01/11/2017 - 10:46

      Just sign up to Spotify or Apple music. If your phone dies, get a new phone and log into your account on the new phone. Easy

      • Gareth on 01/11/2017 - 11:43
        +1

        Yep, but don't stop paying that monthly charge…. cause then it's gone.

        I can buy CDs and they'll still be working in 20-30 years unlike the music that the few surviving streaming providers are no longer interested in or have lost licensing to.

        • shaybisc on 01/11/2017 - 14:32
          +1

          What a concept! You mean that if I buy an album now and want to listen to it again in 40 years time I need to either have been paying Apple/Spotify for 40 years continuously or buy it again? Get outta here. Surely that can't be right.

          You can tell by my total ignorance that I have never paid for streamed music and I am not going to start.

        • macrocephalic on 01/11/2017 - 16:13

          @shaybisc: In 40 years, if you want to listen to the music again, you can subscribe to the relevant streaming service again for only a few dollars.

          Spotify is about $3/month. CD's are $15-$30. For the price of one, maybe two, CD's I get access to pretty much every commercially released piece of western music. If I spend the same money on CD's and Spotify, in 40 years I'll have maybe 80 albums total.

        • Ken1977 on 01/11/2017 - 22:18

          Many of the first cd's I ever purchased got cd rot. They get spots on the surface and makes them essentially unplayable. I gave up on cd's after that.

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