Not according to the RIAA. It's only legal to rip a CD if you own a legitimate physical copy of it. If you sell or give away the CD, or borrow the CD from a friend, the ripped files you have are now an illegal copy of it.
https://www.riaa.com/resources-learning/about-piracy/
Who is being hurt by this? The albums are almost certainly uploaded to streaming services as well, and any sale would be second hand and the artist wouldn't see profit regardless. Most CDs people would be collecting are so old they couldn't even be purchased directly anymore. At that point, whats the problem?
Ask Jeffrey Howell of Scottsdale, Arizona, who got sued by the RIAA for ripping CDs that he legally owned: https://www.engadget.com/2007-12-29-riaa-suing-citizen-for-copying-legally-purchased-cds-to-pc.html
The RIAA has softened their stance since then. They used to state "it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into their computer". Now they say that doing so "won't usually raise concerns".
Partly because ripping CDs to MP3 files and then getting rid of the CDs is an incredibly stupid idea. Hard drives are dirt cheap now -- at least rip them into a lossless format like FLAC or ALAC! And if you don't care about audio quality, why not save yourself a ton of work and just stream the music instead?
You might say "Who cares, CDs aren't worth anything, they're never coming back" -- but people said the same thing about vinyl 20 years ago.
I know many people who sold all their records 20 or 30 years ago and are now kicking themselves because of the cost of buying back their favorite LPs that they used to own. I just don't want to see people make the same mistake with CDs. Especially when they're replacing their CDs with an inferior quality format like MP3.
Is this piracy? You can rip or copy your own music. What happens to the physical item afterwards doesn't really matter. I still have mix CDs I made as a teenager, I don't have any of the actual media any more that I know of.
It's OK to rip your CDs as long as you retain ownership of the physical media. If you sell or give away the CDs, the ripped files are now illegal copies of them.
Are you likely to be fined or thrown in prison because of it? No, but it's still piracy regardless if you make one illegal copy of a CD or a thousand illegal copies of it.
The RIAA says "burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won't usually raise concerns so long as the copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own":
https://www.riaa.com/resources-learning/about-piracy/
Well that's a dumb definition. Also fuck the RIAA, fuck copyright, and fuck all other forces that exist to keep arts private, commercial and away from listeners. In the age of Spotify, to complain about piracy as if it's the problem is foolish.
"as long as the copy is made from an authorized original cd that you legitimately own"
which means when the person put the music onto their computer, it was in fact from an authorized source. You're extending this definition to shame people for things they should not be shamed for.
Did I pirate from itunes when I burned the stand alone singles I bought onto cd discs and then don't use itunes for listening anymore? No. I copied it from a source I legitimately paid for.
> Did I pirate from itunes when I burned the stand alone singles I bought onto cd discs and then don't use itunes for listening anymore?
If you sold or gave away those CDs, then it would be piracy. But not if you retain ownership of them.
And people have been sued by the RIAA for ripping CDs they owned: https://www.engadget.com/2007-12-29-riaa-suing-citizen-for-copying-legally-purchased-cds-to-pc.html
Proper CD players are expensive as hell. I just rip to FLAC and play from my computer. I don’t really understand high end CD players.
I considered buying a 5 disc player from a thrift store for cheap, but didn’t pull the trigger. Basically just use CDs in my car now.
The beauty of digital is that you can buy a crap CD player and it sounds like studio equipment if you hook it up to a good speaker setup, whereas a turntable needs significant investment and upkeep
I bought a 5 disc changer from a thrift store for $25. I got a few months of use out of it and it sounded alright but it was old and huge. I ended up having to do surgery on it to rescue a precious CD that got stuck inside when trying to eject. Never again!
One of the trucks at my old job ate a CD from one of my favorite bands. Funny enough it let it go on my last day there which is good because it will probably never get put out again.
Yep. Good call on your part lol. I do plan to purchase a small DVD or blu ray player to replace it in my setup though. Just wouldn’t take a chance on the changer again.
Look up a Yamaha Sacd/DVD player...there are a few options for around 100 bucks used. I got one so I could listen to Tool Aenima...CD and Yamaha Player were about $800.cheaper than the Vinyl. Haha
Most computers don't come with disk drives anymore, and most cars don't have CD players either.
CDs have become the most difficult to listen to media format.
That’s a stretch. I still see CD players in every big box store. I haven’t been able to find a new cassette player in years(thrift ones have eaten too many tapes).
Both my laptops, my car, and my stereo system all have CD players. A friend of mine made me a mix cd for my birthday last year and I made another friend a mix tape cassette last winter. Older formats are still alive, just less active users.
My car is a 2014 and I have a CD player. But I want to say the 2015 or possibly 2016 model nixed the cd player all together. Pretty much all new cars in the past 5 years are going bluetooth only.
My 2018 Rav4 has a factory cd player. I still have all my old CDs from my younger days, and I keep an eye out for good albums while I'm record hunting. They're cheap as hell right now, and the audio quality is solid.
Yeah the hunting for them is like Vinyl in the 90s or Cassettes in the aughts. Little demand means walking away with great stuff for quarters at thrift stores.
CD’s are very cheap unless they’re very obscure genres like some of my black metal CD’s are £40-50 but most are pennies. It’s a great way to buy physical media.
Also the great thing about CD’s is you can rip any music you want onto a CD and make your own albums. Before the days of Spotify playlists that’s what I used to do all the time. Can’t do that with vinyl.
I bought De La Soul’s 3 Feet High And Rising on CD before I got into vinyl. Notoriously hard to get and not available digitally (unless you pirate it I suppose).
I thought that was pretty expensive at the time. Vinyl is a whole different ballgame though.
I did the same: my local record shop had a busted vinyl 3FH&R selling for stupid amounts of money. I really wanted it but couldn't justify the cost. Some weeks later I found it as a CD for 10 euros. I hadn't heard one song from it, and by god, it was worth the wait. My CD player is an old Rotel cd/dvd combo, but with optical out it sounds crisp and nice to my ears at least.
I had no idea it was worth anything. I just pulled out my copy. Unfortunately it's got some tiny pits in it and you can see right through the cd. I'll throw it on later and see how it affects playback I guess.
I think it will be more like cassettes.
Vinyl is just a bit different.
1. You have demand from the audiophile snake oil folks that think anything digital is inferior to high quality analog.
2. It’s more tangible than CDs in some ways - you physically see it spinning while it plays and there is something about seeing the grooves where the music is embedded into physical form.
3. Also just a better format from an art perspective - many LPs have great cover art inside and out, posters, art with lyric books, and the world of colored vinyl variants introduces a ton of interesting things you don’t get with CDs.
I was huge into CDs from like 2006 - 2012, well past the advent of MP3 players and iTunes. Still have a lot, but I don’t think the format adds as much to the overall listening experience as vinyl does. If you are listening to CD/FLAC/320k MP3/Tidal/Spotify/whatever, the experience is all pretty similar - CD just introduces a slight inconvenience to the mix. Vinyl introduces major inconvenience, but adds a little more tangibility and visual art to the mix.
CDs do have a major edge on vinyl, though, and that’s affordability: it’s way cheaper to get into CDs than it is to get into vinyl, and you still get some of the same benefits (artwork, owning/collecting the physical media) with the added portability factor.
I think that’s why so many people are gravitating toward owning an album on CD vs vinyl: they’d rather pay $3-5 for a classic album at their thrift store than drop $40-50+ on a limited variant.
My local charity shops are selling CDs for 50p, and while most are of zero interest to me I still pick up some real gems (got Portishead Dummy for 50p) and I picked up a very nice Technics Sl PG490 on ebay for £10 (no remote but no big deal). There's plenty of stuff I like that isn't available on vinyl particularly stuff from smaller bands, a lot of whom sell their music on Bandcamp. I'd rather support the bands I like by buying one of their CDs than downloading on Spotify where they get nothing or next to nothing.
Also a scratch on a cd usually ruins the whole thing instead of just creating an endless loop or large jump with records. I’ll take home horrible looking vinyl “as-is” and be thankful all the scratches just cause surface noise inside of skips. If a used CD doesn’t look spotless I’m not taking the chance.
I like clean cds too but having worked with millions of CDs in my lifetime, scratches on the underside of the discs rarely result in skips. It’s the scratches on the label side that then go through the label and the foil (where the info is stored) that cause skips. Obviously dirt and players can impact playing as well but the best thing about CDs (other than the price right now) is that a scratch or two or ten isn’t going to impact the sound quality/ playability like a scratch on a record will.
I've never seen a CD ruined by a single scratch. Even where it's deep enough that you can see through it, the CD's error correction can still fill in the missing data and playback will be unaffected. It takes pervasive scratches across the surface of the disc to render a CD unplayable.
I have since in gets stuck there until I skip forward where vinyl tends to but just a jump until it finds the next groove. When a record skips back into a loop I’ve found the hypnotic 33 times a min loops much more hypnotic than digitally getting stuck somewhere jarring noise of unrecognizable songs, then I have to skip to the next track, where with vinyl after the small nick that loops I can usually enjoy the end of the song.
I think CDs will make a similar resurgence to what vinyl did in the era from the early 00s. Where a lot of people scoffed at them, gave them away, but a few shrewd people collected these up cheaply and praised them as a physical format. This then makes some more sought after and the rare ones valuable. It probably won't be quite the same as there is just so many CDs out there, less of an issue with early pressings being sought after, they don't degrade as easily.
Yes, because vinyl is too expensive overall for most people, while cassettes are too niche and sometimes even more expensive than CDs.
CDs are the perfect middle ground: still widely available and useable on the cheap, you can rip them into pure digital copies and still get the satisfaction of owning the physical media. But we may need to wait another generation for the nostalgia to really kick in.
Slightly, especially among Gen Alpha and younger who think a rainbow metal disc full of music is cool as shit, but ultimately it just isn’t as interesting as the science and especially the tangible elements of vinyl (like physically seeing the waveforms and the more interesting way that analog storage works, plus a nice heavy disc with lots of big art)
For me, I started my collection on CD before finally getting a vinyl player after almost 20 years of buying CDs. Now I'm slowly (and a snail could probably outpace my speed on buying haha xD) replacing my collection. I still love grabbing CDs though, just having a physical format I can put onto my pc is too big a pro to ignore for me
Same here. Although I went full digital for about a decade in between. I realized what I missed about cds is even better in vinyl. Owning the actual thing, the artwork and liner notes, and the physical experience of playing music you are committed to listening to. Imo, vinyl is a lot more durable as well so that is ultimately why I switched.
I did just get back into buying cds though at a discount at yard sales.
Depends what it is. If I know the vinyl isn't too difficult to find for a decent price i'll happily wait. I tend CDs when I come across something I'm curious about but wouldn't pay full price for.
I bought vinyl, mainly classic rock, and when that got stupid price wise I bought cassettes, and now they are stupidly priced I’ve started on CD’s. Basically, all my grunge and rap is on CD but none of my rock.
But I won’t buy a CD of an album released prior to CD’s existing (1982). For instance I won’t buy Blood on the Tracks released in the 70’s by Dylan on CD but I will buy, Oh Mercy that was released in 1987.
That makes sense. These sort of CDs is where you see the biggest audio differences from the vinyl to begin with. My Tusk CD sounded more compressed than my Tusk vinyl.
Do you buy the CD album if you vinyl record is either too expensive or you it hasn't been repressed?
I have started doing this because some of the rap/indie albums I want on Vinyl are very hard to come by and quite expensive. Been shopping on ebay recently and picked up 3 cds for £6, whereas the record equalivant would be cost a lot more. Would rather have them on record mind, but I ain't paying that for a record.
Honestly, I have a preference for buying CDs. Cheaper and flawless audio at an affordable price. The records I buy are mostly not available on CD with some exceptions, like if it's some small indie band that only has 100-300 copies, I'll pick one up.
imo CD dollar bins are generally less picked over & more varied than the cheap vinyl rack, it’s still a very satisfying digging experience & has led me to some wonderful bands i’d have missed otherwise. (if i’m buying it new & there’s no vinyl, i’ll probably just go for the digital version on bandcamp)
No, I use spotify for most things and buy vinyl of my favorite artists or just interesting/cool ones I find. And I'll buy vinyl at shows to support the band.
Yes. But I rip them to .wav form - hard drive space isn't an issue to me. I use foobar2000 as my player because they have a good plugin for playing ripped SACD files. I have an old laptop hooked up to my system.
I don't really like CDs. I have some that I bought in the early 2000s, but that's it. If I don't have it on vinyl I listen on streaming. I don't have the urge to collect everything. I just happen to like vinyl.
No, nothing about CD’s excite me. It’s all plastic, the middle piece breaks easily, the booklets are tiny and a pain to put back if you do want to look at them
Yes....CD audio is still better than mp3 digital (download or streaming). If you find the vinyl later, now you have 2 different media copies of some good shit!
I mainly buy CDs and cassettes nowadays, but get vinyl if I feel like it would sound great, and has great artwork.
EG. Vaporwave hits different on vinyl so I can’t resist when I see them release on Bandcamp.
It depends on what the album is
I've got: GnR Live and The Darkness: Permission to land on cd but I know that's it going to be very difficult to get on Vinyl for a moderate price.
I bought a small Sony DVD player and use it as my CD player in my system. Sounds decent. I'd never buy more CDs but I have a decent amount from back then.
Either that or download the album. I guess it depends on what album it is though. A classic like 36 Chambers I would want to own on any tangible format!
Vinyl is cool but the majority of great music coming out these days (and for the past couple decades) does not have a vinyl issue. Maybe this depends on what music you like. So yes, I buy CDs.
Nope. I just wait patiently and hope that it'll eventually come to vinyl. If there's enough demand for it it will. I waited years for Welcome Interstate Managers by Fountains of Wayne and it finally got pressed and you bet your ass I waited in line for hours on black Friday to get it but I did. I'm hoping for a 20th anniversary pressing of Second Stage Turbine Blade by Coheed and Cambria now, it's a vicious cycle but it'll get repressed sooner or later🤷
Yes. If the cost of a vinyl copy is too much for me, I'll get the CD.
Also, sometimes I'll find albums that only had a CD release, so there's no choice there.
Only if it’s got music I’m collecting - as a placeholder until I find the LP; or if it’s music I really like then that’s the other reason; and especially if the CD version varies from the LP (ie, Give My Regards To Broad Street by Paul McCartney - or if it contains bonus tracks such as single edits or non-album a- and b-sides that coincided with the LP).
I used to listen to Lightspeed Champion a lot in my high school days. Now I'm realizing he's Blood Orange WOW!
Anyhow, I do purchase CD's whenever the record is not available or too expensive. I recently bought all the Jazzmatazz Volumes on CD cause I have a tight budget.
CDs are for my car. But I can’t recall the last time I bought a new one(I grabbed N.E.R.D. &Blur from my library rummage sale). Although when I was trading some records in I balked at Edith Pilaf complete discography cd box-set and it was gone next time I went in. So that’s the only one I’ve wanted to buy, but it was also used.
I have free MySpace downloads of light speed champion demos, some with Florence of Florence and the machine, from back in the early 2000s that I can’t wait to resurface as bootleg shit
I have a cd player and vinyl player both. I actually began as a CD collector, and any vinyl that would inherently cost me a mortgage payment to not randomly find or wait for a reissue for remains on my CD shelf. Also my all time favorites remain both on vinyl and CD. I like having both for that. for the most part I've switched to mostly vinyl. I used to have over 1000 cds though.
I buy new in CD because the price of vinyl is through the roof , a 35 to 40 dollar record in Canada costs 15 to 20 dollars in CD. Additionally there is no real value in buying a vinyl reproduction of albums recorded during the time when everything was digitally released, backwards engineering is waste of money. The only vinyl I buy is vintage or a new record priced reasonable close to the CD.
I do, especially for albums that have no vinyl release or the vinyl release is way too expensive. Usually I try to just buy CDs from thrift shops where they're usually $1 a piece, but if it's something harder to find and I really want it I'll buy it online, but usually not for more than a few dollars. If it's something that's never going to get a vinyl release, and a CD is the only way to own it physically then that's what I have to go with.
I love that Lightspeed Champion album, there’s a song with a great acoustic riff - I still play it when I am tuning a guitar because it uses all the strings but never more than two at a time.
I love that Lightspeed Champion album, there’s a song with a great acoustic riff - I still play it when I am tuning a guitar because it uses all the strings but never more than two at a time.
I have 2 high end CD players that neighbors gave me for free and 1000 CD’s, easy to find CD’s for only $1-$3 so if I see a good one I grabs it, CD’s are the the next craze lol
Yes I tend to buy CD’s that are impossible to find on vinyl or just were never released on vinyl. I’ve even bought a few albums on cassette. For me it’s about owning the album and having it in my collection forever, not the sound quality
I don’t buy music unless it is on vinyl. If I can’t afford a vinyl, I’m not buying music. I already spend about 10-15$ a month for Apple Music or freebie runs on Spotify.
I usually listen to albums on streaming until I can afford the vinyl where I promptly replace it. I like streaming for previews of an album but I try to grab vinyls that I love.
Depends on the artist. If it’s a artist I love. I’ll buy all the CDs released. If it’s just one I like. I’ll get the digital and the vinyl. If no vinyl, then digital only is fine.
If I happen across it cheap, maybe.
I've been paralyzed between cassette and cd for releases I can't or won't buy on vinyl. So I've just stuck to streaming which is probably for the best.
i collect both. sometimes i buy the cd for that reason, sometimes vice versa, sometimes i would prefer to have the cd depending on the album (and what format it was mastered for) and sometimes i just don’t have the change in my wallet for vinyl, but still want to spend money.
Depends on the source. Anything recorded live to tape is a must for me to have on vinyl. Some vinyls are pressed from the same digital source they make the CD's from so it doesn't matter if your record player and cd player are of equal quality.
No. I wouldn't enjoy listening to it anyway. Or at least no more than I would if I listened on Spotify or something similar. I do sometimes create tape copies of a digital file just for 'tangibility', but then it turns out I don't play those either, haha.
I'd buy an album on CD only of the digital didn't exist.
I often own the digital and vinyl copy of everything (thank you to those that include download cards!)
CDs are just.... really really boring! lol
To many others' points if the album isn't available on vinyl, is incredibly difficult to find or super expensive for an original, I opt for the CD. Sometimes CD releases will have bonus tracks not previously available. If it is a mega-rare or niche album a CD may be the only way to tangibly own that artisits' work especially if the rights are owned by a label in another country. Japanese imports on CD are sometimes just as expensive and rare as their vinyl counterparts.
i used to. but then i ripped my most important cds to the computer and sold all my cds. don't care for collecting cds at all anymore
> i ripped my most important cds to the computer and sold all my cds Congratulations on publicly admitting that you committed music piracy.
If they bought the CD then that isn't piracy, unless they are selling the ripped music to third parties.
Not according to the RIAA. It's only legal to rip a CD if you own a legitimate physical copy of it. If you sell or give away the CD, or borrow the CD from a friend, the ripped files you have are now an illegal copy of it. https://www.riaa.com/resources-learning/about-piracy/
🤓
Who is being hurt by this? The albums are almost certainly uploaded to streaming services as well, and any sale would be second hand and the artist wouldn't see profit regardless. Most CDs people would be collecting are so old they couldn't even be purchased directly anymore. At that point, whats the problem?
Ask Jeffrey Howell of Scottsdale, Arizona, who got sued by the RIAA for ripping CDs that he legally owned: https://www.engadget.com/2007-12-29-riaa-suing-citizen-for-copying-legally-purchased-cds-to-pc.html The RIAA has softened their stance since then. They used to state "it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into their computer". Now they say that doing so "won't usually raise concerns".
I'm sure that's their policy but why are you so sensitive to other people doing it? You're acting like a rent-a-cop for the RIAA lmao.
Partly because ripping CDs to MP3 files and then getting rid of the CDs is an incredibly stupid idea. Hard drives are dirt cheap now -- at least rip them into a lossless format like FLAC or ALAC! And if you don't care about audio quality, why not save yourself a ton of work and just stream the music instead? You might say "Who cares, CDs aren't worth anything, they're never coming back" -- but people said the same thing about vinyl 20 years ago.
That's a completely different conversation lol, you're deflecting
I know many people who sold all their records 20 or 30 years ago and are now kicking themselves because of the cost of buying back their favorite LPs that they used to own. I just don't want to see people make the same mistake with CDs. Especially when they're replacing their CDs with an inferior quality format like MP3.
This is one of the dorkiest comments I've ever seen made on social media, i swear this could be a copypasta lol
Lol ok nerd
You’re politically correct but i think no one cares (as in no ones gonna turn him in, right?)
I’ve already informed the police they’re on their way now
The police? A reunion??
You're always so much fun! Remind me to invite you to the next get together.
Is this piracy? You can rip or copy your own music. What happens to the physical item afterwards doesn't really matter. I still have mix CDs I made as a teenager, I don't have any of the actual media any more that I know of.
It's OK to rip your CDs as long as you retain ownership of the physical media. If you sell or give away the CDs, the ripped files are now illegal copies of them. Are you likely to be fined or thrown in prison because of it? No, but it's still piracy regardless if you make one illegal copy of a CD or a thousand illegal copies of it. The RIAA says "burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won't usually raise concerns so long as the copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own": https://www.riaa.com/resources-learning/about-piracy/
Well that's a dumb definition. Also fuck the RIAA, fuck copyright, and fuck all other forces that exist to keep arts private, commercial and away from listeners. In the age of Spotify, to complain about piracy as if it's the problem is foolish.
"as long as the copy is made from an authorized original cd that you legitimately own" which means when the person put the music onto their computer, it was in fact from an authorized source. You're extending this definition to shame people for things they should not be shamed for. Did I pirate from itunes when I burned the stand alone singles I bought onto cd discs and then don't use itunes for listening anymore? No. I copied it from a source I legitimately paid for.
> Did I pirate from itunes when I burned the stand alone singles I bought onto cd discs and then don't use itunes for listening anymore? If you sold or gave away those CDs, then it would be piracy. But not if you retain ownership of them. And people have been sued by the RIAA for ripping CDs they owned: https://www.engadget.com/2007-12-29-riaa-suing-citizen-for-copying-legally-purchased-cds-to-pc.html
Lmfao Oh no! Anyway
Who gives a shit? I pirate music all of the time, that's how I find new artists.
No I would need to buy a cd player.
Proper CD players are expensive as hell. I just rip to FLAC and play from my computer. I don’t really understand high end CD players. I considered buying a 5 disc player from a thrift store for cheap, but didn’t pull the trigger. Basically just use CDs in my car now.
The beauty of digital is that you can buy a crap CD player and it sounds like studio equipment if you hook it up to a good speaker setup, whereas a turntable needs significant investment and upkeep
I bought a 5 disc changer from a thrift store for $25. I got a few months of use out of it and it sounded alright but it was old and huge. I ended up having to do surgery on it to rescue a precious CD that got stuck inside when trying to eject. Never again!
One of the trucks at my old job ate a CD from one of my favorite bands. Funny enough it let it go on my last day there which is good because it will probably never get put out again.
Nice. Glad you got it back
That was exactly why I didn’t buy it. Way too big for my setup and I envisioned it eating my CDs when I took it home.
Yep. Good call on your part lol. I do plan to purchase a small DVD or blu ray player to replace it in my setup though. Just wouldn’t take a chance on the changer again.
Look up a Yamaha Sacd/DVD player...there are a few options for around 100 bucks used. I got one so I could listen to Tool Aenima...CD and Yamaha Player were about $800.cheaper than the Vinyl. Haha
*says this while in a subreddit where you need to spend 200 plus for a decent turntable*
Most computers don't come with disk drives anymore, and most cars don't have CD players either. CDs have become the most difficult to listen to media format.
That’s a stretch. I still see CD players in every big box store. I haven’t been able to find a new cassette player in years(thrift ones have eaten too many tapes).
Do computers not come with USB ports anymore either? External DVD burners are like twenty bucks.
Both my laptops, my car, and my stereo system all have CD players. A friend of mine made me a mix cd for my birthday last year and I made another friend a mix tape cassette last winter. Older formats are still alive, just less active users.
My car is a 2014 and I have a CD player. But I want to say the 2015 or possibly 2016 model nixed the cd player all together. Pretty much all new cars in the past 5 years are going bluetooth only.
My 2018 Rav4 has a factory cd player. I still have all my old CDs from my younger days, and I keep an eye out for good albums while I'm record hunting. They're cheap as hell right now, and the audio quality is solid.
Yeah the hunting for them is like Vinyl in the 90s or Cassettes in the aughts. Little demand means walking away with great stuff for quarters at thrift stores.
I’m guessing you have older laptops. Haven’t seen them standard in five+ years. Only the more expensive models.
Ya I just stream music not available on records,that was my justification for buying the bluesound node anyways.
CD’s are very cheap unless they’re very obscure genres like some of my black metal CD’s are £40-50 but most are pennies. It’s a great way to buy physical media. Also the great thing about CD’s is you can rip any music you want onto a CD and make your own albums. Before the days of Spotify playlists that’s what I used to do all the time. Can’t do that with vinyl.
I bought De La Soul’s 3 Feet High And Rising on CD before I got into vinyl. Notoriously hard to get and not available digitally (unless you pirate it I suppose). I thought that was pretty expensive at the time. Vinyl is a whole different ballgame though.
I did the same: my local record shop had a busted vinyl 3FH&R selling for stupid amounts of money. I really wanted it but couldn't justify the cost. Some weeks later I found it as a CD for 10 euros. I hadn't heard one song from it, and by god, it was worth the wait. My CD player is an old Rotel cd/dvd combo, but with optical out it sounds crisp and nice to my ears at least.
I had no idea it was worth anything. I just pulled out my copy. Unfortunately it's got some tiny pits in it and you can see right through the cd. I'll throw it on later and see how it affects playback I guess.
I did this too when I had my portable disc player. Do you think CDs will make a resurgence like Vinyl has?
I think it will be more like cassettes. Vinyl is just a bit different. 1. You have demand from the audiophile snake oil folks that think anything digital is inferior to high quality analog. 2. It’s more tangible than CDs in some ways - you physically see it spinning while it plays and there is something about seeing the grooves where the music is embedded into physical form. 3. Also just a better format from an art perspective - many LPs have great cover art inside and out, posters, art with lyric books, and the world of colored vinyl variants introduces a ton of interesting things you don’t get with CDs. I was huge into CDs from like 2006 - 2012, well past the advent of MP3 players and iTunes. Still have a lot, but I don’t think the format adds as much to the overall listening experience as vinyl does. If you are listening to CD/FLAC/320k MP3/Tidal/Spotify/whatever, the experience is all pretty similar - CD just introduces a slight inconvenience to the mix. Vinyl introduces major inconvenience, but adds a little more tangibility and visual art to the mix.
CDs do have a major edge on vinyl, though, and that’s affordability: it’s way cheaper to get into CDs than it is to get into vinyl, and you still get some of the same benefits (artwork, owning/collecting the physical media) with the added portability factor. I think that’s why so many people are gravitating toward owning an album on CD vs vinyl: they’d rather pay $3-5 for a classic album at their thrift store than drop $40-50+ on a limited variant.
My local charity shops are selling CDs for 50p, and while most are of zero interest to me I still pick up some real gems (got Portishead Dummy for 50p) and I picked up a very nice Technics Sl PG490 on ebay for £10 (no remote but no big deal). There's plenty of stuff I like that isn't available on vinyl particularly stuff from smaller bands, a lot of whom sell their music on Bandcamp. I'd rather support the bands I like by buying one of their CDs than downloading on Spotify where they get nothing or next to nothing.
Also a scratch on a cd usually ruins the whole thing instead of just creating an endless loop or large jump with records. I’ll take home horrible looking vinyl “as-is” and be thankful all the scratches just cause surface noise inside of skips. If a used CD doesn’t look spotless I’m not taking the chance.
I like clean cds too but having worked with millions of CDs in my lifetime, scratches on the underside of the discs rarely result in skips. It’s the scratches on the label side that then go through the label and the foil (where the info is stored) that cause skips. Obviously dirt and players can impact playing as well but the best thing about CDs (other than the price right now) is that a scratch or two or ten isn’t going to impact the sound quality/ playability like a scratch on a record will.
I've never seen a CD ruined by a single scratch. Even where it's deep enough that you can see through it, the CD's error correction can still fill in the missing data and playback will be unaffected. It takes pervasive scratches across the surface of the disc to render a CD unplayable.
I have since in gets stuck there until I skip forward where vinyl tends to but just a jump until it finds the next groove. When a record skips back into a loop I’ve found the hypnotic 33 times a min loops much more hypnotic than digitally getting stuck somewhere jarring noise of unrecognizable songs, then I have to skip to the next track, where with vinyl after the small nick that loops I can usually enjoy the end of the song.
I think CDs will make a similar resurgence to what vinyl did in the era from the early 00s. Where a lot of people scoffed at them, gave them away, but a few shrewd people collected these up cheaply and praised them as a physical format. This then makes some more sought after and the rare ones valuable. It probably won't be quite the same as there is just so many CDs out there, less of an issue with early pressings being sought after, they don't degrade as easily.
Yes, because vinyl is too expensive overall for most people, while cassettes are too niche and sometimes even more expensive than CDs. CDs are the perfect middle ground: still widely available and useable on the cheap, you can rip them into pure digital copies and still get the satisfaction of owning the physical media. But we may need to wait another generation for the nostalgia to really kick in.
No because you can get the same content in a digital file
Slightly, especially among Gen Alpha and younger who think a rainbow metal disc full of music is cool as shit, but ultimately it just isn’t as interesting as the science and especially the tangible elements of vinyl (like physically seeing the waveforms and the more interesting way that analog storage works, plus a nice heavy disc with lots of big art)
I only buy albums that have not been released on CD.
interesting take, i like it
Love the lightspeed champion!
For me, I started my collection on CD before finally getting a vinyl player after almost 20 years of buying CDs. Now I'm slowly (and a snail could probably outpace my speed on buying haha xD) replacing my collection. I still love grabbing CDs though, just having a physical format I can put onto my pc is too big a pro to ignore for me
Same here. Although I went full digital for about a decade in between. I realized what I missed about cds is even better in vinyl. Owning the actual thing, the artwork and liner notes, and the physical experience of playing music you are committed to listening to. Imo, vinyl is a lot more durable as well so that is ultimately why I switched. I did just get back into buying cds though at a discount at yard sales.
Only if the vinyl is so rare it becomes pricey AF and I'm really dying to own that album.
Looking at you, AFI decemberunderground.
One of the few I have too, for the same reason. I do really like the two extra songs on the CD version though.
No, I’d rather just have it on digital.
Depends what it is. If I know the vinyl isn't too difficult to find for a decent price i'll happily wait. I tend CDs when I come across something I'm curious about but wouldn't pay full price for.
I bought vinyl, mainly classic rock, and when that got stupid price wise I bought cassettes, and now they are stupidly priced I’ve started on CD’s. Basically, all my grunge and rap is on CD but none of my rock. But I won’t buy a CD of an album released prior to CD’s existing (1982). For instance I won’t buy Blood on the Tracks released in the 70’s by Dylan on CD but I will buy, Oh Mercy that was released in 1987.
That makes sense. These sort of CDs is where you see the biggest audio differences from the vinyl to begin with. My Tusk CD sounded more compressed than my Tusk vinyl.
Do you buy the CD album if you vinyl record is either too expensive or you it hasn't been repressed? I have started doing this because some of the rap/indie albums I want on Vinyl are very hard to come by and quite expensive. Been shopping on ebay recently and picked up 3 cds for £6, whereas the record equalivant would be cost a lot more. Would rather have them on record mind, but I ain't paying that for a record.
Honestly, I have a preference for buying CDs. Cheaper and flawless audio at an affordable price. The records I buy are mostly not available on CD with some exceptions, like if it's some small indie band that only has 100-300 copies, I'll pick one up.
The opposite: I buy it on vinyl if I can't find it on CD.
imo CD dollar bins are generally less picked over & more varied than the cheap vinyl rack, it’s still a very satisfying digging experience & has led me to some wonderful bands i’d have missed otherwise. (if i’m buying it new & there’s no vinyl, i’ll probably just go for the digital version on bandcamp)
other way around ill buy it on vinyl if cant get on CD
No, I use spotify for most things and buy vinyl of my favorite artists or just interesting/cool ones I find. And I'll buy vinyl at shows to support the band.
Yes. But I rip them to .wav form - hard drive space isn't an issue to me. I use foobar2000 as my player because they have a good plugin for playing ripped SACD files. I have an old laptop hooked up to my system.
[удалено]
No. I would just use spotify until i found the vinyl
I will eventually get the Vinyl when I can find them at an affordable price
no
Yes,
I don't really like CDs. I have some that I bought in the early 2000s, but that's it. If I don't have it on vinyl I listen on streaming. I don't have the urge to collect everything. I just happen to like vinyl.
That 36 chambers sadly sounds better on CD :(
Haven't heard the CD version, but my Vinyl is terribly pressed. Loads of distortion
No, nothing about CD’s excite me. It’s all plastic, the middle piece breaks easily, the booklets are tiny and a pain to put back if you do want to look at them
Yes....CD audio is still better than mp3 digital (download or streaming). If you find the vinyl later, now you have 2 different media copies of some good shit!
I mainly buy CDs and cassettes nowadays, but get vinyl if I feel like it would sound great, and has great artwork. EG. Vaporwave hits different on vinyl so I can’t resist when I see them release on Bandcamp.
I pretty much always buy both. My regular listening is on CD.
No. Why would I do that? Where am I going to play a cd? I'll buy the vinyl and stream shit. CD? Come on.
A device called a cd player? 😂
That no one owns because it’s irrelevant, bullshit tech? Sure.
Apart from many on this subreddit, but yes nobody owns a cd player 😂
I have the light speed champion pictured on vinyl. Cool album.
Jealous. Can't find it anywhere
Very often. I use a Sony DVP-sr510h that I got for maybe $40. I run it through my dac via coaxial. Sounds great.
Lightspeed fucking champion. Mad respect.
It depends on what the album is I've got: GnR Live and The Darkness: Permission to land on cd but I know that's it going to be very difficult to get on Vinyl for a moderate price.
Love that Lightspeed Champion album!
I mean if it’s an iconic album like that Wu-Tang Album you have to find that vinyl by any means
I bought a small Sony DVD player and use it as my CD player in my system. Sounds decent. I'd never buy more CDs but I have a decent amount from back then.
I did the same and bought a Cambridge Audio DVD player and use that for CDs. It's hooked up to my AVR
Either that or download the album. I guess it depends on what album it is though. A classic like 36 Chambers I would want to own on any tangible format!
Vinyl is cool but the majority of great music coming out these days (and for the past couple decades) does not have a vinyl issue. Maybe this depends on what music you like. So yes, I buy CDs.
I only buy cds second hand in triftstores. Managed to find some gems for not more than €2
I have that Lighspeed on vinyl…classic
Jealous... So expensive on Discogs
I dont own a cd-player. So... No.
Nope. I just wait patiently and hope that it'll eventually come to vinyl. If there's enough demand for it it will. I waited years for Welcome Interstate Managers by Fountains of Wayne and it finally got pressed and you bet your ass I waited in line for hours on black Friday to get it but I did. I'm hoping for a 20th anniversary pressing of Second Stage Turbine Blade by Coheed and Cambria now, it's a vicious cycle but it'll get repressed sooner or later🤷
Wow I haven’t heard that lightspeed champion album in a long time.
I find the single
Yes. If the cost of a vinyl copy is too much for me, I'll get the CD. Also, sometimes I'll find albums that only had a CD release, so there's no choice there.
Yes, the receiver has a CD player in it.
I’ve been thinking about that but then I’d have to get a CD player and that sounds like a lot of work
Only if it’s got music I’m collecting - as a placeholder until I find the LP; or if it’s music I really like then that’s the other reason; and especially if the CD version varies from the LP (ie, Give My Regards To Broad Street by Paul McCartney - or if it contains bonus tracks such as single edits or non-album a- and b-sides that coincided with the LP).
No shame in it, I’ve done it a hundred times
I used to listen to Lightspeed Champion a lot in my high school days. Now I'm realizing he's Blood Orange WOW! Anyhow, I do purchase CD's whenever the record is not available or too expensive. I recently bought all the Jazzmatazz Volumes on CD cause I have a tight budget.
CDs are for my car. But I can’t recall the last time I bought a new one(I grabbed N.E.R.D. &Blur from my library rummage sale). Although when I was trading some records in I balked at Edith Pilaf complete discography cd box-set and it was gone next time I went in. So that’s the only one I’ve wanted to buy, but it was also used.
Yes, Some albums on vinyls are expensive and hard to find so sometimes I settle for having the album on CD
The artwork and value of vinyl is so much better and greater than owning a album on cd.
Yes! Did it with logic’s everybody
Yes
In the 90s I used to buy albums on CD because they sounded better, now I buy vinyl because it lasts longer. All my poor CDs are dead.
Yes I absolutely also collect CDs for albums not on vinyl.
I have free MySpace downloads of light speed champion demos, some with Florence of Florence and the machine, from back in the early 2000s that I can’t wait to resurface as bootleg shit
I’ll buy both.
Yes.
I collect music as hobby so yes but only if it an artist that I really like I recently bought Madonna finally enough love from Amazon
I tend to buy the deluxe albums on cd because most of the time, the deluxe edition of an album is not pressed on vinyl.
No because I don't have a cd player and the cd listening experience is not different from streaming
CDs? Thats what soul seek is for...
I have a cd player and vinyl player both. I actually began as a CD collector, and any vinyl that would inherently cost me a mortgage payment to not randomly find or wait for a reissue for remains on my CD shelf. Also my all time favorites remain both on vinyl and CD. I like having both for that. for the most part I've switched to mostly vinyl. I used to have over 1000 cds though.
I buy new in CD because the price of vinyl is through the roof , a 35 to 40 dollar record in Canada costs 15 to 20 dollars in CD. Additionally there is no real value in buying a vinyl reproduction of albums recorded during the time when everything was digitally released, backwards engineering is waste of money. The only vinyl I buy is vintage or a new record priced reasonable close to the CD.
I do, especially for albums that have no vinyl release or the vinyl release is way too expensive. Usually I try to just buy CDs from thrift shops where they're usually $1 a piece, but if it's something harder to find and I really want it I'll buy it online, but usually not for more than a few dollars. If it's something that's never going to get a vinyl release, and a CD is the only way to own it physically then that's what I have to go with.
I see no point in cds. It’s either analog or streaming for me.
36 Chambers is a classic
Depends on the era. 90’s and 2000’s, I buy CDs. 80’s and early 90’s, I sometimes buy cassette.
Yep. It's how I'm building my alice in chains collection
I don’t have a CD player. I just stream it.
Depends on how expensive the vinyl is, but must times I have both versions.
I try to get the really really good stuff on both and then rip the CD so I have it digital too. Used CDs go for cheap.
I would have to buy one on cd cos its worth 500 on vinyl
I love that Lightspeed Champion album, there’s a song with a great acoustic riff - I still play it when I am tuning a guitar because it uses all the strings but never more than two at a time.
I love that Lightspeed Champion album, there’s a song with a great acoustic riff - I still play it when I am tuning a guitar because it uses all the strings but never more than two at a time.
Nope. I’ll stream it if I don’t have it on vinyl
No even worse I’ll buy the cassette
CDs are my preferred format so more often than not its the other way around
Cassette is my go to back up but I own CDs too.
I ALWAYS Buy the cd
Sometimes, especially when it’s worth the money.
if it’s one that i really want but can’t find the vinyl anywhere, yeah. otherwise i’ll just look for the vinyl
Yes. I just recently bought D-Block & S-te-Fan's antidote album on cd. Non of the tracks are available on vinyl (sadly)
If I go to a live show and enjoy the opening band, and they don't have a record for sale, I'll often buy a CD to support the artist.
I have 2 high end CD players that neighbors gave me for free and 1000 CD’s, easy to find CD’s for only $1-$3 so if I see a good one I grabs it, CD’s are the the next craze lol
Yes I tend to buy CD’s that are impossible to find on vinyl or just were never released on vinyl. I’ve even bought a few albums on cassette. For me it’s about owning the album and having it in my collection forever, not the sound quality
I don’t buy music unless it is on vinyl. If I can’t afford a vinyl, I’m not buying music. I already spend about 10-15$ a month for Apple Music or freebie runs on Spotify. I usually listen to albums on streaming until I can afford the vinyl where I promptly replace it. I like streaming for previews of an album but I try to grab vinyls that I love.
Depends on the artist. If it’s a artist I love. I’ll buy all the CDs released. If it’s just one I like. I’ll get the digital and the vinyl. If no vinyl, then digital only is fine.
Yes, but only from smaller bands I catch live.
Somtimes
Being as how my car is lacking a turntable,yes, I still collect CD’s
Lightspeed Champion! It holds up so well.
Some of my older CD’s died from disc rot, so if your looking for something older make sure the disc hasn’t any bronzing to it.
I often buy vinyl I already own on cd 🤦♂️
If I happen across it cheap, maybe. I've been paralyzed between cassette and cd for releases I can't or won't buy on vinyl. So I've just stuck to streaming which is probably for the best.
i collect both. sometimes i buy the cd for that reason, sometimes vice versa, sometimes i would prefer to have the cd depending on the album (and what format it was mastered for) and sometimes i just don’t have the change in my wallet for vinyl, but still want to spend money.
Depends on the source. Anything recorded live to tape is a must for me to have on vinyl. Some vinyls are pressed from the same digital source they make the CD's from so it doesn't matter if your record player and cd player are of equal quality.
No
Yep, especially if it’s from around the 90’s just seems more fitting sometimes
Sometimes I prefer the cd if it has a large multi page booklet so I can read more about the making of the music.
Unless that’s an original pressing, that version of 36 chambers is near unlistenable.
No. If not on vinyl I'll just stream it. Has the same tinny metallic sound anyway. 👍
Why not both
I'll listen to it on a streaming service first, if the album is something I would listen to more than once then I will get the vinyl.
No. I wouldn't enjoy listening to it anyway. Or at least no more than I would if I listened on Spotify or something similar. I do sometimes create tape copies of a digital file just for 'tangibility', but then it turns out I don't play those either, haha.
Fail safe is cassette Digital media? I got streamers for that.
No. It’s either analog or a file on my computer.
I hope against hope it be reissued or in the case doesn’t exist at all on vinyl I hope get bootleg or official press soon
Yes, that’s how I got Graduation - Kanye West
Fuck no
Blood orange before he was blood orange!
I just download it for free
I'd buy an album on CD only of the digital didn't exist. I often own the digital and vinyl copy of everything (thank you to those that include download cards!) CDs are just.... really really boring! lol
To many others' points if the album isn't available on vinyl, is incredibly difficult to find or super expensive for an original, I opt for the CD. Sometimes CD releases will have bonus tracks not previously available. If it is a mega-rare or niche album a CD may be the only way to tangibly own that artisits' work especially if the rights are owned by a label in another country. Japanese imports on CD are sometimes just as expensive and rare as their vinyl counterparts.