40 ms·

CD sales grow for first time since 2004

163 points by Drew_ 5y ago

nih0 5y ago
I've returned to buying physical media. Its really awesome. Things I like dont just dissapear anymore. And the 10 movies or so I watch per year is cheaper than a subscription service.
- blueridge 5y ago
  Yes, this is it. For me what matters is ownership—physical media, objects, artwork. I like owning things that bring me joy day after day. It's about being able to experience them whenever I want, on my terms. We rent, and lease, and license almost everything—books, software, cars, apartments, music, movies, furniture. Everything is offered "as a service". I get that a lot of people are drawn to the "flexibility" and ease of use that comes with rentals, with subscriptions, but not me. I'm not giving up on ownership.
  - z3c0 5y ago
    One benefit of physical media that I don't see mentioned here: if you like underground music, the rarity of the CD/Vinyl can cause it to greatly appreciate in value over time. It's a great reward for dedicated fans who are willing to jump on a release early. A lot of my CD's double in value within months (eg this album[1] came out only 2 years ago* and has already tripled in value) [1]: https://www.discogs.com/master/1701108-Spectral-Lore-Mare-Cognitum-Wanderers-Astrology-Of-The-Nine https://www.discogs.com/master/1701108-Spectral-Lore-Mare-Co... *edit: I forgot what year it is
- albertzeyer 5y ago
  But you will not be able to read the CD anymore after some years.
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    Rip. Mix. Burn.
  - at_a_remove 5y ago
    I have CDs from the 1980s that read just fine. In any case, I plan on backing them up at some point.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      I do, too. Not one suffers from "CD rot". I usually prefer CDs from the 80s, before they were "remastered", dynamically compressed, etc.
      - midnightclubbed 5y ago
        They were always mastered, there was just the 90s-2000s race for loudness that changed how they were mastered. There are some genre's that benefitted from that loudness war (pop music sonics changed dramatically) but yeah anything which should have had subtlety got squashed to oblivion. How do you feel about more recent re-masters where they have been more sensitive to over-compression and in some cases re-re-mastered to address the appalling re-masters? I have some issue with re-masters that attempt to fix problems with the source material. I'm not a huge fan of artists tinkering with the original material, adding elements that got lost in the mix due to overdubs/noise, were not technically possible, or just re-mixing for their taste. At least Taylor Swift is up-front about re-recording her albums. My gut is that music recorded/mastered to tape is going to sound 'as intended' on vinyl and everything recorded digitally (the old DDD label on CDs) targeted CD. I have nothing scientific to back that up though.
        WalterBright 5y ago
        > How do you feel about ... I don't trust them enough to risk spending money on more re-masters. I always go for the original. Interestingly, I've grown to dislike music that is too perfectly produced. I like that the singing isn't perfect, there's some background noise picked up by the mikes, etc. For example, listen to some of the Jefferson Airplane albums from the 60s. Those albums would never be produced today, because the band is a bit of a mess. The harmonies are out of sync, the pitch is imperfect, the timing erratic, everything is off kilter. But that rawness is, strangely enough, what makes the albums so endearing and a treasure. It's like the band has come by your house and is just having fun in your living room. So much better than the antiseptically perfect modern productions, along with that awful ubiquitous autotuning. Barf. C'mon, dare to have a sour note here and there.
- symlinkk 5y ago
  You’re confusing physical formats with the advantages of ownership. You can own DRM free digital files and have all of the same advantages, plus also enjoy the ease of use of digital. The only problem is there is no legal way of obtaining DRM free digital copies of movies or tv shows. For music you have Bandcamp and (I think) iTunes.
  - Groxx 5y ago
    I don't think they're confusing the two, it's more that sellers are forcibly combining the two. Nobody likes it, but they keep doing it, except in a couple sections where massively rampant piracy has essentially forced them to provide less user-hostile options.
  - aparks517 5y ago
    > The only problem is there is no legal way of obtaining DRM free digital copies of movies or tv shows. I think that depends on where you are. Maybe someone will correct me, but I was under the impression that here in the US you can "format-shift" a DVD or BD you legally own by ripping it to an unencrypted format so you can watch it on your tablet or what-have-you. Isn't that the legal leg iTunes stood on (before ITMS) for ripping CDs to listen to on your computer or iPod?
    - symlinkk 5y ago
      It is pretty hard to rip Blu Rays, from my surface level understanding only one piece of software supports it (MakeMKV), and only certain Blu Ray drives with specific versions of firmware support it.
      - jerf 5y ago
        mpv can be convinced to rip most blurays, but getting the requisite magic files can be a bit of a trip. You're looking for the latest "KEYDB.cfg". There's also still a chunk of blurays that it just won't rip because they're too sophisticated, although shocking few releases seem to be releasing those. (Must be a lot more expensive to make them.) You also run the risk that if you're not careful about what you put in your drive, you can have the latest Bluray disk revoke your drive simply by it spinning up and doing the initial read before you even ask for anything, from what I gather. I'm not sure if this is a current risk, but it's always changing. I've also found there's some confusion about what constitutes a 'track number'. DVD only has one, Bluray seems to have two. Most releases keep both in sync, but not all of them. The STTNG Blurays were a bit tricky to get the right shows off in the right order.
- brimble 5y ago
  > And the 10 movies or so I watch per year is cheaper than a subscription service. Libraries (and the free-if-you-have-a-participating-library-card Kanopy streaming service) exist, too.
  - kjkjadksj 5y ago
    Back in like 2005 or so, I would get all my music and movies from the library and just make rips to blanks to grow the collection at home. I did that with netflix dvd service too.
- 2ion 5y ago
  For me, it was the trouble of inadquate losless download offerings by so many labels / distributors. Even if you just want a digital library, getting the physical medium and making your private digital copy is a so much more stress-free variant, and it also doesn't limit your choice, because almost all music is available on CD and a much smaller fraction as well-produced losless audio downloads. I'm not paying CD price for a mp3, it's not the 2000s anymore, I can afford to download 700M of data for an album --- data saving was the original purpose of lossy audio codecs to begin with.
- Xavdidtheshadow 5y ago
  > the 10 movies or so I watch per year is cheaper than a subscription service. I think the value here _really_ depends on your usage patterns. For you, it sounds like individual discs make a ton of sense. But, many people watch more movies than that (during the height of lockdown, we were watching 1-2 movies _daily_), so streaming services made the most sense. Sure, it's annoying that movies come and go, but the price is certainly right. Once size won't fit all here, so it's definitely great that discs are still an option. I'm glad it works for you!
natdempk 5y ago
Worth noting that CD sales as a percent of total revenue fell from 4.0% to 3.9%, continuing the trend relative to the whole there. From: https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/
- jandrese 5y ago
  It is also worth noting that people spent more on Vinyl than they did on CDs last year. CDs are a fairly small niche now. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/us-music-fans-spent-more-on-vinyl-than-cd-last-year-for-the-first-time-since-1986/ https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/us-music-fans-spent-m...
  - goosedragons 5y ago
    Doesn't that have more to do with Vinyl being basically a collectors format with much higher MSRPs per album than CD? In unit sales CD still sells more.
    - luhn 5y ago
      No, vinyl is the majority of physical sales by unit now in the US. > According to data from the MRC and Billboard, 38.3 per cent of all album sales in the country last year were in vinyl format, while it accounted over 50 per cent of all physical album sales (41.72 million sales out of a total of 82.79 million). https://www.nme.com/news/music/vinyl-albums-outsold-cds-in-us-for-first-time-in-30-years-in-2021-3138423 https://www.nme.com/news/music/vinyl-albums-outsold-cds-in-u... Billboard source (paywalled): https://www.billboard.com/pro/vinyl-sales-new-record-past-cds-2021/ https://www.billboard.com/pro/vinyl-sales-new-record-past-cd...
      - ghaff 5y ago
        I have no interest in going back to vinyl and I don't have most of my old albums any longer. But if you want retro physicality of your music medium, vinyl probably has a lot more appeal than the alternatives. I do buy CDs from time to time if they're as cheap or cheaper than MP3s (or they're something oddball I can't buy digitally). But I generally then just rip them and put the physical CD in a box in the attic.
pacifika 5y ago
Yeah the current generation sees right through software as a tracking service.
- bin_bash 5y ago
  You think teens wary of Spotify tracking what they listen to caused a 15% increase in sales?
  - pacifika 5y ago
    Teens see the result of the internet on their mental health, and decide to forego it yes. Even lawmakers clued up
    - irrational 5y ago
      Wait, what? You are joking, right? What percentage of teens have foregone the Internet?
    - aidenn0 5y ago
      I have two teenage children and they both pay out of their own pockets for Spotify
    - onemoresoop 5y ago
      I really hope to see that and maybe a movement emerging in that direction. Sadly teenagers are one good target for commercial music because they could be easily manipulated with tropes that no longer work for other age groups (but they did when they were teenagers).
    - ryanmcbride 5y ago
      you got some sources to back that up?
    - trophycase 5y ago
      My experience is that teens have poor mental health and have no idea the internet is causing it.
unethical_ban 5y ago
I wonder if that is due to concerts and local artists earning money at shows, or if it is a broader trend. Story of one: I have been buying physical media from Bandcamp for albums that I like and that offer it. Bandcamp is so cool! Actually owning the music, even if digitally, is a comforting feeling.
- sdevonoes 5y ago
  For me at least the reason is: - with a subscription model (e.g., Spotify) I enjoy the music as long as a) I keep paying, and b) the supplier keeps supplying it - with a "buy a CD" model, I own the music forever. I can copy it in another CD to preserve it if needed. I don't have to worry about Spotify or Apple Music being up/down or if they even increase their base price or not
AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
Perhaps some consumers are discovering that they really don't like it when an artist they have been listening to on their subscription streaming service suddenly disappears because of a label dispute.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I assume those people would purchase a digital file of the song with a lot less friction than buying and ripping a CD.
  - AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
    Probably. But owning the CD allows you to re-rip it at some future date if you decide that storage is cheaper than it was 20 years ago and you'd really prefer to have some of your favorite albums in lossless FLAC format than lossy MP3. Or at the very least, maybe a higher quality mp3 than the 128kbps that was the norm during the Napster era.
    - giantrobot 5y ago
      You're entirely discounting the cost of physical storage. It's a non-zero and non-trivial cost to store and move all those CDs. If you've ripped them with high quality lossless settings you will not get better sound later reripping as FLAC. So unless you only ever ripped them with the old unregistered l3enc (limited to 112kbps and a shitty encoder anyways) there's little reason to rerip them. You may want to keep physical CDs for nostalgia or because you like the physical artifact but if you've ripped them in the past 15 or so years your lossless copy is likely transparent to lossless to the human ear.
      - AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
        I fear you've misunderstood me. I said going from LOSSY to Lossless, not lossless to lossless. Meaning even if your first rip was LAME-encoded VBR MP3 or OGG, you might decide you want to re-rip later as FLAC or APE.
willcipriano 5y ago
I buy CD's on Bandcamp but leave them in the wrapping since they also give you a flac copy. I imagine others do the same.
- mostlysimilar 5y ago
  Bandcamp was recently bought by Epic Games. Do you happen to know of an alternative of the same quality?
  - tehnub 5y ago
    Is there something wrong with Epic?
    - henriquecm8 5y ago
      I don't if there's something specific, but there's a pattern of companies getting bought than after a year or two, your favorite thing about the platform gets remove or put behind a paywall. It might not happen, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
      - theandrewbailey 5y ago
        My favorite thing about Bandcamp is buying albums and downloading them. That's already behind a paywall by definition.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    I do not. I listen to all my music through Plex so I'll probably go back to ripping CD's and finding stuff on the open seas at the first sign of funny business. The nice thing about being able to download your content is Bandcamp can close and I still have what I paid for.
beardyw 5y ago
>physical music is enjoying a resurgence CDs are the children of floppy disks, not vinyl. They are digital (it's in the name). Vinyl is actually physical beyond bits and bytes.
- Jyaif 5y ago
  > They are digital (it's in the name) CD stands for "compact disc"
- dsr_ 5y ago
  What are you implying by "Vinyl is actually physical beyond bits and bytes"? Are you trying to say "vinyl is analog"? Because that's true. Are you trying to say "the analog vinyl is superior to a CD prepared from the same mix"? That's demonstrably incorrect. Are you trying to say "the vinyl mixes are often superior to the CD mixes"? That's often true.
  - uhtred 5y ago
    Maybe they are not implying anything?
    - dsr_ 5y ago
      Everything in the universe is either mass or energy (and mass is energy), so making claims about vinyl being "physical" doesn't need to be said. I assume they had a point to make, and I'm hoping that they will make it more clearly.
      - beardyw 5y ago
        Sorry. I was just saying that a CD is a digital representation of sound. If you had a CD with a document on it you wouldn't call it a physical copy. However on a vinyl record the sound is physically represented in the grooves. It is as near to a physical representation of sound as you could get. Like a physical document is on paper. I have no bias. I listen happily to streaming.
- 5y ago
midnightclubbed 5y ago
Adele had a huge album launch last year, and sold very well on vinyl and CD. That one album may account for the entire growth. Maybe her fanbase are of the right age/demo to enjoy or to be nostalgic for physical media, maybe a lot of copies bought as gifts... Between that big launch and vinyl pressing plant supply issues (Covid supply chain issues and huge orders for two album releases) people who want the physical object may have moved from vinyl to CD editions. Anecdotally I pulled my CD collection out of retirement for use in my home office during Covid. There's something about 'putting on' a cd/record that streaming just does not do. A couple of weeks ago I caved and bought a vintage technics record player (late to the bandwagon), the price of vinyl is shocking compared to CD - $30+ for a 28g new release/reissue and quality used records are easily $20+. Feels like when I was a teenager and carefully deciding what I could afford that week/month and then playing it to destruction.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  The ritual aspect is heard in many mouths :) There's a tiny glimpse of magic of seeing the apparatus that turns physical storage into music. Even a CD drive gives you some mechanical hints of things happening. Best part is when you have an open drive mechanism :)
  - midnightclubbed 5y ago
    For me the ritual of deliberately choosing what I want to listen to from a somewhat limited/curated selection of music is the magic. Although seeing a diamond rubbing over a piece of plastic and knowing that's how the sound is made is pretty cool too...
- amerkhalid 5y ago
  I never gave up on CDs or physical books. Though I use Kindle and a few years ago I subscribed to Google Music and stopped buying new CDs. Lately, it is very rare that people discuss music. So recently, I moved my CD (& books) collection to living room and it has been good way to start conversations about music. Friends scan through the collection, sometimes, they borrow them. Album art is another thing that is fun to look at together. It feels a lot more social than sharing music on Facebook. My only issue is I don't have a CD player anymore except in the car. (Same thing with books, any book I buy on Kindle, I assume it is a rental. If I really like the book, then I get a paper copy.)
criddell 5y ago
One of my kids got into vinyl a few years ago and that triggered me to get my CD collection out of the attic and I started buying CDs again. I really enjoy listening to entire albums. Lately though, I've been using Apple Music because I got a free trial and found I really like their spatial audio and ATMOS tracks. Just about everything I stream is lossless and most that I listen to are higher than CD quality. The big question is (ignoring spatial audio), can I tell a difference between 16 bit / 44 kHz (CD) and 24 bit / 192 kHz (studio master)? The answer seems to be maybe. I've tried A-B tests where I switch between the two and I can never notice any differences. But after listening to an entire album I can often say that the album was CD or studio master quality. I wonder if maybe the two formats are mixed differently? The CD format is trapped in amber and the world is moving on (esp. with spatial audio) and I think that's too bad for people who like to buy music.
- digisign 5y ago
  I don't find the extra resolution helps at all at playback time, although I have older ears now. What it significant is a quality master in the first place. With that I downsample to 16/48, I personally can't tell the difference at that point from higher-res. For example, I've made mp3/opus from a quality remaster, that sound better than the 80s CD, simply because the new master was scanned on better equipment.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  It is not a good A/B test unless you are blind to which test is CD and which is not. Have you done that? (You need the help of another person)
- pier25 5y ago
  > can I tell a difference between 16 bit / 44 kHz (CD) and 24 bit / 192 kHz (studio master)? Even under perfect listening conditions (which are very rare) 99.99% of people won't be able to tell the difference. The vast majority of people can't tell the difference between a 44.1Khz/16 bits .wav and a 128kbps MP3.
  - boc 5y ago
digisign 5y ago
I have bought several CDs in the last year, in order to get .flacs that weren't otherwise available, or not available at a decent price. Unfortunately for the music business I've bought many used. It's like $8 vs $24 and I don't need to downsample to 16/48 to save space and play on the car stereo. All older recordings should be cheaper to combat piracy. The idea that I'm gonna pay top dollar for something multi-decades old because they remastered it (which is 10x cheaper to produce) is silly.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > All older recordings should be cheaper to combat piracy. That would kill the sales of new stuff.
  - digisign 5y ago
    Most kids and some adults aren't interested in old stuff. Not until they get older.
petercooper 5y ago
I'm mostly buying vinyl, but some CDs too, especially of stuff that isn't on streaming services (surprisingly common with older albums or those from non-US/UK countries). CDs can be poorly or well mastered, but the latter really sound better than a lot of the rips that have ended up on streaming services to me in a blind comparison.
ghastmaster 5y ago
The volume of CD sales grew compared to 2020, but was less than the volume from 2019. If you look at the data chart from the link in the article (https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/) you can see the trend is still down. The revenue per cd in 2019 = $13.28, 2020 = $15.29, 2021 = $12.54. Combined 2018/9 sales totaled 99.3M units sold vs combined 2020/1 78.2M units sold. There was a huge drop in 2020. Is it safe to assume that sales not done in 2020 were done in 2021?
uhtred 5y ago
it's often cheaper to buy a cd and rip to flac than to buy a hi-res download. Plus you also then have the cd to play on cd player!
- dehrmann 5y ago
  Only if your time is free.
  - washadjeffmad 5y ago
    I'm ashamed to admit that I will never be compensated for the four minutes it took to rip the hour long CD that I will listen to for the next few decades of my life. Instead, I invoiced HN for the time it took me to browse this forum and post this comment, and I strongly urge HN to require registered users to include personal payment information so we can bill each other for our time spent reading and replying to each other. Life is a tax on my time, and I will not be cheated.
  - uhtred 5y ago
    I do it in my free time
  - mindslight 5y ago
    I don't understand how people can post comments like this as support for streaming. Not being able to watch/listen anything when Internet uplink or service is down. Low quality and artifacts due to congestion. Relearning menus when on-high decides to change the UI. Password resets and locked accounts. Suffering through ads. Waiting for device firmware to update. Having to buy a new device because your old one isn't supported. Dealing with HDCP issues. Having to buy a new display because your old one isn't supported. That seems like a lot more wasted time and frustration at inconvenient times, rather than having to do a bit of work on your own schedule to rip a CD or start a torrent. I'd say the main difference is that with the top-down solution you don't have to think too hard - just do whatever the top-down system instructs you do, no matter what it costs you.
deutschew 5y ago
I grew up with Napster, Morpheus, KazaA, eDonkey/eMule. never ever bought music. recently i bought a music CD for the first time. I really liked the artist. Was surprised to find: - a complete booklet of all track lyrics - some additional behind the scenes content - hidden tracks - no DRM, I can simply lend it to ppl. - if need be Windows Media Player will rip to mp3 - a good feeling from sunk cost and my willingness to repeat this There is a reason that CD/DVD sales in Japan are still going strong.
- bitsoda 5y ago
  You're probably looking for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30641467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30641467
  - dang 5y ago
    Moved hither. Thanks!
    - deutschew 5y ago
      thanks haha!
- momojo 5y ago
  Wrong thread?
LiquidPolymer 5y ago
Cassettes are also ticking up in sales and major artists like Taylor Swift are releasing new material on cassette. Obviously this is a very niche market but I find it fascinating that physical formats are being appreciated again. I'm kind of a nut about this personally as I have reel to reel, cassette, DAT, minidisc, CD, and of course vinyl in my personal collection. A reel to reel machine is a heavy marvel of engineering and arguably sounds worse than many of the better compression formats. This giant machine with moving parts, required maintenance, and finicky loading is not everyone's cup of tea - but I love the quality of the machine and process by which it plays music. Locally we have a used CD, cassette, vinyl store that is always busy (Every Day Music - they actually have two very large retail locations.) I love the physical media aspect for all the reasons already mentioned by others in this thread. Nostalgia is also a prime ingredient. So hearing that these formats are finding a place in the market, however small, is good news and means more fun for me.
- cogman10 5y ago
  What I don't quiet understand is why we never went to flash for media distribution. SD cards are dirt cheap and can hold massive amounts of data. Seems weird that we can't just hand out 128MB SD cards with an album on it.
  - mmahemoff 5y ago
    Bill Gates called it when interviewed about the upcoming Blu-Ray format in 2005. "Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. Everything's going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it's even unclear how much this one counts."
  - clintonb 5y ago
    My guess is digital purchases became easier just before flash memory was cheap enough to use for albums. Also, distribution is much simpler, and the labels can get more profit due to decreased manufacturing costs.
    - 5y ago
daenz 5y ago
[x] Works on relatively low tech hardware [x] Doesn't require internet connection [x] Can't be removed from your possession for violating ToS [x] Can be easily backed up
- Tenoke 5y ago
  All of the above is true for Bandcamp except needing an internet connection initially but I don't imagine that's such a limiting factor. There's still CD sales going on there so the above doesn't explain it completely and I imagine the nostalgia, having a physical item, contrarianism etc. have a bigger hand in the resurgence.
TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
I hope CD never dies. It's a lossless, DRM-free physical format. There's nothing like it.
- adamredwoods 5y ago
  Listening to cymbals is much better on a CD than streaming.
  - mark-r 5y ago
    And even better on vinyl!
- YaBomm 5y ago
spoonjim 5y ago
After several startups shut down and caused me to scramble to export my data and change my workflow I've decided to put much less of my life in things that other companies can tear away from me. I use Dropbox, iCloud, etc. that I expect to stay available and without big price increases, as well as things like Spotify where I make sure to not invest too much time in curating playlists in case Spotify's pricing gets raised to the point where I don't want to use it anymore. Perhaps others have done the same.
bob1029 5y ago
I am certain I have contributed to this statistic. I was sent off the deep end after Spotify removed one song in particular from my playlist that I really wanted to listen to on one occasion. We are only into the month of March, and I have already spent ~$500 YTD on physical CDs, BluRays and other multimedia formats. Last year I probably spent close to 3-4k on the same. The rate at which I have pirated content (which is otherwise difficult to source on physical media) is also up dramatically since this incident.
- skydhash 5y ago
  I was so hyped when Spotify added my country. But I then found that most of the artists I listen to (Reggae artists, CHVRCHES) was missing from the catalog. I keep it for a little time as it was cheap, but did not bother to renew when my card expired.
kart23 5y ago
i’ve been buying cds for a while, mostly just new albums of a few of my favorite artists. the only thing that worries me is that most new cars don’t have cd players anymore. I also bought some cassettes a few years ago that are pretty valuable now, but absolutely nowhere to play them since my old car was my only cassette player.
- brewdad 5y ago
  My car has a factory CD player still. Yay! It's located INSIDE the glove box. WTH?
  - Kon-Peki 5y ago
    That's a seriously inconvenient location. Where do you keep your driving gloves?
- MartinCron 5y ago
  My older car has a 6 CD magazine, very fancy for the time. When my kid noticed the "eject" button on the dashboard, she thought that the car had ejector seats!
ghusto 5y ago
Ha! Coincides with me starting to buy CDs again, so I guess I'm not the rebel I thought I was. I was buying albums as FLAC, when I realised; "wait a minute, what the heck am I doing?! This is more expensive than buying a CD which I can rip myself to FLAC anyway". So I did _a lot_ of research on the best medium to buy music in for sound quality (surprise; it's not vinyl), and I'm rebuilding my collection. Listening to albums is fun again :)
- eej71 5y ago
  What tools do you find helpful in managing tags and missing album art work?
  - djrogers 5y ago
    When ripping CDs myself with iTunes, I never found either to be a problem... Yeah, iTunes had other issues, but it's original functionality was 'Rip, Mix, Burn'.
  - tehnub 5y ago
    I haven’t done a ton of ripping, but a fair amount, and I’ve found Music on macOS to be pretty decent.
  - benoliver999 5y ago
    I use beets https://beets.io/ https://beets.io/ It's a bit nerdy but for large collections it's a godsend
    - ghusto 5y ago
      This is great, I don't know how I missed it! Is there any configuration I can use to tag only, and do no conversion or copying. In other words, I'm more interested in correcting tags than actually managing the library. Can't seem to find the correct configuration options :/
      - benoliver999 5y ago
xeromal 5y ago
Similarly related, I've been collecting UHD blu-rays for the past year and have been enjoying it greatly. Lawrence of Arabia is being released as a 4k scan later this year and I'm pumped! I think there are a few parts to physical media collection * No fear of the media getting "Cancelled" and you losing access to it * Quality is always consistent. 4k and high quality audio bit rates generally do ok when streaming but start artifacting when there are any hiccups in your connection. I have GB service and I Still have low quality moments on my streaming. * Collecting items scratches an itch I didn't know I had * With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you songs that you wouldn't normally consider or search for. Spotify makes it easy to skip a song you may not like but I tend to try out new songs on my record player and sometimes I like new things * The artwork for blu-rays, vynyls, and CDs can be beautiful and make a nice addition to a shelf or library in your living room.
- humaniania 5y ago
  I don't understand 4K blu ray. It's 4x the resolution of HD but only has ~2x the storage capacity of blu ray. Isn't that limiting bitrate/quality?
  - xeromal 5y ago
    UHD Blu-Rays can go up to 100GB in capacity and can be read at 144Mbits/second. I don't think it limits many movies, but my 4k Lord of the Rings copy has the movie split into multiple discs.
  - deergomoo 5y ago
    Different codecs. Regular Blu-Rays are largely H.264 (though some of the original releases are MPEG-2 like DVDs); UHD is H.265 which is way more space efficient.
- bgorman 5y ago
  If you use YouTube and search for “LG Oled 4k” you will find fantastic looking streaming videos that look better than anything streaming from Netflix, HBO max, Disney plus, Apple TV etc… It is very frustrating that Blu Ray is the only way to get high quality Hollywood content. The technology is there for streaming
mthwl 5y ago
I wrote a bit recently about why I still collect music on CDs. Here are my 3 reasons, which echo a lot of the comments: 1. To Support the Artist, 2. To Own the Music, 3. To Collect Artifacts (which is fun) I also found a few recent attempts at creating new physical music formats, but most of them require Internet connectivity and are essentially cloud services that have physical access tokens :( I ended up just lamenting that we never got the Sony MiniDisc revolution that we all deserved. The post is here: https://www.matthewhowell.net/notes/2022/on-collecting-music/ https://www.matthewhowell.net/notes/2022/on-collecting-music...
- realPubkey 5y ago
  For me, collection things that you do not really need, is just a waste of scarce resources.
  - Forgeties79 5y ago
    So you have no hobbies that are non-essential?
  - nicky0 5y ago
    One could say that living at all is a waste of scarce resources.
    - Forgeties79 5y ago
      Honestly he’s just being edgelord trying to yuck other people’s yum.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - grumpyprole 5y ago
    Speak for yourself, but for me art in a physical form is something I need.
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  I like that you mention “collecting artifacts.“ I have a pretty extensive video game OST vinyl collection. The first thing I do when one comes in the mail is open it up, deep clean the record, drop it on the record player, and spin it. But while it’s playing, I actually have the audio routed through a recorder capturing it as 96kHz/24bit wav. I have so far archived every video game vinyl I have and I’ve slowly doing the rest of my vinyl collection. It’s been a really fun project, and like you said with “artifacts,“ I feel like I’ve got my own little museum of sorts going on. Plus it’s fun to cut them into sides (not tracks), compress into 48kHz wav, FLAC, and mp3, add the album art, and get them on my phone and home server. So I basically can take my vinyl anywhere I go! Is it the most practical exercise? Of course not. But it’s really fun in its own way. I just like archive diving a lot given my history background, so making my own archive scratches a similar itch I guess.
ozzythecat 5y ago
I stopped purchasing ebooks and am buying hardcover or paperback, even if it costs more. I want to physically own my purchases, not just have some entitlement to some file on a server.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I'm not buying NFTs, either!
at_a_remove 5y ago
Compounded by my lateness to the smartphone world, I feel hopelessly out of touch, but I have finally decided to start ripping a lot of my fairly hefty CD collection in hopes of playing them in my car, but many things I once thought true have mutated over time: - Headphone jacks disappearing from phones - iPhones in general, it seems like a lot of work just to get some random file onto the damned thing - Head units don't recognize .m3u playlists (what?!) Overall, it seems the happy path is just to subscribe to some music service and like whatever it is they have on ("played at a reasonable volume," as the Pictures for Sad Children bit goes). However, I already have the radio for the "shut up and like what we feed you" option. We're swimming upstream a bit here, liking CDs.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  >Headphone jacks disappearing from phones For most phones it just got merged into the USB C port. It's the same thing, but with a different connector except USB C also supports digital audio output too instead of just analog.
  - f1refly 5y ago
    That doesn't change the problem that I can't plug my headphones in anymore.
modzu 5y ago
i had to look up "CD"
vikingerik 5y ago
To be clear, this is an increase from calendar year 2020 to 2021. The 2020 baseline was artificially low with the pandemic. This isn't a trend, it's one skewed data point.
- andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  Yeah, it's almost certainly more likely that the CD sales market has hit a floor with a variable margin...
- YaBomm 5y ago
- vmception 5y ago
  You're right, the trend is still down: 2018 - $696m 2019 - $631m 2021 - $584m
emkoemko 5y ago
is this inflation? they don't mention sales volume increase just profit?
durpleDrank 5y ago
When the RIAA went after Youtube-dl I realized I was digging my own grave supporting streaming sites. Used CDs, Bandcamp, Flac. Anything but streaming sites where the RIAA gets money.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Polycarbonate is the new vinyl. Let the dynamic range wars reignite!
- mark-r 5y ago
  One reason that vinyl is doing better than CDs is because of dynamic range (loudness) wars. Vinyl is being marketed to more discerning customers, so it's being mastered with MORE dynamic range. By rights the CD should sound better, but it doesn't.
Spooky23 5y ago
I still do CDs, iTunes and iTunes Match. I get all of the streaming benefits, etc on my phone, without having to deal with a shitty streaming service. iTunes Songs are DRM free. Plus, since I’m pretty firmly established in the Apple world, I have an easy escape path for when they finally fuck up the music app beyond my level of tolerance. Cost-wise, it’s about the same. I probably spend about $100 year on music most years.
pjmlp 5y ago
I am no fan of Spotify and similar services, I keep buying CDs and ripping them into MP3.
kleer001 5y ago
By about 20% if anyone's interested in the actual magnitude
dpcx 5y ago
Damn Millenials, ruining the digital music industry! /s
blt 5y ago
As a person who carried a Discman for quite a few years, I do not miss CDs. I can only imagine that these CD buyers are either listening exclusively at home, or immediately ripping to FLAC. I guess having the album art is nice, but if that's your main motivation why not go all the way and collect vinyl?
- LiquidPolymer 5y ago
  Would you like to meet my personal CD player collection? I'm heading to Mexico in a few days and I'm debating which of my players to bring. I have a modular bluetooth transmitter that works with all of them, but typically I'm just listening on my Sony studio headphones. I also make my own CD's complete with artwork and printing directly on the disc. I purchased Lorde's "Solar Power" (not available on CD) and instantly made printed disc with jewel box art. I think this tremendously fun. I recognize this will all go away soon, but some of us are doing the opposite of what you suggest.
  - blt 5y ago
    Yes I should not be dismissive. It does sound really fun. I guess what I really meant to say is: it's interesting how everyone has their own perceived fun-vs-convenience tradeoff for old technology. To me, even though curating/maintaining the collection of players and CDs sounds fun, dealing with scratched CDs and a skipping discman does not seem worth it. But I also like to buy hard copies of math/CS textbooks even though they are ridiculously expensive, heavy, and don't have ctrl+F.
paulsmith 5y ago
I honestly thought from the headline before clicking through that this was referring to the other CDs, "certificates of deposit", which, I imagine, may be more in-demand due to rising interest rates.
Kapura 5y ago
Anecdotally, I've purchased several new CDs over the past 12 months because I bought a used car that has a CD player and I CBA to set it up to work with my phone. Given that the used car market is undergoing an unprecedented boom, I wonder if some % of CD sales come from similarly motivated new used cars owners.
- Kaibeezy 5y ago
  I recently bought a “vintage” 2003 car, removed the aftermarket touchscreen stereo, and reinstalled the OEM tape deck. I’m playing my old cassettes, stuff I haven’t listened to since the 80s. Adrian Belew, Desire Caught by the Tail. Brand X, Product. UK, Danger Money. Yeah, not exactly hi-fi, but not unlistenably wobbly. Car has a stick and wicked turbo lag too. Smiles for miles.
siskiyou 5y ago
I feel very fortunate to have grown up before streaming (ie, music you can't own). I collected about 800 CDs that I still have and listen to, and about 1200 LPs mostly given to me by people getting out of vinyl. I love the big artwork of LPs, and the ritual of cleaning and playing them, many of which are unavailable online. I ripped most of the CDs so I can avoid losses due to damage and listen on any device. I pay zero dollars to streaming services, nothing paid to Apple, and nothing supporting Joe Rogan. The down side to this approach is mostly just space for storage.
- rmah 5y ago
  I sorta feel the same way as you as I spent a lot of money on music when I was younger. But, that said, those 800 CD's and 1200 LP's cost you around 800 * $15 + 1200 * $10 = $24000. That's enough to pay for 200 years of streaming at $10/mo. And with streaming, you'll get 1000x more content to choose from. So I kind understand the appeal for the younger crowd.
  - zbuf 5y ago
    The counterpoint.. The day you cancel your subscription to a streaming service and you have absolutely nothing to show for it. Without the physical media, I lose the journal of what I enjoyed, why and when (as well as the guarantee I can listen to it)
    - mark-r 5y ago
      I had the same experience when all the alternative rock radio stations shut down in our area, after their heyday had passed. All the music I had been listening to for years was suddenly no longer on the air, and unless I remembered something specific I had no way to track it down.
  - siskiyou 5y ago
    I understand too. However I didn't pay for a huge portion of those LPs, because people gave them away by the box load, including a long time subscriber of the Capitol Records club who didn't play them. I lucked out and I'd rather keep playing them than subscribe to anything.
major505 5y ago
I still buys cds. I stop to buying and for a while brougth albuns in Itunes. After being tired of spotify I ended up trying to download my old albuns, and find I cant donwload them anymore. So I just got pissed and stated bying cds and ripping them. I don't care much about the phisical copy as long as it is preserved so I been buying digipaks.
- mackrevinack 5y ago
  any time i can't find a movie online i just buy the dvd, make a digital copy then throw it up on ebay. i have no use for the plastic bits either
pavlov 5y ago
After a decade of streaming movies, I started buying Blu-Rays again last year. The last straw was trying to watch Kurosawa's "Ran". The supposedly 4K remaster available on Amazon Prime Video is criminally badly encoded. During the raid on the castle, you literally can't see the smoke because macroblocks are popping so hard on every keyframe. The Blu-Ray is pristine and nobody can take it away from me. With streaming services, you pay for movies but you never know what quality they actually deliver on a given day. These are public corporations trying to deliver shareholder returns in what has become an environment of sinking stock prices, so if they can save on bandwidth costs by making the movie look a bit worse, they'll probably do it at some point -- and then again next quarter.
- deergomoo 5y ago
  > The supposedly 4K remaster available on Amazon Prime Video is criminally badly encoded. During the raid on the castle, you literally can't see the smoke because macroblocks are popping so hard on every keyframe This is such a widespread issue, especially in dark scenes. Netflix is bad, but Prime Video seems by far the worst. I watched Mr Robot through a few months ago, and at times it was like watching 2009-era YouTube, despite being 4K on paper. I'll take a 1080p Blu-Ray over a 4K stream any day. UHD Blu-Ray is nice, but it's a shame it's still 1.5-2x the price of regular BD. Then again you can still buy DVDs for some reason, so I guess high quality physical media is starting to be considered an enthusiast option..
  - srvmshr 5y ago
    This is just my observation & I don't know if others might have noticed: Netflix streams sharp pixels towards the center of the screen, and the backgrounds are always bit worse due to the bandwidth constraints perhaps. It perhaps works on the assumption that our focus is on the foreground mostly, and not the background. This is all good until the scenes are darker shades and you could notice the choppiness due to the network constraints.
    - kasabali 5y ago
      That's one of the "psychovisual enhancements" employed by modern codecs. Here [0] is a nice explanation I could among in top search results: "... x264’s psychovisual enhancements do a pretty good job of keeping detail where you’d notice it (the face), at the expense of the stuff you normally wouldn’t notice while watching (like those background areas)." [0] https://mattgadient.com/comparing-x264-rf-settings-in-handbrake-examples/ https://mattgadient.com/comparing-x264-rf-settings-in-handbr...
deergomoo 5y ago
While I'm not particularly interested in going back to physical media for music, I have mulled over the idea of dropping streaming and going back to buying albums. Apart from the fact that using Apple Music is an absolutely dreadful experience, anecdotally I feel like I enjoy music less when I listen in the ways that streaming tries to funnel you into, i.e. playlists and radio-like experiences. The music becomes less of an active engagement and more just background noise. The sticking points I have are that the discovery aspect is huge—despite my reservations about playlists, I've discovered a lot of bands that I really love from them just popping up randomly. But also, the cost difference is a hard sell; I recognise that that's largely a function of streaming pricing being pretty much unsustainable for all but the biggest artists, but when for the same price as one album per month I can access a huge portion of all the music in the world it's difficult to say no to that.
analog31 5y ago
My family buys CDs. We're into a lot of less popular genres such as chamber, folk, jazz, etc. We attend performances, workshops, and so forth. I've asked the musicians quite bluntly: How should I buy your stuff, so you can make the most money from it? The answer is: Buy the CD right here. Most of the performers sell CD's at their performances -- their own and ones from their friends. We often go home with a couple of CDs. I rip them onto a file server. Digital distribution sounded like a great idea when it was introduced, and it's been great for the "industry," but I don't think that small time musicians have figured out a way to monetize it.

163 points by Drew_ 5y ago

nih0 5y ago

I've returned to buying physical media. Its really awesome. Things I like dont just dissapear anymore. And the 10 movies or so I watch per year is cheaper than a subscription service.

blueridge 5y ago
Yes, this is it. For me what matters is ownership—physical media, objects, artwork. I like owning things that bring me joy day after day. It's about being able to experience them whenever I want, on my terms. We rent, and lease, and license almost everything—books, software, cars, apartments, music, movies, furniture. Everything is offered "as a service". I get that a lot of people are drawn to the "flexibility" and ease of use that comes with rentals, with subscriptions, but not me. I'm not giving up on ownership.
- z3c0 5y ago
  One benefit of physical media that I don't see mentioned here: if you like underground music, the rarity of the CD/Vinyl can cause it to greatly appreciate in value over time. It's a great reward for dedicated fans who are willing to jump on a release early. A lot of my CD's double in value within months (eg this album[1] came out only 2 years ago* and has already tripled in value) [1]: https://www.discogs.com/master/1701108-Spectral-Lore-Mare-Cognitum-Wanderers-Astrology-Of-The-Nine https://www.discogs.com/master/1701108-Spectral-Lore-Mare-Co... *edit: I forgot what year it is
albertzeyer 5y ago
But you will not be able to read the CD anymore after some years.
- egypturnash 5y ago
  Rip. Mix. Burn.
- at_a_remove 5y ago
  I have CDs from the 1980s that read just fine. In any case, I plan on backing them up at some point.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I do, too. Not one suffers from "CD rot". I usually prefer CDs from the 80s, before they were "remastered", dynamically compressed, etc.
    - midnightclubbed 5y ago
      They were always mastered, there was just the 90s-2000s race for loudness that changed how they were mastered. There are some genre's that benefitted from that loudness war (pop music sonics changed dramatically) but yeah anything which should have had subtlety got squashed to oblivion. How do you feel about more recent re-masters where they have been more sensitive to over-compression and in some cases re-re-mastered to address the appalling re-masters? I have some issue with re-masters that attempt to fix problems with the source material. I'm not a huge fan of artists tinkering with the original material, adding elements that got lost in the mix due to overdubs/noise, were not technically possible, or just re-mixing for their taste. At least Taylor Swift is up-front about re-recording her albums. My gut is that music recorded/mastered to tape is going to sound 'as intended' on vinyl and everything recorded digitally (the old DDD label on CDs) targeted CD. I have nothing scientific to back that up though.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        > How do you feel about ... I don't trust them enough to risk spending money on more re-masters. I always go for the original. Interestingly, I've grown to dislike music that is too perfectly produced. I like that the singing isn't perfect, there's some background noise picked up by the mikes, etc. For example, listen to some of the Jefferson Airplane albums from the 60s. Those albums would never be produced today, because the band is a bit of a mess. The harmonies are out of sync, the pitch is imperfect, the timing erratic, everything is off kilter. But that rawness is, strangely enough, what makes the albums so endearing and a treasure. It's like the band has come by your house and is just having fun in your living room. So much better than the antiseptically perfect modern productions, along with that awful ubiquitous autotuning. Barf. C'mon, dare to have a sour note here and there.
symlinkk 5y ago
You’re confusing physical formats with the advantages of ownership. You can own DRM free digital files and have all of the same advantages, plus also enjoy the ease of use of digital. The only problem is there is no legal way of obtaining DRM free digital copies of movies or tv shows. For music you have Bandcamp and (I think) iTunes.
- Groxx 5y ago
  I don't think they're confusing the two, it's more that sellers are forcibly combining the two. Nobody likes it, but they keep doing it, except in a couple sections where massively rampant piracy has essentially forced them to provide less user-hostile options.
- aparks517 5y ago
  > The only problem is there is no legal way of obtaining DRM free digital copies of movies or tv shows. I think that depends on where you are. Maybe someone will correct me, but I was under the impression that here in the US you can "format-shift" a DVD or BD you legally own by ripping it to an unencrypted format so you can watch it on your tablet or what-have-you. Isn't that the legal leg iTunes stood on (before ITMS) for ripping CDs to listen to on your computer or iPod?
  - symlinkk 5y ago
    It is pretty hard to rip Blu Rays, from my surface level understanding only one piece of software supports it (MakeMKV), and only certain Blu Ray drives with specific versions of firmware support it.
    - jerf 5y ago
      mpv can be convinced to rip most blurays, but getting the requisite magic files can be a bit of a trip. You're looking for the latest "KEYDB.cfg". There's also still a chunk of blurays that it just won't rip because they're too sophisticated, although shocking few releases seem to be releasing those. (Must be a lot more expensive to make them.) You also run the risk that if you're not careful about what you put in your drive, you can have the latest Bluray disk revoke your drive simply by it spinning up and doing the initial read before you even ask for anything, from what I gather. I'm not sure if this is a current risk, but it's always changing. I've also found there's some confusion about what constitutes a 'track number'. DVD only has one, Bluray seems to have two. Most releases keep both in sync, but not all of them. The STTNG Blurays were a bit tricky to get the right shows off in the right order.
brimble 5y ago
> And the 10 movies or so I watch per year is cheaper than a subscription service. Libraries (and the free-if-you-have-a-participating-library-card Kanopy streaming service) exist, too.
- kjkjadksj 5y ago
  Back in like 2005 or so, I would get all my music and movies from the library and just make rips to blanks to grow the collection at home. I did that with netflix dvd service too.
2ion 5y ago
For me, it was the trouble of inadquate losless download offerings by so many labels / distributors. Even if you just want a digital library, getting the physical medium and making your private digital copy is a so much more stress-free variant, and it also doesn't limit your choice, because almost all music is available on CD and a much smaller fraction as well-produced losless audio downloads. I'm not paying CD price for a mp3, it's not the 2000s anymore, I can afford to download 700M of data for an album --- data saving was the original purpose of lossy audio codecs to begin with.
Xavdidtheshadow 5y ago
> the 10 movies or so I watch per year is cheaper than a subscription service. I think the value here _really_ depends on your usage patterns. For you, it sounds like individual discs make a ton of sense. But, many people watch more movies than that (during the height of lockdown, we were watching 1-2 movies _daily_), so streaming services made the most sense. Sure, it's annoying that movies come and go, but the price is certainly right. Once size won't fit all here, so it's definitely great that discs are still an option. I'm glad it works for you!

natdempk 5y ago

Worth noting that CD sales as a percent of total revenue fell from 4.0% to 3.9%, continuing the trend relative to the whole there. From: https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/

jandrese 5y ago
It is also worth noting that people spent more on Vinyl than they did on CDs last year. CDs are a fairly small niche now. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/us-music-fans-spent-more-on-vinyl-than-cd-last-year-for-the-first-time-since-1986/ https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/us-music-fans-spent-m...
- goosedragons 5y ago
  Doesn't that have more to do with Vinyl being basically a collectors format with much higher MSRPs per album than CD? In unit sales CD still sells more.
  - luhn 5y ago
    No, vinyl is the majority of physical sales by unit now in the US. > According to data from the MRC and Billboard, 38.3 per cent of all album sales in the country last year were in vinyl format, while it accounted over 50 per cent of all physical album sales (41.72 million sales out of a total of 82.79 million). https://www.nme.com/news/music/vinyl-albums-outsold-cds-in-us-for-first-time-in-30-years-in-2021-3138423 https://www.nme.com/news/music/vinyl-albums-outsold-cds-in-u... Billboard source (paywalled): https://www.billboard.com/pro/vinyl-sales-new-record-past-cds-2021/ https://www.billboard.com/pro/vinyl-sales-new-record-past-cd...
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I have no interest in going back to vinyl and I don't have most of my old albums any longer. But if you want retro physicality of your music medium, vinyl probably has a lot more appeal than the alternatives. I do buy CDs from time to time if they're as cheap or cheaper than MP3s (or they're something oddball I can't buy digitally). But I generally then just rip them and put the physical CD in a box in the attic.

pacifika 5y ago

Yeah the current generation sees right through software as a tracking service.

bin_bash 5y ago
You think teens wary of Spotify tracking what they listen to caused a 15% increase in sales?
- pacifika 5y ago
  Teens see the result of the internet on their mental health, and decide to forego it yes. Even lawmakers clued up
  - irrational 5y ago
    Wait, what? You are joking, right? What percentage of teens have foregone the Internet?
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    I have two teenage children and they both pay out of their own pockets for Spotify
  - onemoresoop 5y ago
    I really hope to see that and maybe a movement emerging in that direction. Sadly teenagers are one good target for commercial music because they could be easily manipulated with tropes that no longer work for other age groups (but they did when they were teenagers).
  - ryanmcbride 5y ago
    you got some sources to back that up?
  - trophycase 5y ago
    My experience is that teens have poor mental health and have no idea the internet is causing it.

unethical_ban 5y ago

I wonder if that is due to concerts and local artists earning money at shows, or if it is a broader trend. Story of one: I have been buying physical media from Bandcamp for albums that I like and that offer it. Bandcamp is so cool! Actually owning the music, even if digitally, is a comforting feeling.

sdevonoes 5y ago
For me at least the reason is: - with a subscription model (e.g., Spotify) I enjoy the music as long as a) I keep paying, and b) the supplier keeps supplying it - with a "buy a CD" model, I own the music forever. I can copy it in another CD to preserve it if needed. I don't have to worry about Spotify or Apple Music being up/down or if they even increase their base price or not

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago

Perhaps some consumers are discovering that they really don't like it when an artist they have been listening to on their subscription streaming service suddenly disappears because of a label dispute.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
I assume those people would purchase a digital file of the song with a lot less friction than buying and ripping a CD.
- AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
  Probably. But owning the CD allows you to re-rip it at some future date if you decide that storage is cheaper than it was 20 years ago and you'd really prefer to have some of your favorite albums in lossless FLAC format than lossy MP3. Or at the very least, maybe a higher quality mp3 than the 128kbps that was the norm during the Napster era.
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    You're entirely discounting the cost of physical storage. It's a non-zero and non-trivial cost to store and move all those CDs. If you've ripped them with high quality lossless settings you will not get better sound later reripping as FLAC. So unless you only ever ripped them with the old unregistered l3enc (limited to 112kbps and a shitty encoder anyways) there's little reason to rerip them. You may want to keep physical CDs for nostalgia or because you like the physical artifact but if you've ripped them in the past 15 or so years your lossless copy is likely transparent to lossless to the human ear.
    - AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
      I fear you've misunderstood me. I said going from LOSSY to Lossless, not lossless to lossless. Meaning even if your first rip was LAME-encoded VBR MP3 or OGG, you might decide you want to re-rip later as FLAC or APE.

willcipriano 5y ago

I buy CD's on Bandcamp but leave them in the wrapping since they also give you a flac copy. I imagine others do the same.

mostlysimilar 5y ago
Bandcamp was recently bought by Epic Games. Do you happen to know of an alternative of the same quality?
- tehnub 5y ago
  Is there something wrong with Epic?
  - henriquecm8 5y ago
    I don't if there's something specific, but there's a pattern of companies getting bought than after a year or two, your favorite thing about the platform gets remove or put behind a paywall. It might not happen, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
    - theandrewbailey 5y ago
      My favorite thing about Bandcamp is buying albums and downloading them. That's already behind a paywall by definition.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  I do not. I listen to all my music through Plex so I'll probably go back to ripping CD's and finding stuff on the open seas at the first sign of funny business. The nice thing about being able to download your content is Bandcamp can close and I still have what I paid for.

beardyw 5y ago

>physical music is enjoying a resurgence CDs are the children of floppy disks, not vinyl. They are digital (it's in the name). Vinyl is actually physical beyond bits and bytes.

Jyaif 5y ago
> They are digital (it's in the name) CD stands for "compact disc"
dsr_ 5y ago
What are you implying by "Vinyl is actually physical beyond bits and bytes"? Are you trying to say "vinyl is analog"? Because that's true. Are you trying to say "the analog vinyl is superior to a CD prepared from the same mix"? That's demonstrably incorrect. Are you trying to say "the vinyl mixes are often superior to the CD mixes"? That's often true.
- uhtred 5y ago
  Maybe they are not implying anything?
  - dsr_ 5y ago
    Everything in the universe is either mass or energy (and mass is energy), so making claims about vinyl being "physical" doesn't need to be said. I assume they had a point to make, and I'm hoping that they will make it more clearly.
    - beardyw 5y ago
      Sorry. I was just saying that a CD is a digital representation of sound. If you had a CD with a document on it you wouldn't call it a physical copy. However on a vinyl record the sound is physically represented in the grooves. It is as near to a physical representation of sound as you could get. Like a physical document is on paper. I have no bias. I listen happily to streaming.
5y ago

midnightclubbed 5y ago

Adele had a huge album launch last year, and sold very well on vinyl and CD. That one album may account for the entire growth. Maybe her fanbase are of the right age/demo to enjoy or to be nostalgic for physical media, maybe a lot of copies bought as gifts... Between that big launch and vinyl pressing plant supply issues (Covid supply chain issues and huge orders for two album releases) people who want the physical object may have moved from vinyl to CD editions. Anecdotally I pulled my CD collection out of retirement for use in my home office during Covid. There's something about 'putting on' a cd/record that streaming just does not do. A couple of weeks ago I caved and bought a vintage technics record player (late to the bandwagon), the price of vinyl is shocking compared to CD - $30+ for a 28g new release/reissue and quality used records are easily $20+. Feels like when I was a teenager and carefully deciding what I could afford that week/month and then playing it to destruction.

agumonkey 5y ago
The ritual aspect is heard in many mouths :) There's a tiny glimpse of magic of seeing the apparatus that turns physical storage into music. Even a CD drive gives you some mechanical hints of things happening. Best part is when you have an open drive mechanism :)
- midnightclubbed 5y ago
  For me the ritual of deliberately choosing what I want to listen to from a somewhat limited/curated selection of music is the magic. Although seeing a diamond rubbing over a piece of plastic and knowing that's how the sound is made is pretty cool too...
amerkhalid 5y ago
I never gave up on CDs or physical books. Though I use Kindle and a few years ago I subscribed to Google Music and stopped buying new CDs. Lately, it is very rare that people discuss music. So recently, I moved my CD (& books) collection to living room and it has been good way to start conversations about music. Friends scan through the collection, sometimes, they borrow them. Album art is another thing that is fun to look at together. It feels a lot more social than sharing music on Facebook. My only issue is I don't have a CD player anymore except in the car. (Same thing with books, any book I buy on Kindle, I assume it is a rental. If I really like the book, then I get a paper copy.)

criddell 5y ago

One of my kids got into vinyl a few years ago and that triggered me to get my CD collection out of the attic and I started buying CDs again. I really enjoy listening to entire albums. Lately though, I've been using Apple Music because I got a free trial and found I really like their spatial audio and ATMOS tracks. Just about everything I stream is lossless and most that I listen to are higher than CD quality. The big question is (ignoring spatial audio), can I tell a difference between 16 bit / 44 kHz (CD) and 24 bit / 192 kHz (studio master)? The answer seems to be maybe. I've tried A-B tests where I switch between the two and I can never notice any differences. But after listening to an entire album I can often say that the album was CD or studio master quality. I wonder if maybe the two formats are mixed differently? The CD format is trapped in amber and the world is moving on (esp. with spatial audio) and I think that's too bad for people who like to buy music.

digisign 5y ago
I don't find the extra resolution helps at all at playback time, although I have older ears now. What it significant is a quality master in the first place. With that I downsample to 16/48, I personally can't tell the difference at that point from higher-res. For example, I've made mp3/opus from a quality remaster, that sound better than the 80s CD, simply because the new master was scanned on better equipment.
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
It is not a good A/B test unless you are blind to which test is CD and which is not. Have you done that? (You need the help of another person)
pier25 5y ago
> can I tell a difference between 16 bit / 44 kHz (CD) and 24 bit / 192 kHz (studio master)? Even under perfect listening conditions (which are very rare) 99.99% of people won't be able to tell the difference. The vast majority of people can't tell the difference between a 44.1Khz/16 bits .wav and a 128kbps MP3.
- boc 5y ago

digisign 5y ago

I have bought several CDs in the last year, in order to get .flacs that weren't otherwise available, or not available at a decent price. Unfortunately for the music business I've bought many used. It's like $8 vs $24 and I don't need to downsample to 16/48 to save space and play on the car stereo. All older recordings should be cheaper to combat piracy. The idea that I'm gonna pay top dollar for something multi-decades old because they remastered it (which is 10x cheaper to produce) is silly.

pessimizer 5y ago
> All older recordings should be cheaper to combat piracy. That would kill the sales of new stuff.
- digisign 5y ago
  Most kids and some adults aren't interested in old stuff. Not until they get older.

petercooper 5y ago

I'm mostly buying vinyl, but some CDs too, especially of stuff that isn't on streaming services (surprisingly common with older albums or those from non-US/UK countries). CDs can be poorly or well mastered, but the latter really sound better than a lot of the rips that have ended up on streaming services to me in a blind comparison.

ghastmaster 5y ago

The volume of CD sales grew compared to 2020, but was less than the volume from 2019. If you look at the data chart from the link in the article (https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/) you can see the trend is still down. The revenue per cd in 2019 = $13.28, 2020 = $15.29, 2021 = $12.54. Combined 2018/9 sales totaled 99.3M units sold vs combined 2020/1 78.2M units sold. There was a huge drop in 2020. Is it safe to assume that sales not done in 2020 were done in 2021?

uhtred 5y ago

it's often cheaper to buy a cd and rip to flac than to buy a hi-res download. Plus you also then have the cd to play on cd player!

dehrmann 5y ago
Only if your time is free.
- washadjeffmad 5y ago
  I'm ashamed to admit that I will never be compensated for the four minutes it took to rip the hour long CD that I will listen to for the next few decades of my life. Instead, I invoiced HN for the time it took me to browse this forum and post this comment, and I strongly urge HN to require registered users to include personal payment information so we can bill each other for our time spent reading and replying to each other. Life is a tax on my time, and I will not be cheated.
- uhtred 5y ago
  I do it in my free time
- mindslight 5y ago
  I don't understand how people can post comments like this as support for streaming. Not being able to watch/listen anything when Internet uplink or service is down. Low quality and artifacts due to congestion. Relearning menus when on-high decides to change the UI. Password resets and locked accounts. Suffering through ads. Waiting for device firmware to update. Having to buy a new device because your old one isn't supported. Dealing with HDCP issues. Having to buy a new display because your old one isn't supported. That seems like a lot more wasted time and frustration at inconvenient times, rather than having to do a bit of work on your own schedule to rip a CD or start a torrent. I'd say the main difference is that with the top-down solution you don't have to think too hard - just do whatever the top-down system instructs you do, no matter what it costs you.

deutschew 5y ago

I grew up with Napster, Morpheus, KazaA, eDonkey/eMule. never ever bought music. recently i bought a music CD for the first time. I really liked the artist. Was surprised to find: - a complete booklet of all track lyrics - some additional behind the scenes content - hidden tracks - no DRM, I can simply lend it to ppl. - if need be Windows Media Player will rip to mp3 - a good feeling from sunk cost and my willingness to repeat this There is a reason that CD/DVD sales in Japan are still going strong.

bitsoda 5y ago
You're probably looking for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30641467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30641467
- dang 5y ago
  Moved hither. Thanks!
  - deutschew 5y ago
    thanks haha!
momojo 5y ago
Wrong thread?

LiquidPolymer 5y ago

Cassettes are also ticking up in sales and major artists like Taylor Swift are releasing new material on cassette. Obviously this is a very niche market but I find it fascinating that physical formats are being appreciated again. I'm kind of a nut about this personally as I have reel to reel, cassette, DAT, minidisc, CD, and of course vinyl in my personal collection. A reel to reel machine is a heavy marvel of engineering and arguably sounds worse than many of the better compression formats. This giant machine with moving parts, required maintenance, and finicky loading is not everyone's cup of tea - but I love the quality of the machine and process by which it plays music. Locally we have a used CD, cassette, vinyl store that is always busy (Every Day Music - they actually have two very large retail locations.) I love the physical media aspect for all the reasons already mentioned by others in this thread. Nostalgia is also a prime ingredient. So hearing that these formats are finding a place in the market, however small, is good news and means more fun for me.

cogman10 5y ago
What I don't quiet understand is why we never went to flash for media distribution. SD cards are dirt cheap and can hold massive amounts of data. Seems weird that we can't just hand out 128MB SD cards with an album on it.
- mmahemoff 5y ago
  Bill Gates called it when interviewed about the upcoming Blu-Ray format in 2005. "Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. Everything's going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it's even unclear how much this one counts."
- clintonb 5y ago
  My guess is digital purchases became easier just before flash memory was cheap enough to use for albums. Also, distribution is much simpler, and the labels can get more profit due to decreased manufacturing costs.
  - 5y ago

daenz 5y ago

[x] Works on relatively low tech hardware [x] Doesn't require internet connection [x] Can't be removed from your possession for violating ToS [x] Can be easily backed up

Tenoke 5y ago
All of the above is true for Bandcamp except needing an internet connection initially but I don't imagine that's such a limiting factor. There's still CD sales going on there so the above doesn't explain it completely and I imagine the nostalgia, having a physical item, contrarianism etc. have a bigger hand in the resurgence.

TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago

I hope CD never dies. It's a lossless, DRM-free physical format. There's nothing like it.

adamredwoods 5y ago
Listening to cymbals is much better on a CD than streaming.
- mark-r 5y ago
  And even better on vinyl!
YaBomm 5y ago

spoonjim 5y ago

After several startups shut down and caused me to scramble to export my data and change my workflow I've decided to put much less of my life in things that other companies can tear away from me. I use Dropbox, iCloud, etc. that I expect to stay available and without big price increases, as well as things like Spotify where I make sure to not invest too much time in curating playlists in case Spotify's pricing gets raised to the point where I don't want to use it anymore. Perhaps others have done the same.

bob1029 5y ago

I am certain I have contributed to this statistic. I was sent off the deep end after Spotify removed one song in particular from my playlist that I really wanted to listen to on one occasion. We are only into the month of March, and I have already spent ~$500 YTD on physical CDs, BluRays and other multimedia formats. Last year I probably spent close to 3-4k on the same. The rate at which I have pirated content (which is otherwise difficult to source on physical media) is also up dramatically since this incident.

skydhash 5y ago
I was so hyped when Spotify added my country. But I then found that most of the artists I listen to (Reggae artists, CHVRCHES) was missing from the catalog. I keep it for a little time as it was cheap, but did not bother to renew when my card expired.

kart23 5y ago

i’ve been buying cds for a while, mostly just new albums of a few of my favorite artists. the only thing that worries me is that most new cars don’t have cd players anymore. I also bought some cassettes a few years ago that are pretty valuable now, but absolutely nowhere to play them since my old car was my only cassette player.

brewdad 5y ago
My car has a factory CD player still. Yay! It's located INSIDE the glove box. WTH?
- Kon-Peki 5y ago
  That's a seriously inconvenient location. Where do you keep your driving gloves?
MartinCron 5y ago
My older car has a 6 CD magazine, very fancy for the time. When my kid noticed the "eject" button on the dashboard, she thought that the car had ejector seats!

ghusto 5y ago

Ha! Coincides with me starting to buy CDs again, so I guess I'm not the rebel I thought I was. I was buying albums as FLAC, when I realised; "wait a minute, what the heck am I doing?! This is more expensive than buying a CD which I can rip myself to FLAC anyway". So I did _a lot_ of research on the best medium to buy music in for sound quality (surprise; it's not vinyl), and I'm rebuilding my collection. Listening to albums is fun again :)

eej71 5y ago
What tools do you find helpful in managing tags and missing album art work?
- djrogers 5y ago
  When ripping CDs myself with iTunes, I never found either to be a problem... Yeah, iTunes had other issues, but it's original functionality was 'Rip, Mix, Burn'.
- tehnub 5y ago
  I haven’t done a ton of ripping, but a fair amount, and I’ve found Music on macOS to be pretty decent.
- benoliver999 5y ago
  I use beets https://beets.io/ https://beets.io/ It's a bit nerdy but for large collections it's a godsend
  - ghusto 5y ago
    This is great, I don't know how I missed it! Is there any configuration I can use to tag only, and do no conversion or copying. In other words, I'm more interested in correcting tags than actually managing the library. Can't seem to find the correct configuration options :/
    - benoliver999 5y ago

xeromal 5y ago

Similarly related, I've been collecting UHD blu-rays for the past year and have been enjoying it greatly. Lawrence of Arabia is being released as a 4k scan later this year and I'm pumped! I think there are a few parts to physical media collection * No fear of the media getting "Cancelled" and you losing access to it * Quality is always consistent. 4k and high quality audio bit rates generally do ok when streaming but start artifacting when there are any hiccups in your connection. I have GB service and I Still have low quality moments on my streaming. * Collecting items scratches an itch I didn't know I had * With vynyl and CDs, listening to a whole album shows you songs that you wouldn't normally consider or search for. Spotify makes it easy to skip a song you may not like but I tend to try out new songs on my record player and sometimes I like new things * The artwork for blu-rays, vynyls, and CDs can be beautiful and make a nice addition to a shelf or library in your living room.

humaniania 5y ago
I don't understand 4K blu ray. It's 4x the resolution of HD but only has ~2x the storage capacity of blu ray. Isn't that limiting bitrate/quality?
- xeromal 5y ago
  UHD Blu-Rays can go up to 100GB in capacity and can be read at 144Mbits/second. I don't think it limits many movies, but my 4k Lord of the Rings copy has the movie split into multiple discs.
- deergomoo 5y ago
  Different codecs. Regular Blu-Rays are largely H.264 (though some of the original releases are MPEG-2 like DVDs); UHD is H.265 which is way more space efficient.
bgorman 5y ago
If you use YouTube and search for “LG Oled 4k” you will find fantastic looking streaming videos that look better than anything streaming from Netflix, HBO max, Disney plus, Apple TV etc… It is very frustrating that Blu Ray is the only way to get high quality Hollywood content. The technology is there for streaming

mthwl 5y ago

I wrote a bit recently about why I still collect music on CDs. Here are my 3 reasons, which echo a lot of the comments: 1. To Support the Artist, 2. To Own the Music, 3. To Collect Artifacts (which is fun) I also found a few recent attempts at creating new physical music formats, but most of them require Internet connectivity and are essentially cloud services that have physical access tokens :( I ended up just lamenting that we never got the Sony MiniDisc revolution that we all deserved. The post is here: https://www.matthewhowell.net/notes/2022/on-collecting-music/ https://www.matthewhowell.net/notes/2022/on-collecting-music...

realPubkey 5y ago
For me, collection things that you do not really need, is just a waste of scarce resources.
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  So you have no hobbies that are non-essential?
- nicky0 5y ago
  One could say that living at all is a waste of scarce resources.
  - Forgeties79 5y ago
    Honestly he’s just being edgelord trying to yuck other people’s yum.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- grumpyprole 5y ago
  Speak for yourself, but for me art in a physical form is something I need.
Forgeties79 5y ago
I like that you mention “collecting artifacts.“ I have a pretty extensive video game OST vinyl collection. The first thing I do when one comes in the mail is open it up, deep clean the record, drop it on the record player, and spin it. But while it’s playing, I actually have the audio routed through a recorder capturing it as 96kHz/24bit wav. I have so far archived every video game vinyl I have and I’ve slowly doing the rest of my vinyl collection. It’s been a really fun project, and like you said with “artifacts,“ I feel like I’ve got my own little museum of sorts going on. Plus it’s fun to cut them into sides (not tracks), compress into 48kHz wav, FLAC, and mp3, add the album art, and get them on my phone and home server. So I basically can take my vinyl anywhere I go! Is it the most practical exercise? Of course not. But it’s really fun in its own way. I just like archive diving a lot given my history background, so making my own archive scratches a similar itch I guess.

ozzythecat 5y ago

I stopped purchasing ebooks and am buying hardcover or paperback, even if it costs more. I want to physically own my purchases, not just have some entitlement to some file on a server.

WalterBright 5y ago
I'm not buying NFTs, either!

at_a_remove 5y ago

Compounded by my lateness to the smartphone world, I feel hopelessly out of touch, but I have finally decided to start ripping a lot of my fairly hefty CD collection in hopes of playing them in my car, but many things I once thought true have mutated over time: - Headphone jacks disappearing from phones - iPhones in general, it seems like a lot of work just to get some random file onto the damned thing - Head units don't recognize .m3u playlists (what?!) Overall, it seems the happy path is just to subscribe to some music service and like whatever it is they have on ("played at a reasonable volume," as the Pictures for Sad Children bit goes). However, I already have the radio for the "shut up and like what we feed you" option. We're swimming upstream a bit here, liking CDs.

charcircuit 5y ago
>Headphone jacks disappearing from phones For most phones it just got merged into the USB C port. It's the same thing, but with a different connector except USB C also supports digital audio output too instead of just analog.
- f1refly 5y ago
  That doesn't change the problem that I can't plug my headphones in anymore.

modzu 5y ago

i had to look up "CD"

vikingerik 5y ago

To be clear, this is an increase from calendar year 2020 to 2021. The 2020 baseline was artificially low with the pandemic. This isn't a trend, it's one skewed data point.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago
Yeah, it's almost certainly more likely that the CD sales market has hit a floor with a variable margin...
YaBomm 5y ago
vmception 5y ago
You're right, the trend is still down: 2018 - $696m 2019 - $631m 2021 - $584m

emkoemko 5y ago

is this inflation? they don't mention sales volume increase just profit?

durpleDrank 5y ago

When the RIAA went after Youtube-dl I realized I was digging my own grave supporting streaming sites. Used CDs, Bandcamp, Flac. Anything but streaming sites where the RIAA gets money.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Polycarbonate is the new vinyl. Let the dynamic range wars reignite!

mark-r 5y ago
One reason that vinyl is doing better than CDs is because of dynamic range (loudness) wars. Vinyl is being marketed to more discerning customers, so it's being mastered with MORE dynamic range. By rights the CD should sound better, but it doesn't.

Spooky23 5y ago

I still do CDs, iTunes and iTunes Match. I get all of the streaming benefits, etc on my phone, without having to deal with a shitty streaming service. iTunes Songs are DRM free. Plus, since I’m pretty firmly established in the Apple world, I have an easy escape path for when they finally fuck up the music app beyond my level of tolerance. Cost-wise, it’s about the same. I probably spend about $100 year on music most years.

pjmlp 5y ago

I am no fan of Spotify and similar services, I keep buying CDs and ripping them into MP3.

kleer001 5y ago

By about 20% if anyone's interested in the actual magnitude

dpcx 5y ago

Damn Millenials, ruining the digital music industry! /s

blt 5y ago

As a person who carried a Discman for quite a few years, I do not miss CDs. I can only imagine that these CD buyers are either listening exclusively at home, or immediately ripping to FLAC. I guess having the album art is nice, but if that's your main motivation why not go all the way and collect vinyl?

LiquidPolymer 5y ago
Would you like to meet my personal CD player collection? I'm heading to Mexico in a few days and I'm debating which of my players to bring. I have a modular bluetooth transmitter that works with all of them, but typically I'm just listening on my Sony studio headphones. I also make my own CD's complete with artwork and printing directly on the disc. I purchased Lorde's "Solar Power" (not available on CD) and instantly made printed disc with jewel box art. I think this tremendously fun. I recognize this will all go away soon, but some of us are doing the opposite of what you suggest.
- blt 5y ago
  Yes I should not be dismissive. It does sound really fun. I guess what I really meant to say is: it's interesting how everyone has their own perceived fun-vs-convenience tradeoff for old technology. To me, even though curating/maintaining the collection of players and CDs sounds fun, dealing with scratched CDs and a skipping discman does not seem worth it. But I also like to buy hard copies of math/CS textbooks even though they are ridiculously expensive, heavy, and don't have ctrl+F.

paulsmith 5y ago

I honestly thought from the headline before clicking through that this was referring to the other CDs, "certificates of deposit", which, I imagine, may be more in-demand due to rising interest rates.

Kapura 5y ago

Anecdotally, I've purchased several new CDs over the past 12 months because I bought a used car that has a CD player and I CBA to set it up to work with my phone. Given that the used car market is undergoing an unprecedented boom, I wonder if some % of CD sales come from similarly motivated new used cars owners.

Kaibeezy 5y ago
I recently bought a “vintage” 2003 car, removed the aftermarket touchscreen stereo, and reinstalled the OEM tape deck. I’m playing my old cassettes, stuff I haven’t listened to since the 80s. Adrian Belew, Desire Caught by the Tail. Brand X, Product. UK, Danger Money. Yeah, not exactly hi-fi, but not unlistenably wobbly. Car has a stick and wicked turbo lag too. Smiles for miles.

siskiyou 5y ago

I feel very fortunate to have grown up before streaming (ie, music you can't own). I collected about 800 CDs that I still have and listen to, and about 1200 LPs mostly given to me by people getting out of vinyl. I love the big artwork of LPs, and the ritual of cleaning and playing them, many of which are unavailable online. I ripped most of the CDs so I can avoid losses due to damage and listen on any device. I pay zero dollars to streaming services, nothing paid to Apple, and nothing supporting Joe Rogan. The down side to this approach is mostly just space for storage.

rmah 5y ago
I sorta feel the same way as you as I spent a lot of money on music when I was younger. But, that said, those 800 CD's and 1200 LP's cost you around 800 * $15 + 1200 * $10 = $24000. That's enough to pay for 200 years of streaming at $10/mo. And with streaming, you'll get 1000x more content to choose from. So I kind understand the appeal for the younger crowd.
- zbuf 5y ago
  The counterpoint.. The day you cancel your subscription to a streaming service and you have absolutely nothing to show for it. Without the physical media, I lose the journal of what I enjoyed, why and when (as well as the guarantee I can listen to it)
  - mark-r 5y ago
    I had the same experience when all the alternative rock radio stations shut down in our area, after their heyday had passed. All the music I had been listening to for years was suddenly no longer on the air, and unless I remembered something specific I had no way to track it down.
- siskiyou 5y ago
  I understand too. However I didn't pay for a huge portion of those LPs, because people gave them away by the box load, including a long time subscriber of the Capitol Records club who didn't play them. I lucked out and I'd rather keep playing them than subscribe to anything.

major505 5y ago

I still buys cds. I stop to buying and for a while brougth albuns in Itunes. After being tired of spotify I ended up trying to download my old albuns, and find I cant donwload them anymore. So I just got pissed and stated bying cds and ripping them. I don't care much about the phisical copy as long as it is preserved so I been buying digipaks.

mackrevinack 5y ago
any time i can't find a movie online i just buy the dvd, make a digital copy then throw it up on ebay. i have no use for the plastic bits either

pavlov 5y ago

After a decade of streaming movies, I started buying Blu-Rays again last year. The last straw was trying to watch Kurosawa's "Ran". The supposedly 4K remaster available on Amazon Prime Video is criminally badly encoded. During the raid on the castle, you literally can't see the smoke because macroblocks are popping so hard on every keyframe. The Blu-Ray is pristine and nobody can take it away from me. With streaming services, you pay for movies but you never know what quality they actually deliver on a given day. These are public corporations trying to deliver shareholder returns in what has become an environment of sinking stock prices, so if they can save on bandwidth costs by making the movie look a bit worse, they'll probably do it at some point -- and then again next quarter.

deergomoo 5y ago
> The supposedly 4K remaster available on Amazon Prime Video is criminally badly encoded. During the raid on the castle, you literally can't see the smoke because macroblocks are popping so hard on every keyframe This is such a widespread issue, especially in dark scenes. Netflix is bad, but Prime Video seems by far the worst. I watched Mr Robot through a few months ago, and at times it was like watching 2009-era YouTube, despite being 4K on paper. I'll take a 1080p Blu-Ray over a 4K stream any day. UHD Blu-Ray is nice, but it's a shame it's still 1.5-2x the price of regular BD. Then again you can still buy DVDs for some reason, so I guess high quality physical media is starting to be considered an enthusiast option..
- srvmshr 5y ago
  This is just my observation & I don't know if others might have noticed: Netflix streams sharp pixels towards the center of the screen, and the backgrounds are always bit worse due to the bandwidth constraints perhaps. It perhaps works on the assumption that our focus is on the foreground mostly, and not the background. This is all good until the scenes are darker shades and you could notice the choppiness due to the network constraints.
  - kasabali 5y ago
    That's one of the "psychovisual enhancements" employed by modern codecs. Here [0] is a nice explanation I could among in top search results: "... x264’s psychovisual enhancements do a pretty good job of keeping detail where you’d notice it (the face), at the expense of the stuff you normally wouldn’t notice while watching (like those background areas)." [0] https://mattgadient.com/comparing-x264-rf-settings-in-handbrake-examples/ https://mattgadient.com/comparing-x264-rf-settings-in-handbr...

deergomoo 5y ago

While I'm not particularly interested in going back to physical media for music, I have mulled over the idea of dropping streaming and going back to buying albums. Apart from the fact that using Apple Music is an absolutely dreadful experience, anecdotally I feel like I enjoy music less when I listen in the ways that streaming tries to funnel you into, i.e. playlists and radio-like experiences. The music becomes less of an active engagement and more just background noise. The sticking points I have are that the discovery aspect is huge—despite my reservations about playlists, I've discovered a lot of bands that I really love from them just popping up randomly. But also, the cost difference is a hard sell; I recognise that that's largely a function of streaming pricing being pretty much unsustainable for all but the biggest artists, but when for the same price as one album per month I can access a huge portion of all the music in the world it's difficult to say no to that.

analog31 5y ago

My family buys CDs. We're into a lot of less popular genres such as chamber, folk, jazz, etc. We attend performances, workshops, and so forth. I've asked the musicians quite bluntly: How should I buy your stuff, so you can make the most money from it? The answer is: Buy the CD right here. Most of the performers sell CD's at their performances -- their own and ones from their friends. We often go home with a couple of CDs. I rip them onto a file server. Digital distribution sounded like a great idea when it was introduced, and it's been great for the "industry," but I don't think that small time musicians have figured out a way to monetize it.