CD Availability Nearing It's End And The Consequences

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16 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Just my opinion, mind you. But I don’t see CDs going away. Now, they might disappear from the pop music scene, especially that section of the pop music market aimed at youngsters. But for more “serious” and/or “mature” music genres, unless some more convenient firmware format comes along, I just don’t see the little silver disc going away anytime soon. 

 

Agreed. CD is simply a distribution format, and there's nothing preventing anyone from using it. It is no better than any other digital distribution format. Whatever files are placed on CD are downloadable as well. If junk is put up for download, the same junk can be put on CD.

 

Groups can cut their own CDs and sell them at concerts. Similarly they can release their own albums on Bandcamp which can be downloaded as FLAC. For example, this is a group of young artists (support if you enjoy!)

 

https://bloodchill.bandcamp.com/album/bloom

 

The web is a publishing platform that allows people to self publish. That promotes diversity!

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1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

You have zero information ...  and you’re throwing in the whole made up issue of generational degradation with digital data. 

 

Hey stop dissing on my kids ... I've tried to limit cell phone and Netflix use but they are in isolation ...

 

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P.S. I sure hope that decimal point separating dollars from cents on my bank statement disappears one of these days due to all the generations of data used to produce the statement. 

 

That's called inflation  

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Sigh ... "CD" downloads have a long life ahead of them but I am downloading HD on Qobuz ... SACD unfortunately the state of DSF downloads is not so robust

 

Speaking of that Qobuz has a promotion going on where all the profits from download purchases are passed on to the artist -- so buy now!

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1 hour ago, Vangelis said:

The point I was trying to make earlier was that it is painful to spend $20 plus on a Hi-Rez download just to find out your 16/44 CD sounds better. Of course this is not always the case, but happens far too frequently. I’ve purchased too many expensive downloads that ended up sounding like somebody just threw a tarp over my speakers. 

 

This is the brilliance of Qobuz ... you can stream high res, and if you like it, purchase and download.

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3 hours ago, John Dyson said:

 

I guess I dont count much as a customer anyway - my concept of Hi Fi died in the late 1980's when I finally bought my last CD expecting that it would be 'audiophile quality'.  Now, I generally know that most pop CDs that I can purchase are NOT 'audiophile quality', and that includes pop *high res* downloads that I have purchased.

So which medium do you purchase? LPs?SACD? I hope not “none” because you are missing a lot of great music. 

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1 hour ago, Albrecht said:

The old model, - (when I was playing), - was that the live shows/tours supported record/CD sales and lost tons of money. 

Now, - "groups" artists have to make money off of touring because they loose so much money by selling downloads.

For sure! Differentiate between downloads though and streaming — streaming does rip off artists for sure — if I like something I buy it and assume the artist is getting a reasonable cut — just bought a bunch of stuff on Qobuz today because they are claiming to give all profits to artists as a promotion. I hope it’s true. 
 

Id rather pay $$$ to an artist for live concert than scalper so understand the big rise in tix

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2 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I think it's more of the labels ripping off artists, and consumers deciding they don't want to purchase all 12 tracks on a physical CD. 

 

Labels are making big money from streaming. 

Yep, it’s whomever created that contract that pays the artist $0.0 per streamed track.  Nowadays you can play the entire album on streaming services so no incentive to buy. Yeah but an album I bought on Qobuz in 2015 is no longer available there so it’s good for me that I have a NAS 😊