Continuing with CDs?

I still buy cds and vinyl. I will keep them all unless I needed the money.
I barely download now, but like always, I still try to buy what I downloaded as long as I liked it.

im continuing! cd's are beautiful

1. No, never.
2. I will keep them as the art objects/media that they are.
3. Until I can buy whole albums from iTunes or Amazon as .wav files, I will continue buying essential CDs.

A lot of good reasons to hang onto CDs in this thread. I still enjoy cases and liner notes and having a good thing around to throw my disposable income at. In a lot of ways, I also find them easier to store and maintain than digital music, where you need at least two forms of backup and need to keep an organized file/folder structure together if you're going to find stuff easily. Finally, I still can hear the difference between reasonably good-quality CDs and mp3s, and with formats, storage methods, etc. changing frequently keeping CDs around seems like less of a long-term headache.

I'll still buy a lot, taking advantage of the lower cost and because I like having the little cardboard boxes from Caiman in the post to look forward to after returning from work.

I keep the price stickers on my CDs, and it amazes me just how much I was paying for music in the 90s. £15 - £16 for some CDs was not unusual.

ridic

its like 12 bux tops for me now. unless its brand new and too good

I'll continue keeping 100s of cds in a sock drawer which I occasionally pull out for a car ride. I wont sell them. But I oughta clean them all. I hate when a cd skips and I hate how I lost some of my cds even though I dont listen to any of my cds much. But I did lose Roxy Music - The Early Years and Tangerine Dream - Rubycon. I broke Thrakattak. And I can't remember what else at the moment. Kinda sucks. Kinda not.

Those of you who sell off your CDs, someday your hard drive is gonna fail. If you're lucky, you'll have it backed up to another drive. But then that one could fail as you're trying to dump it to your new hard drive. Then I will point and laugh.

i hate that too, captain -- i'm actually making a list of CD's i have that are too scratched up/missing. i replace a few ever year

it's like i just realized how to properly take care of a cd.

Fastnbulbous accurate enough, which is why the CDs I sell back are the ones I never listen to, or have only heard once and thought, "Nice" and never went back to at all. Ergo, why keep 'em around?

I moved into a new place two months ago and never bothered taking my CDs out of their boxes. I have a few lying around that I've bought recently, but there's no real reason for me to have them out, since the majority are on my iTunes/iPod, anyway.

Back when I started to download albums, I told myself that if I really liked something I downloaded I'd buy it on CD. But then it just seemed silly to go to the trouble of buying it, only to put it on a shelf and forget about it as soon as it was out of its shrink wrap.

Now the albums I buy are the ones I simply can't find online. I don't use p2p, but I can find most major new indie releases on a couple of choice websites or through friends. So what I buy ends up being not necessarily indicative of what I'm really excited about. A lot of times this amounts to used CDs I stumble across and take a chance on.

Those of you who sell off your CDs, someday your hard drive is gonna fail.
This is exactly right — CDs have become nothing more than backup.

http://www.sevenoaksart.co.uk/images/record1.gif

1) nah, I'm the kind of person who saves everything
2) ???
3) I never exclusively bought CDs, it was always a mix of vinyl, cassette (back in the day), or mp3 formats. I see no reason why this will change for me in the near future.

1) too lazy really - and they're not worth that much anyway
2) never completely stopped buying vinyl, so it's not even an accurate record
3) I''ve bought maybe 6 cds this year and maybe 300 LPs (and some cassettes, second hand for the car)

Also, I may want to rip at a higher bitrate later once hd prices come down.

yeah i thought about that. A couple weeks ago I embarked on digitizing my collection, starting with albums I didn't like that much; I ripped ~ 30 cds @ 320 which is fine for those but my main collection I'm probably gonna want to do in flac or whatever for posterity but i haven't done the math on what i'll need for space. I got 2 500G drives on black friday and I was gonna send one back but maybe I won't. than again i've been latched to rhapsody pretty hard lately and soon even the mp3s might be ancillary to how i'm listening to music. so much up in the air.

soon as I'm satisfied with backing up, and keeping the habit, I'm selling all my CDs. I need the space and I need the money.

i've sold all of my cds. still buy vinyl, which i also sell sometimes. while it's impractical, it retains its value better (and escalates in value far more often) and is more 'fun'. sue me

I keep the price stickers on my CDs, and it amazes me just how much I was paying for music in the 90s. £15 - £16 for some CDs was not unusual.

We still quite frequently pay $25-$35 AUD for some CD albums in this country. And they wonder why ppl use torrents.

resolved, did you just rip your CDs into FLAC format and keep them on your hard drive or something?

i ripped the ones that deserved it to FLAC + mp3 (for ipod), most of them just to variable rate mp3. and then a lot i just sold without bothering.

Will you bother trying now to sell off your existing CDs?

maybe. next year I might be compelled to "monetize" my vinyl collection.

Will you leave them as a record of 80s/90s to early 00s buying?

hate to say it but after sitting there unplayed for awhile they just take up space.

Will you continuing buying CDs selectively alongside downloading, for reasons of completing certain artists or genres?

Barely. I stream music on my computer, listen to old CDs less & less often. CDs/itunes I buy as gifts.

First off, CDs are still the primary way i listen to music, and I don't download very often.

1.) I'll hang onto my CDs for a long, long time, until they rot away (none of them have). I stopped selling back CDs a few years ago, because I tend to regret it later on. I used to regularly purge my collection of stuff if I hadn't played it in awhile, but there are too many CDs that I'm kicking myself now for selling then.

Plus, it always killed me when I tried to sell stuff that I knew was of really high musical quality or that someone would love to have, and the clerk would offer a pathetic couple of bucks (usually less!) for it. Most used stores never offer very much for CDs, and now when I think about it, the best offer I've ever received (about $3 for a CD, not common at all) is just not worth it to me. I'd rather hang on to the album, sorry, then take your 50 cents.

2. I'll keep my CDs as much more than just a record of this particular time, as they have fucking music on them!!

3. I'll probably buy CDs for quite a while. As others have mentioned, there are so many good finds on used CDs right now, it's great. So much stuff that I would never expect to find in used shops. It's only going to get better over the next few years, too.

Newbury Comics usually gives about $3 per CD.

1) No - mainly because CDs are not worth much now, particularly when trying to trade them in at a record store.

2) Most of the CDs I listen to regularly have been ripped now, but I'll keep them as a backup and also because of the possibilty of ripping in higher quality formats/higher bitrates later.

3) I still buy CDs sometimes but nowhere near as often as I used to - I've gone from half a dozen a week in 2001 to a couple a month now. But if I see a box set at a cheap price I'll probably buy it.

Those of you who sell off your CDs, someday your hard drive is gonna fail. If you're lucky, you'll have it backed up to another drive. But then that one could fail as you're trying to dump it to your new hard drive. Then I will point and laugh.

I've never had a hard drive die on me ever before. Meanwhile in that time a lot of my records and CDs got damaged in a flood. Life's funneee.

I wonder how homeowner's insurance would cover a hard drive filled with burned FLACs. Are you just screwed or could you reasonably claim the full value of replacing them on iTunes or whatever?

i sold them on amazon btw, the run of the mill ones at least. you get a lot more money that way if you're prepared to go to spend an hour going packing/going to the post office every few days.

x-post
but when your hd dies it's all gone. and the probability is much higher than all your cds being destroyed at once...

word. i'm still reeling from getting over £30 for a tatty Sasha & Digweed CD. xp

what is with you hd-failure doomsayers? you have to fuck a hd up pretty bad before the data on it is completely irretrievable.

Oh I'm just curious from an insurance standpoint. Like what if someone broke into your house and stole your HD. Can you only claim the HD or could you reasonably claim the cost of replacing the MP3s (I just talked to my boss-a former underwriter--and he's gonna find out for me)?

once i had a hd which seemed perfectly ok. but suddenly it crashed. it had been formatted a couple of megabytes too high. when i reached the limit it was all over.

presumably it might differ according to the original source of the mp3s. like if you've bought them from digital sources in the first place you'll have the receipts etc to demonstrate this. if you've just ripped your cd collection i assume you'd be shit out of luck.

The downloading thread is bad for music. People need to see an entire album as an artistic statement, and not just pick single tracks.

The only positive thing is that people are at least less fixated on singles, able to see that there may be good tracks that aren't hit singles too. But generally, downloading is bad bad bad bad!

BAD!

Bad?

bad bad bad bad

On the insurance thing, pretty sure the only things that would be insurable would be receipted downloads, as you don't actually legally "own" the ripped mp3s if the CD is gone, thus they have no insurable value.

xpost

People need to see an entire hamburger as an artistic statement, and not just pick off the pickles or eat the grilled onions.

http://www.baronbob.com/hamburgercdholder.jpg

Snacking is destroying the meal preparation industry

home cooking is destroying the fast food industry.

The hamburger analogy isn't so hot. I prefer to think of an album as very much like a box of chocolates.

yes, yes, and yes i guess. the last few times I went to sell stuff back i didn't get a whole lot, and with 800+ CDs still it's kind of a pain to drag them up to amoeba and then back home. BUT, I did sell more stuff recently, and got more money for them than I'd expected; might have just been because I had a new buyer. I also sold off a ton of rare stuff on ebay because this stuff is never going to be worth more than it is right now. But there are things I still can't see myself getting rid of, and I'll still buy CDs from time to time, of artists I like, who pay attention to packaging

Geir you assume no one downloads whole albums, then? Oh wait why am I even arguing.

Mark Clemente OTM on all counts. Same for me.

you have to fuck a hd up pretty bad before the data on it is completely irretrievable.

That's not entirely true. I've had an external (Maxtor) drive fail that wasn't fucked with at all, and internal (IBM) drive that, well, it was involved with Microsoft products, so I guess was doomed to fail. (Back on a Mac, thnx Bill.)

Secondly, have you ever paid to have your data retrieved? I did, once, for 40GB worth of data - and paid about $1K/10GB (aka $4K). Now I've got two external drives, backing up my backup of my backup. But I would guess that, for example, $4K to retrieve one's digital library would, by cost alone, define "irretrievable."

Youch. I had no idea. That's crazy expensive.

when you say fail do you mean it was completely beyond repair/no way to salvage at all?

Yup, did that and it was very helpful when I finally added everything back in 2016 or so.

Hmm, I've only ever lurked on Discogs to check out prices of stuff for sale. Will investigate - thx!

i just bought a CD/DVD burner for $30 (to produce my own small release)! the low cost blew my mind.

Is there such a thing as a scanner one can buy for the home, which would read the bar codes on CDs and transfer the info onto a database on your computer? I dreamt last night that I had one, and was making some serious headway into my collection.

― henry s, Thursday, October 30, 2025 5:28 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I bought one several years ago. I used it for a while, but ultimately decided it didn't really save me much time when logging discs into inventory or my collection vs just looking at label catalog numbers and matrix numbers / SID codes. Lots of false positives (ie scanner often pulls up albums by entirely different artists), and they don't work on old BMG / Columbia House record club pressings. You also don't realize how many CDs you own that don't have barcodes until you undertake this sort of job. I'd say if you can find one for under $25 or so, give it a try, but mine just sits in my closet. Maybe they've improved since I got mine.

Thanks! Yeah, I figured that obsolete/inaccurate/absent bar codes would be a headache. Worth looking into, though.

Apologies if this has been discussed but is there a good way to clean up old scuffed up cds - no deep scratches?my copy of Superunknown is skipping at all my favorite parts

dude, spend 5 bucks + shipping on yourself, you deserve a treat

https://www.discogs.com/release/409348-Soundgarden-Superunknown

you can try toothpaste, or if you wanna spend a little, car headlight polisher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XL_rjRV3JU

i tried toothpaste on a dvd and got nowhere with it. i think it has to be the slightly abrasive kind though.

surely superunknown on cd is bobbins via the usual suspects whereever you are based !?
worth every penny.
if not, then holla, happy to help etc.

Not sure if people still have CD burners, but if you do, you could try ripping it and burning a copy. The computer might be able to read it with multiple tries.

you’re going to spend as much on time+toothpaste or buying polisher as you would just buying a used copy, I would guess. unless you’re bored and just kind of messing around with it while listening to your other albums

We all know that "just buy a new CD" is going to work (and probably the right answer).
But how are we, collectively, going to find out about the car headlight polisher solution if you keep talking him out of it?

I bought car headlight polisher for my actual car headlights once. It didn't work very well, imo.

i assume your headlights were yellow and faded - for that you need a healight restoration kit like the one 3m sells and ideally a power drill. meguiars plastx won’t cut it (literally)

That sounds accurate.

The 1975 have just confirmed why you should always buy the cd option whenever possible.

??

see the recent thread revival re the 1975.

The polisher made superunknown sound like the 1975 fuck you guys

I actually am in a region where I can’t find a new or used copy of it but yeah a new copy is due next time I am

lol xp

The polisher made superunknown sound like the 1975 fuck you guys

― Heez,

genuine lol.

There are CD resurfacing machines, but I think they’re pretty $. The only person I’ve own who had one was a dealer.

^ I love the 'drug' aspect of this statement.

I've tried diy disc polishing - made it worse. Sent it off to an eBay disc polishing/refurb service (about £5 I think) and it came back playing perfectly.

Was listening to my Klim discman thing on the train yesterday and a guy, who was probably about 20, said ‘oh, that’s so cool - I’ve seen pictures of CD players before but never actually seen one in real life’.

💀

On that note, does anyone have recommendations for ~good~ portable CD players? I gave up after all the early-00s ones I got on ebay kept dying. The new ones I see are all super cheap.

Never heard of klim but will check them out. Having a rechargeable battery would be excellent

IME the 80s/90s discmen are built like tanks but they don't have good skip protection and aren't as good at reading scratched up discs as the 00s ones

some of the new ones out of the Chinese retro audio market seem pretty good

I bought a duplicate of my last Sony player a number of years ago (rip the original, dropped it too many times during college) and it still works pretty well and has optical out. You know, in case you want to connect it to a system that has that, or you really want to dub some CDs to minidisc. That'd be the Sony D-EJ715. I wouldn't recommend buying a used or deadstock player overall, though. Probability is too high that they'll break or be on their last legs.

I like the Klim Nomad so much I got a second one. Rechargeable battery and the ability to play via Bluetooth is great. Battery life isn’t super long and I think if you’re a proper audiophile you might have concerns about ASP compression, or w/e, but it’s perfect for my needs.

I bought many duplicates of the ca 2003 sony discman I ~loved~ but the buttons stopped working. I’m sure someone could fix that, but probably not for less than what it’s worth. So then I bought a classic tank discman, and it stopped working too.

After some research, I think I’ll splure for the FiiO dm13, which seems to be the best audiophile-leaning option. I mean, if I’m going to playing CDs at all might as well get something that sounds good.

Also, I bought 10 CDs this week (thanks bandcamp) so that’s where I’m at, despite trying to drastically cut down new purchases