Continuing with CDs?

I've seen apartments with an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling vinyl (management made him move to a ground floor apartment when they saw it for the first time), no reason you couldn't build a custom shelf that would hold about 8,000 CDs along one long wall

There are a variety of releases and box sets on Ace and Cherry Red out of the UK I regularly get without fail (neither label offers a Bandcamp option and so I'd prefer to have the physical version), but it's a small amount overall. There are a couple of bands where I'm looking to get as complete runs on CD as I can, or if I already did to get better versions of same -- ended up with pretty much the entire Coil discography on CD (as official as it will get, I guess) and given some of the older issues of Spacemen 3 on CD I'm upgrading bit by bit there. For things like the Cure/Depeche/Siouxsie/Pet Shop Boys reissue series I got everything, and obviously in the case of the former I'm still waiting on a couple more there, along with the putative Machina box by the Smashing Pumpkins. But a lot of what I was especially interested of a time -- limited edition CDRs -- has essentially disappeared as the historical moment has passed and such efforts shift to Bandcamp or other digital options. It's all careful maintenance for me at this point and I still only have the one CD rack remaining, which is where I want it to be, though some box set spillover is kept elsewhere.

along with the putative Machina box by the Smashing Pumpkins

Fingers crossed, sooner rather than later. Of course I would be willing to run with the completely unsubstantiated rumor that this is Ned's subtle way of announcing Billy drafted him to write the liner notes.

Ha, no. And as it stands if he ever somehow reached out my response would be "Yeah how about you completely disavow Alex Jones down to the molecule and then I'll think about it."

<3

Fair!

Well, speak of the devil.

https://www.nme.com/news/music/the-smashing-pumpkins-machina-ii-rework-is-finished-and-will-have-at-least-80-songs-says-billy-corgan-2867160

this is not the first time this has happened.
i swear its like beetlejuice/candyman with ILM and him.

I've seen apartments with an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling vinyl (management made him move to a ground floor apartment when they saw it for the first time), no reason you couldn't build a custom shelf that would hold about 8,000 CDs along one long wall

― fbclid=fhAZ3l (f. hazel), Thursday, January 28, 2021 6:03 PM (two hours ago)

I'd love to do that, if I had a free wall, or especially if I had a corridor... But the other main reason besides space constraints I don't think I'd ever do that is my wife doesn't find wall-o'-CDs nearly as exciting a decor idea as I do ; )

the main reason I want a single shelf that holds all of them is that it looks so much nicer than having everything else in the house filled to the brim with CDs!

agreed, I have mine all in a central location but spread over 4 differently-sized shelves and 8 of those small wooden holders.

I don't think I'd ever do that is my wife doesn't find wall-o'-CDs nearly as exciting a decor idea as I do ; )

hence why i never let my wife go into the attic here.
was my secret stash.

I just want to consolidate everything again. I need to purge and reorganize in a big way. One might think the pandemic would have been a good time to embark on this but, uh, we all know how well good intentions work.

I ordered new shelving so I could stop quarantining amongst piles of books and other stuff, and then the company was like "thanks for your order! it will ship in... twelve weeks"

I've cleared 2000 easy, but it's unlikely I'll ever get past 3000 albums, let alone CD's. I'm at a point where I'm selling off closer and closer to the same level I'm buying, which is probably good. I don't want to sit on albums that I'll barely enjoy and rarely hear, so I try to sell those off to someone who'll probably make better use of them.

yeah it's much easier to cut stuff loose and have fun curating a collection when you know 99% of it will be easy to hear online if the mood strikes you, in the 90s it was bit different as without the CD in hand chances are you had no way to listen to it again.

A friend of mine had a super cool system, it looked like an old wooden library card catalog like below, but more horizontal than vertical. He discarded all the jewel boxes and had the discs and art in sleeves. I may go this route at some point.

https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-ofrvbbu9ve/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/591/2023/cd456b__66228.1532050898.jpg?c=2?imbypass=on

yeah it's much easier to cut stuff loose and have fun curating a collection when you know 99% of it will be easy to hear online if the mood strikes you, in the 90s it was bit different as without the CD in hand chances are you had no way to listen to it again.

Exactly. Robert Christgau in his old CG columns often mention his "reference" shelves, which makes sense if you're a music writer/critic in the '80s and you need stuff you don't necessarily like, but nowadays, it doesn't make sense to take up valuable space that way.

I mean, I still collect CDs because I still have this reservation about throwing my lot entirely in with streaming services and relying on everything to be "easy to hear online" forever. Music is not TV/film to be sure, but I think we're already starting to see the drawbacks and disadvantages over there:

- Obviously a big one is the endless churn of shows/films between various streaming services, meaning we're likely stuck in this ceaseless cycle of chasing content across services as contracts get modified, catalogs get purchased and streaming services shut down. It seems (knock wood) that things have settling down on the music streaming sites, but after watching the Neil Young and Taylor Swift catalogs come and go, it isn't hard to see a similar future for music (particularly if artist specific services like Young's Archives prove at all successful over time)
- Edited content. We've already seen movies and films getting edited to fit our new paradigm, mostly for the good in removing straight up racists material (but again, that triggers a broader discussion about what is kept for a historical record) but also minor things like the guns edited out of E.T. We saw Kanye tweaking (iirc) Life of Pablo several times once that started to get streamed, so the first uploaded version is gone, minus some folks that maybe saved a local version early. It also isn't hard to imagine some artist some day wanting to George Lucas old bits of their catalog and, for better or worse, those becoming the only versions on streaming sites.

I've never considered myself a "film collector", so I've largely made peace with streaming movies and gave up on clogging my shelves with DVDs and BluRays, minus 3 or 4 a year that I want to keep around, or things like my Herzog box. I'm just not there with music yet and I'm not ready to place my faith in a bunch of corporations in keeping the music important to me easily available.

tl;dr - There's just little about the current streaming paradigm that makes me feel comfortable that all the music I care about is going to be easily available online five years from now, much less twenty.

I would love it if someone would buy me this would be so great to be able to digitize everything but not have to deal w/a laptop

https://www.bluesound.com/products/vault/

nice though those things look, i can think of about a dozen cds on my collection where an automated process just wouldn't work. looking at you, Klaus Schulze.

lol plz clarify

his la vie electronique CDs split long tracks into chapters so you just get abrupt edits. ditto the dark side of the moog cds. one of the Mary chain rhino boxes had incorrect index marks on it. floodlands fades two tracks together and the track mark is such that neither sounds good played individually. first pale saints lp also. and also every single mix cd (which i normally do as a single track).

my ideal storage would be cupboards along an entire wall, deep enough for CDs, lps, books, comics, basically all the media that clutters my life, and seemless doors.

ah, index issues, that makes sense, ty

I would love it if someone would buy me this would be so great to be able to digitize everything but not have to deal w/a laptop

https://www.bluesound.com/products/vault/

it might be the initial ripping he wants to avoid - those devices automate that

i did mine at work, a handful a day, swapping them, fixing metadata during breaks. took about 6 months, plus weekends on top of the 1000 or so I'd already done. problem now is, are there any i didn't do and how do i find out without going through them all again.

(Hidden tracks!)

it might be the initial ripping he wants to avoid - those devices automate that

I rip everything with nerdily exacting metadata and file tree structure, store it on a NAS, and also back up to two external SSDs, and also keep most of the collection on a 1TB micro SD in my LG V50 phone... I hate Spotify et al on an ethical level, but I don't actually pull out the CDs really ever...

If I do a big Dusty Groove order or (in the pre-COVID days, a big haul at a shop), it can be a bit tedious to spend several evenings ripping everything. But if you just sort of do it as you acquire CDs, keeping a digital library isn't that much hassle. But if I had the whole collection needing to be digitized... I guess I never would do it. (Still have a couple thousand early CDs that I only have in like V-6 low VBR, because HDD space was much more precious back then...)

yeah ripping is easy, the metadata is what takes work and there's just no way around it... no single CD information database isn't full of errors and other things that will annoy you

I mostly want it because it can just be a stereo component

I really miss Google Music but tuomas that sounds like a good solution, any idea if cloudplayer works with Chromecast?

guess y’all are... not... continuing with cds
― brimstead, Wednesday, January 27, 2021 8:55 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I'm sorry! I should've mentioned that I'm a 30-40 CD buyer a year, but I'm hoping to back up these purchases digitally, with a program that is conducive to android products (as a former Itunes slave).

I just bought a few CDs at the local hoard-o-rama, first CDs in many a year. I love vinyl, but CDs are cheap as borscht & sound great for the most part.

Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
Inbreds - Kombinator
some Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci album

These were all CD-era releases, which feels more comfortable than buying, say, an Equals or Zombies CD because I can’t find the vinyl at a reasonable price.

I really miss Google Music but tuomas that sounds like a good solution, any idea if cloudplayer works with Chromecast?

That sounds like a great solution. I too miss Google Play Music.

All that said, I've got two new laptops and neither have CD/DVD drives. I'm nae going back down the route of external drives.

I still get CDs whenever they are an option and this thread just makes me all the more reluctant to go digital. It just sounds like a bigger headache than space issues if you do actually have room for a few thousand CDs.

I still get CDs whenever they are an option and this thread just makes me all the more reluctant to go digital. It just sounds like a bigger headache than space issues if you do actually have room for a few thousand CDs.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, January 29, 2021 6:11 PM

Why not both? Once you get the habit of quickly fixing metadata to your liking, it's not such a laborious process.

While I've stuck with CDs for 28 years, I've been digitizing for at least half of that. I was one of those weirdos with daisy-chained CD changers--pretty sure I had a 200 and a 300-disc player. I first got an mp3 CD player in 1999 or 2000 or so, and a 100GB mp3 player (that you stuck a laptop HDD into) in 2004. And I have to admit, having my collection at instantaneous reach--whether randomized, making playlists, or picking a few albums to shuffle--had a profound positive effect on my listening. I think it made me much more sensitive to connections between different music, made me far less focused on individual artists and more interested in movements, times, places, common threads, and confluence between them. The ritual of pulling one album out and listening front to back--still important (though less ritualized) to me, but I really appreciate the more holistic perspective digitizing my CDs has allowed...

do you folks just sell back your CDs after you rip them or what?

lol that sounded snipey, sorry <3

For me, I keep all the CDs (hence continuing with CDs), rational or not. They're like... the archive, the library. But the digital library is what I use, day-to-day.

that's illegal, brimstead. just as a point of interest.

fixing metadata to your liking

― Soundslike, Friday, January 29, 2021 6:33 PM (one hour ago)

That just sounds stressful, I don't want to know about metadata, I don't want to spend time ripping CDs. I have about 10 or 12 digital albums and I have to remind myself I own them, which is a shame because they're great albums but I'd prefer to have them on CD.

You know what's crazy is that I have a decent-sized stack of still-shrinkwrapped CDs because I find it easier/faster to Slsk them rather than rip the CDs. I think the oldest one still unopened is the second Grinderman album, bought on release. I still like to have the physical product and in theory I'd prefer to be listening to the CDs, but the reality of my life right now is that my young kids have mostly taken oven my former listening area and 95% of my listening is through the Sonos speakers that have gradually been spreading throughout the house. I figure in 15 years or so I'll have time check out those liner notes and photos.

(I just looked up the release date of Grinderman II after writing that, I think it's not coincidental that it came out about three weeks after my firstborn.)

having my collection at instantaneous reach--whether randomized, making playlists, or picking a few albums to shuffle--had a profound positive effect on my listening. I think it made me much more sensitive to connections between different music, made me far less focused on individual artists and more interested in movements, times, places, common threads, and confluence between them. The ritual of pulling one album out and listening front to back--still important (though less ritualized) to me, but I really appreciate the more holistic perspective digitizing my CDs has allowed...

this. this. this.
a couple of years of re-ripping my cd archive off at 320 has totally paid off.

the process involved so many cds that i actually wore out the internal optical drive on my laptop.
thankfully, external drives are not that pricey these days ...

re: the demise of Google Play Music -- I really miss it. I'd done some research on alternates, and a couple looked interesting: iBroadcast and MediaLeap both give you unlimited music storage for $5/month (iBroadcast has a free tier but w/lower quality). Ultimately I decided that if I was going to be paying a monthly fee I might as well get access to a full streaming service, so I've started a free trial of Apple Music since as far as I can tell it's the only major one that also lets you upload your own library. But now I find I'm afraid to flick the switch that will sync my library because I remember all the horror stories of corrupted/disappearing libraries when they first started.

Completely forgot how long it took to rip my CD's for portable usage. There's no way.I would have done it on my own free time, I just did a few to a handful each day I worked in a computer lab, and pretty much got through it all over a year or two.

I have about 50 unheard-CDs; a separate ILM subject on here somewhere...

I ripped a bunch and uploaded them to Google Music, at my last job, over the course of a year or so when I had a CD drive. I focused on the titles that weren’t readily available for streaming, were out of print, etc. Glad I did it! They’re accessible to me now in YouTube Music.

I totally did this too ^. Took me days. I keep forgetting they're available in YT Music.

I've been seeing some rumblings about delays in vinyl pressing plants, but I'm starting to see a lot of talk about CD manufacturing delays as well now. I've gotten emails from four different labels this week about various pre-orders being delayed several weeks (or months in once case) due to manufacturing delays.