Continuing with CDs?

also from upthread, soundslike I dig the updated design... toekicks, I feel seen

This is the most inconveniently packaged CD that I own – it’s almost comical:

http://www.teenbeatrecords.com/images/items/075bx.jpg

(I also have a Red Krayola live CD that came attached to the inside rear cover of a magazine-sized booklet written in French, IIRC)

I think I had a chance to cop one of those Weird Al box sets shaped like an accordion for free once. Obviously, I love Weird Al, but honestly where would I keep an accordion shaped box?

on a shelf

in a drawer

on top of a box

next to your accordions

I have about 100 CDs I'd like to be able to easily transport -- is there anywhere I can still find a 100 (or whatever) CD carrying case? Not looking for the 'wallet style' that only allows for the disc itself -- looking for the kind with a bunch of slots where I can insert the jewel cases. A quick Google search didn't lead me to what I was looking for, but I know my dad had one back in the 90s.

I know this isn't exactly what you are describing, but morrisp posted some bags that might work in his post from yesterday:

We recently ditched our CD rack (as part of a living room redesign) and stashed away most our CDs in storage bags like these. We kept a small batch out for quick access & "display" purposes.

The bags are obv. inconvenient if you dip deep into your CD collection a lot, but... well, we don't.

Oops, the link didn't carry over, but if you ctrl+f that post, there is a link.

I really like 'Really Useful Boxes' for non-display storage and transport. They're strong and very well designed and there's a raft of different sizes. They stack nicely too. They were perfect for doing record/CD fairs as well, as you can easy sell right out of them too.

Here's their CD/DVD/vinyl selection

UK: https://www.reallyusefulproducts.co.uk/uk/html/onlineshop/rub_music.php
USA: https://www.reallyusefulproducts.co.uk/usa/html/onlineshop/rub_music.php

They're pretty widely available at least in the UK (eBay, Amazon, Rymans etc).

Anyone else use them? I've actually been meaning to pick up more to put away the bulk of my CD collection. Currently my vinyl lives in a bunch of 8-10 of the 35XL size.

...you can easily sell right out of them...

Another reason to continue with CDs (if you still bother with physical formats at all):

Price of new Chills album Scatterbrain, including shipping:
CD: $16
Vinyl: $32

The vinyl is indeed really pretty, but if you're buying 4-6 albums per month that adds up!

In 20 years CDs are either going to be rare like 1990s vinyl or there will be boxes of the things under the beds of many former label runners.

CDs that are new now, I mean.

a lot of the indie label I'm buying CDs from are doing pressings of like 300 or 500, so I'd guess they'll be rare (if anyone wants them or not)

Yeah that's kind of my observation as well. When I look at ownership stats on Discogs for new releases there may be one or two hundred for vinyls's and a handful for the CD. Of course I expect a limited demand for them in 20 years as well but there will always be a few supporters for any format.

My anecdotal observation is that the small CD pressings of reissues in particular seem to sell out faster than vinyl, but I get that there's not much incentive to spend time and effort re-pressing the format with the lower profit margin, and risking using up that crucial under-bed storage.

that's true, it feels like you can just slap an extra $20 onto the price of a vinyl release and people will just pay it. doesn't work for CDs.

Is that slightly overstated perhaps? Vinyl is expensive to produce unless you're making a significant amount and the profit margin on CDs can be pretty good even on 500. I mean, I think presently it's simply the lack of demand.

Ah sorry, when I said profit margin I meant total profit. Like I say, I see CDs selling out surprisingly often considering how much I hear there's no demand, which makes me think the demand is probably both low and underestimated.

nah, I see vinyl releases they're charging $50 for with like one record and maybe a gatefold cover, there's no way that's costing them that much to manufacture... if you're pressing up 1,000 copies it's like $3-4 per record plus whatever the sleeve costs. you just can't ask for that kind of premium on a CD release today.

I feel like a shark at Half Price Books these days, just cruising through and scooping up mouthfuls of $4-5 CDs

How much support does CD-R's still have? I know Amazon does a lot of MOD for catalog titles now. With new music, I'm wondering if the new model is to press a limited run and let people burn their own from the FLAC's offered on bandcamp and elsewhere.

both low and underestimated.

I'm sure it's often very difficult to guage. A guess but I suspect that in some areas / genres there's a certain amount of return to the format and demand is actually rising.

It's striking to see CDs go "out of print" quickly and this goes some way to couunter the perception of it was a "landfill" format.

I think the fragility and low barrier of entry for CDr is at odds with the reasons many CD buyers have for wanting them. It's kind of a different market? xp

Been considering getting back into CD-Rs now that I drive again

I was going to pick up the new Sleater-Kinney at a preferred shop on Saturday, then changed it to Sunday when I realized Saturday was RSD. So I go Sunday, and not only had they sold out of the CDs, they just had a couple copies of the vinyl. I was back by there on Wednesday, and still no CDs.

Yeah, I can see cars making a big difference with CD's. When I was still driving around Chicago, I only played CD's. The only time I drive now is if I'm at a relative's place - for the older cars it's CD's but for the newer cars my iPod (which I still use because utilizing my phone for movies and music would be too much of a memory and battery drain given the amount of usage).

I still like CD-R's because I often do custom tweaks. I never stopped buying compilations, but I often burned an additional CD-R with tweaks to take care of glaring omissions, wrong mixes or a haphazard track sequence.

First CD-R I remember burning was a Changesbowie just to reinstate the original mix of "Fame." There was a gold CD reissue that also took care of that, but at the time $20-30 was waaaaay too much money, especially when most of my CD's were just "free" CD club selections I got through my parents.

I still burn them, especially after I found a stack of a few hundred left on a wall. Also still spend money on them on Bandcamp but mainly to support the artists and get the files.

Sooner or later working burners and blank media are going to become exotic items.

I'd been without a non-car CD player for about 5 years after the 1994 Discman earned with Camel Cash gave up the ghost. Just found a 5-disc changer at my first trip back to the thrift store since lockdown, $11. Fits under the turntable nicely. Haven't been tempted to pick up any CDs, but it's nice to work to full length records without the temptation to skip around or having to turn over LP sides every 20 minutes.

Graphic design student daughter just told me she first realized she was interested in lettering design watching me decorate CD-Rs with a Sharpie, circa 2004.

Which is an indication that some of the artists whose work I like don't even have enough of an audience to jusify a small CD run, sadly. xp

I often burn my Bandcamp flacs to play in the car. Unfortunately the car's CD player eject mechanism is giving up the ghost so I'm stuck with a Trojan reggae comp for the foreseeable.

I experimented with one of those Bluetooth adapters but it's a real faff. Much prefer CDs in the car.

xxxp they already are

Forced obsolescence just like they did with vinyl in the 90s.

I still listen to cds/cdrs a bunch as I got a boombox at work and in the car, but I think it is an old fogey thing to do now.

Ah well the world moves on...and if you want to listen to music on the go, one of the f'n tech companies is going to get a cut somehow.

the 1994 Discman earned with Camel Cash gave up the ghost

woah, this gen-xer wants to know how many camel wides did this cost?

backing up my 1.6 TB library of lossless rips/downloads to my NAS, before transplanting the 2TB drive inside my Mac Mini and adding it to the hifi stack.

(where my nice CD player also resides alongside the DAC)

Camel Cash: about 365 camel bucks got me a Discman and a set of silk pajamas spangled with camels ( but not JOE CAMELS!)

But I could have gotten a museum piece

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7UDDZgncHS/?utm_medium=copy_link

Now I have fourth and fifth faulty cd releases to complain about.

Morgiana/Cremator soundtracks (Finders Keepers)
Frost - Day And Age (Inside Out/Sony)

I started to think maybe this is my CD player but I don't think it is. With the possible exception of Lal Waterson & Oliver Knight - Once In A Blue Moon (from 1996 but I heard this was a reissue, but there's no discogs record of that), all of these faulty cds have been from the last decade. They play fine until the last quarter, but not always, occasionally they play fine, but I'm reluctant to play them when I know they might start getting skippy.

It's making me a bit scared about buying recent cds. Especially when one was Inside Out/Sony, I'd be really pissed if this happened on one of those big expensive Jethro Tull releases.

I can't find out very much about this. I'm probably not the person who listens to the most CDs here, so I'm surprised nobody else has come across it. Seen a little discussion of it on Steve Hoffman forums, but not much at all.

I'll end up buying some of these on digital and I wish the labels wouldn't bother with CDs if they can't do them right. The Lush - Chorus box set is the only release I've seen a bunch of other people complaining about.

I know this is obvious, but have you actually tried playing them in a different CD player?

It's difficult to nail down, since a faulty CD will generally work in some percentage of CD players, just not ALL of them. I rip a ton of CDs and if you set aside the physically damaged ones, most of them can be ripped if you try a different drive. Are they faulty? Yes and no.

I can believe that CD manufacturing is getting sloppy too, since the demand is way down.

Any pressing info on those CD's? (i.e. the name of the pressing plant on the inner rim, if there is one listed)

I should try them on the bluray player, I don't have another cd player but I'm fairly confident standards are slipping

I can't see any common pressing details

And sometimes they play fine, the Morgiana/Cremator disc has only screwed up a couple of times.

I had major problems with the recent Sign O' The Times reissue (3 CD version.) Took it back to the store to replace it, same thing happened with the new one. And on the same song too (the title track.) Thing is, it eventually started playing fine, so who knows?

Got to think many releases now are just like indie cds, only in the hundreds pressed. Knock wood, on the two I pressed in the last decade, they turned out fine.

I think DVD players are kinda bonky in general for reading other discs. DVD players have data protection in them to read head when you play movies so you don't have flutter and distortions in the signal and I think it screws up other kinds of media sometimes. They burn these update discs where I work to update GPS software in field toughbooks and they run like SHITE in them as it seems to have to read the whole disk before the script will run to update the software. Same stuff copied to a thumb drive runs like nothing. I can't remember the name it's some 3 letter thing, but I found on some of the models if you went into the settings and turn off that read protection they ran better (for those update disks). These toughbooks that had burners seemed to work better odd enough... criminy the code on some of those devices has to be old as shit at this point as all of them pretty much auto-install from some generic driver in Windows.

Anyone fuck with 50-disc or 100-disc changers? Any particular downsides to them?