Continuing with CDs?

My CDs are pretty scattered, though little pockets do exist. All the 4AD stuff seems to wind up together, as do genres like jungle and rave. Box sets, specially-packaged and odd-sized stuff live in a large curio cabinet, and digipaks are mainly kept separate from plastic jewel boxes, as the latter seem to pick on the former.

I have an unusually large amount of CDs and add 5-10 a week, mostly used in the $1-7 range. They are unorganised, just stacked on shelves in various places in my house, or in boxes, plus the car and my office. I often buy duplicates, triplicates or even more copies of CDs I already own. I keep lots of them in folders and throw away the cases but often there's other intact copies somewhere which I don't have to look too hard to find, I don't have to care for them particularly carefully, and I can give them away if I want to. I gave a friend of mine almost the entire discographies of Sade and EBTG at Christmas, just from duplicates I had lying around. I have joked with my children that each of them are bequeathed an entire Stereolab discography on CD when I die. It's either that or the Salvation Army is going to have an entire bankers box of Stereolab on the $1 rack. No doubt this seems insane to a lot of people, but to me the way other people access their music, or deal with physical media gives me a headache.

Legend

For over 15 years, I've had a guy who buys my promo CDs. We first met when I worked at Global Rhythm and then Metal Edge; the editor of Relix gave me the connect, and every couple of months, he'd come to the office after hours and pick up hundreds of discs from me and I'd go home with sometimes close to $1000 in my pocket. He was well-known in the music journalism community, I think — at bigger magazines like Rolling Stone, he'd go desk to desk buying from people. That was the golden age, when I was getting lavish Rhino box sets in the mail. Anyway, after Metal Edge shut its doors but I was still writing and accumulating loads of promo CDs, he'd come to my apartment, at first every couple of months but gradually less and less often. Recently, he's only come once or twice a year, and last night, he came for the last time, because I'm moving out of his territory and anyway, I've told all the publicists I work with to send me download links (ideally, Bandcamp codes) instead of physical CDs. Anyway, he gave me $400 for about 1 1/2 milk crates full of CDs and a couple of LPs, and we said our goodbyes. (He sells at record shows and on college campuses and stuff like that. And if anybody in the NY/NJ area wants to sell a collection, I can give you his email address.)

I'm continuing with CDs... by foolishly making a 2CD set in 2023. Will be the first time I ever put any music I've made on real glass-mastered CDs. Collecting three albums and an EP I made during 2022, the first time I'd made music since 2001.

Made a mock-up tonight of the artwork:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqLInuKWYAIdWFc?format=jpg&name=large

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqLIqdqWwAI9sGJ?format=jpg&name=large

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqLIr8FWwAUGm6U?format=jpg&name=large

The cost of making a glass-master CD for a small run seems to be at cost parity with getting proffessional CD-Rs at this point. I wknder if it's because companies have the capacity but not much demand anymore?

Anyway, CDs remain my physical media of choice, and for many reasons--not least being I have room for thousands of CDs in my apartment, but wouldn't, LPs--I still love CDs. I'm glad I came of age during the CD era. So I guess it was inevitable I'd want one "real" CD with my name on it.

hope your move goes smoothly, unperson!

congrats on the release, soundslike! rad photos, artwork looks great

that looks great soundslike! I'm excited about buying a bigger place so I can... buy a second CD shelf!

Thanks much! I hope it turns out well, I keep listening to the WAVs over and over making sure there's not some glitch I missed haha

Hope you get that second shelf, F. Hazel! Finally put mine on shelves after decades in boxes and it feels great to see them every day.

oh boy, here we go.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/cd-revival-compact-discs-rob-sheffield-1284487/

Looks like that was posted last year but yeah, how many of these articles do we really need at this point

In a disaster scenario, what CDs would you save from your collection just from the perspective that both the content has likely never been ripped by anyone and tracking down another copy would be nigh impossible?

Basically, what weird cultural artifacts are you unwittingly the last remaining guardian for?

Sonny Sharrock's soundtrack music to Space Ghost: Coast to Coast was never commercially released, but Cartoon Network sent out promo CDs of it and I have one.

Good question -- I don't know. At the least, there's no 'instagrab' section in my rack here next to my desk and I never thought of it that way. Some CDR releases perhaps.

There's a bunch of box sets I'd go for, because while the music may be streamable there's still the books, packaging and promotional gimmicks. But alas, probably not efficient to be grabbing the bulkiest stuff and so I'd probably go down with the fire or flood or whatever the disaster is.

I would save my Coil Live Box, that's it tho

The 7-disc set of Toru Takemitsu film music would certainly be tucked under my arm as I flee the hypothetical burning building, most of the other must-haves are relatively easily replaceable though. Not sure I own any mega rare CDs that are actually worthwhile tbh.

Do I own rare CDs? Yes. Valuable? Debatable.

In a disaster scenario, what CDs would you save from your collection just from the perspective that both the content has likely never been ripped by anyone and tracking down another copy would be nigh impossible?

I once had an enormous amount of contaminated water dumped on a bunch of CD/SACD's due to a contractor's negligence. REALLY sucked, but at the same time, it was nice that a careful and gentle washing saved the discs themselves even if they were still massively devalued. (Quite a few of those discs were out-of-print or expensive SACD reissues.) I just remember thinking how they would've help up if they were vinyl - could you ever really clean the sediment and crap that would've caked into the grooves?

probably... but sleeves and labels would be so hopeless i imagine one wouldn't bother.

I may have a few CDs like that, but they're the last thing I'd be thinking about in a disaster. (I did go through and rip a lot of not-on-streaming stuff to Google Music years back, when it was transitioning to YT Music, and the window to do that was closing.)

The coolest rare CD I own is probably this one which I created the Discogs page for (as documented on the discogs thread)... it's sort of a Red Krayola side project that was pressed by the folks involved (not a CD-R).

When I was in college I stored my LPs open-side-down on the floor against an outside wall. Some time after the winter rains I smelled a little mildew, and tracked it down to the corner with the LPs. In addition to the jackets getting water damage, the vinyl had a little mold residue, I guess, in the outer 1/2-1 inch, which produced a "chhh" sound when played.

that post required a trigger warning

lol

(side note: I think that's what's afflicting this copy of Yusef Lateef's Detroit that I was playing, time for the Spin Clean)

Were they kept open side down so you could see the spines looking while looking down at them?

Yep. I did wonder if the vinyl damage would not have been as bad had they been on their sides, but the spot they were in made it very awkward for any other arrangement than spine up.

It's nice that CDs can last so long without any noticeable degradation in sound quality, if you take care not to scuff them up. I just played a CD this weekend that's over 30 years old and sounds like new.

I'll do one better -- was reripping some very old Marc Almond CDs I have that were affected by the legendary PDO oxidization botch. And...they all ripped just fine.

re: ripping -- what threshold of accuracy/convenience does a digital download option (legal or not) need to cross before you go that route instead of DIY ripping?

Eh, depends on what works for you, I guess. My massive ripping project over a decade back was for very high end mp3s; now I'm doing Apple Lossless (more hard drive space, less of an overall collection to rip, etc.) Also, it's music I already have that's right there, so.

Is the fact that you have the artist/title/metadata/library management set up the way you want to part of it?
I was thinking an interesting project would be to create a simulated ripper that just downloads a flac and reencodes/retitles it the way you would if you'd inserted a CD in the ripper program you are used to.

I "simulated rip" every record I buy without a download code... hell, even some that do. Thanks soulseek. #onethread

If anybody who still loves CDs would be interested--the glads-mastetrd 2CD set I'm quixotically putting out in is up for pre-order, shipping early April:

https://ianmanire.bandcamp.com/album/improvisations

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/0031708315_71.jpg

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/0031708317_71.jpg

(Just home-made mock-ups for now, but you know I had to do graphical knock-out screen printing on the discs to let that glorious silver shine through haha)

"glass-mastered," that is. Yeesh...

speaking of cds ..
last week, the black dog announced a new album release on vinyl and cd.
today they have said that the cd will probably sell out before the release date, whereas normally its the vinyl edition that sells out first.
admittedly, there are 'only' 500 copies of the cd version, but still.

Would be interesting to know the ratio of LPs pressed to CDs pressed for a given release nowadays. I wonder if, for some releases, the CD versions will become the rarities of the future.

Vinyl just surpassed CDs in terms of units shipped this past year, for the first time in 30 years. (It had already passed CDs in dollar value a couple years ago.)

Ah, thought the thread revive might be about this (from The Guardian):

Alcopops and non-chart CDs ejected from UK ‘inflation basket’

Two ubiquitous consumer items of the 1990s – alcopops and CDs – will no longer count towards the monthly update of Britain’s cost of living after the latest shake-up of the shopping basket used to measure price changes.

In a sign it is no longer fashionable to order a fruit drink laced with booze in a pub and that the age of the compact disc is over, the Office for National Statistics said both products had fallen foul of its annual audit of the UK’s spending habits.

Non-chart CDs and alcopops – along with digital compact cameras – were the most high-profile casualties of the latest rejigging of the ONS inflation basket, which contains everything from cucumbers and TV licences to compost and tissues, and is used to measure the annual inflation rate.

FWIW, germane to this conversation though admittedly anecdotal, I'm currently trying to locate an out of print CD for a friend that was released in 2016 by a pretty big indie specializing in reissues, and not finding even used copies for less than $60. The vinyl version is still available everywhere, including Amazon. Clearly there is still demand for CDs, even if that demand has grown more niche.

Most indie reissue label CDs are limited editions, even if they aren't necessarily branded as such.

Right, but so are their vinyl equivalents, many of which seem to remain in print forever

What is the CD?

XP Yes, but they're more likely to press more vinyl editions to begin with, and do represses on those if they sellout.

I wish they'd go back to jewel cases for CDs, I loathe the modern cardboard sleeve foldover ones. So cheap. Digipaks are all right I suppose.

I prefer digipaks mostly for storage reasons, take up less space. Definitely not a fan of the cardboard sleeve ones.

I put all my CDs in binders and throw out the cases, so its all the same to me.

What is the CD?

― djh, Monday, March 13, 2023 5:30 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

A comp of Sun Ra singles released a few years ago on Strut

I put all my CDs in binders and throw out the cases, so its all the same to me.

This is how unhip I am: every now and then, especially through the '10s, I've bought boxes of unassembled jewel cases from a wholesaler for repair purposes. I've not bought pawn shop CDs by the dozen so much recently so a few dozen remaining empty cases will themselves be taking up space for a wee while.