Continuing with CDs?

I haven't driven since maybe 2008, and I stuck with my family's ancient sedan because it was the most gas efficient car we had. All it had was a radio and cassette deck, so I bought one of those cassette deck adapters that were made for portable CD players and used it on my iPod. That was the maximum level of technical "sophistication" I achieved with an automobile. Now when I ride with a family member, I'm not even sure how they start their cars.

have to chime in as another spotify hater. haven't had an account in years. now when i open it up in a browser window it feels like going to the mall. any time i have to turn to my phone to do something it's like stepping into the sharper image store. it's all such a branded experience or whatever. and such a hassle. i don't want to go shopping every time i want to listen to some music. the next reason i hate spotify is streaming audio quality. the third distant reason i hate it is how it screws over artists, but i mean that's still bad of course.

imo cds, specifically the age of burning / copying / ripping cds, was the pinnacle of recorded music as far as freedom, power and pleasure afforded to the listener.

One of the best things about CDs and tapes in the car is that when you turn the car off and go inside, it starts right where you left off.

If you download the album on your phone and play it in the car, there’s like a 50% chance it will pick up where you left off and a 50% chance it will play the first song alphabetically listed in your library. If you leave Spotify or iTunes or Tidal or Qobuz there’s a chance you will use that app OUT of your car, like listening on walks or dishwashing and, again, lose your spot.

It is such a great feeling to turn on a car and have the music waiting for you just as you left it as opposed to having to fumble with some dumb app and go BUH WHAT TRACK WAS I ON LET ME JUST CUE IT UP HOLD ON HOLD ON

I find myself rarely wanting to listen to a full album these days. I much prefer to put my entire music library on shuffle and have a randomized listening experience. I hear stuff I haven't heard in years and am constantly being surprised by what I hear.

I love the idea of starting something ironically and then falling into it for real

― Cone of uncertainty (morrisp), Sunday, 20 August 2023 22:19 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.theonion.com/ironic-porn-purchase-leads-to-unironic-ejaculation-1819565403

A pornography store located in suburban Winnetka, on a street that connects to the one where they filmed “Home Alone” - those guys at the Onion really go the extra mile with the details.

To my amazement, given it's 2023 and I know those of us still buying CDs are freaks, so far I've managed to sell about 175 of the 300 copies of the 2CD set I put out of my own music, via Bandcamp and directly. To get rid of the rest, I'm selling them for $1 : )

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/0031873599_71.jpg

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/0031873603_71.jpg

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

A constant refrain I heard was "oh I'll play it in my car--the only player I have left". Which is funny, given I despise cars as much as I love music, and haven't driven one myself since 2005. But I do remember playing music in a car was about the only good thing about it all...

For normal people, have they gotten rid of blu ray players as thoroughly as they have CD players? I thought most people at least still had those, but I guess I'm a weirdo still buying physical media for films, too?

all my friends are weirdos with like, laserdisc players, reel-to-reels, and room-sized speakers they got from movie theaters closing down

Blu ray / steelbook / rare slipcover / 4K fans are definitely still buying and collecting blu ray movies. Though it is really shocking how few brick and mortar stores exist that sell blu ray at all, besides the handful of ones at Target or whatever.

My prediction is that physical media for movies and TV shows will perhaps experience a resurgence. It's frustrating how things come and go on the streaming services, people just want to pop their favorite movies in, you know? Not figure out what streaming platform has it, if anyone actually has it. We have gotten used to most things being mostly available, most of the time, I don't think that will be the case forever especially given the current strikes are at least partially about residuals.

I got a PS5 a little while back and it plays 4k which is cool, but I was very dismayed to learn it doesn't play audio CDs at all!

One of the best things about CDs and tapes in the car is that when you turn the car off and go inside, it starts right where you left off.

absolutely! don't get me started on the apple podcast app.

One practice I've enjoyed lately is blind selection: closing my eyes, turning around a few times, and slowly walking until my pointed finger hits the spine of a CD, record or tape — that's what I'm listening to (with occasional rejections of the heard-it-too-recently/too-disagreeable variety).

I've noticed a slight uptick in people just throwing out CDs on the curb or putting them in little free libraries.
What are your best free CD scores?

xxxp that's insane that it wouldn't play CDs, surely a deliberate decision.
The difference between a "4K" stream (aggressive compression, reconstructed artificial grain overlaid on smoothed image) and a 4K UHD disc, is arguably greater than 4K vs blu-ray discs, at least in my experience. I have maybe ... 2000 DVDs/BDs/UHDs? I've been collecting since 2001 (and > half I bought used).

I got a PS5 a little while back and it plays 4k which is cool, but I was very dismayed to learn it doesn’t play audio CDs at all!

One more reason why the Xbox Series X is better, haha! Although I haven’t bothered playing any CDs in it, only the occasional DVD or Blu-ray. And in fact it only dawned on me relatively recently that there’s an Apple Music app for it, and that streams my whole mp3 library.

Techmoan did a video recently where he was pointing out that most currently available gaming players have fazed out CD playback, which surprised me — I had just assumed it was really easy to include, so why wouldn't you do it?

I doubt it's much more expensive parts-wise these days to include CD playback capability in gaming systems, but here's a fun conspiracy theory: they want you to subscribe to their streaming music services instead!

so, what happened with disc drives in consoles, is that Microsoft was going to dump the disc drive, going with an "always on", online only console (what would eventually be the Xbox One). I know this to be true from someone who worked in one of the largest game publishers and was their Microsoft liason.

news of this had leaked out and people -- especially those in rural areas without good broadband service -- were really pissed off about it (the game audience was still very attached to disc emotionally at that point too), so Adam Orth (a then producer at Microsoft) tweeted out some insulting tweets saying people were basically freaking out about nothing (see story: https://venturebeat.com/social/adam-orth-fired-microsoft-xbox-exec-who-insulted-fans-appears-to-have-joined-the-ranks-of-the-jobseekers/), when asked about people in rural areas he (and this is what killed him) he tweeted "Why would I live there?"

This was April, during E3 that summer, Sony makes a big production during their press conference with little shots at Microsoft's no-disc plan and people ate it up. This sent MS scrambling to add the disc drive back in to Xbox One, which was released with a drive.

But IMO that whole incident extended the life of physical game media for several years. Otherwise, MS was absolutely going all-digital in 2013.

xp I think that's true, and I wouldn't call planned obsolescence a conspiracy theory. I think, from a grim capitalist perspective, it makes perfect sense for gaming companies to phase out physical discs and force users to rely solely on big tech and its whims. See: phasing out of optical drives on laptops and eliminating CD players in cars. In some ways, this is merely old technology being supplanted by new technology. The difference afaic is that this particular technology is insidious and arguably worse for the consumer in the long run.

hey want you to subscribe to their streaming music services instead!

― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Tuesday, August 22, 2023 9:03 AM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

and yes "games as as service" has been the goal otm

are the patents/fees on CD playback expired yet? for DVDs, I think some of the nintendo consoles were technically capable but they didn't want to pay the DVD association fee, or whatever it was.

xxxp that ‘move to a city if you want to play Xbox’ attitude combined with a marketing strategy that pushed the Xbox One as an entertainment hub rather than a games console pretty much killed it against the PS4 and arguably brought about the nicey-nice-to-gamers Microsoft of today. (Ironically enough, the Series X is very much the entertainment hub they wanted the One to be.)

are the patents/fees on CD playback expired yet? for DVDs, I think some of the nintendo consoles were technically capable but they didn't want to pay the DVD association fee, or whatever it was.

― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, August 22, 2023 9:32 AM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

that's what led to the little GameCube discs - it wasn't just the fees, but also that part of the fees were going to their biggest competitor, Sony

xpost - yeah that's pretty much it on all counts

Just came across this Gen Z–oriented “aesthetic” CD player (you can also get a Display/Storage Stand – “to make sure that your music experience is satisfying and pleasing to the eye”).

that's pretty cute

muji have been doing those for literally 20 years

https://kocha.medium.com/mujis-cd-player-b20ca424ebb1

My car was broken into recently and they took my car CDs. This is how I know CDs are back. They used to leave them.

xp Muji's has no line out though. morrisp's link might be the best one of these knockoffs I've seen. Well, quite similar to the AmazonBasics one Techmoan looked at in this video which took a hilarious (to me) turn to finding a version of the concept that just stuffs the static CD booklet in front of the cool spinny wall disc!

that does solve a lot of the problems (although doesn't work just on its own, which i find a bit odd)

BUT the square nature means ir doesn't look as nice as the circular cd version especially given that the bottom edge is twice as wide as all the others. bugs me.

techmoan did a video about that kind of player recently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZyRiHy46FQ

I feel like I could be posting his videos here almost constantly, they're a real treasure trove.

I find watching the disc spin in my Sony CMT-EX1 very satisfying even though I can't really read the display from more than a few feet away, and then I get to admire the label when it's stopped playing. Album covers remain fairly visible in general, where CD face art is the kind of thing that disappears with streaming. (A lot of it's totally generic of course, but so too were those 45 labels of yore that Rhino CDs lovingly emulated.)

I can’t vouch for the authenticity of this but if accurate it’s an interesting comparison of different cd masterings. This compares different version of abba’s “lay all your love on me”… no dumbass voiceover mansplaining just the tune

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op3XK_x3ehQ

Abba is the example used on the Wikipedia page for the loudness wars, too — looks like it might even be the same song. When you hit '97, it's like your ears get clogged all the sudden.

The feel of that one Pet Shop Boys case in your hand
The smell of the Cibo Matto Viva! La Woman insert

Yeah, ABBA's been treated pretty poorly in the digital era. It's frustrating because as soon as they started using the original, first-generation master tapes, they started jacking up the upper midrange and the treble to make everything overly bright and grating. Then with each subsequent mastering, they kept jacking it up while squashing it with more compression and processing the shit out of everything with horrible noise reduction.

The "best" sounding CD's are the old ones, before the '90s. They aren't perfect - IIRC they all come from production masters, i.e. dubs used for cutting vinyl - but they sound fine when you crank them up, unlike the later CD's from the '90s to the present day.

CDs must be back as Amazon keeps trying to sell me things like these
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imperius-Portable-Improved-Carrying-Moistureproof-Clear/dp/B08XZHV9DF/

https://i.imgur.com/BOwhL96.jpg

They heard you're continuing with CDs

Your Kickstarter Sucks just alerted me to the HOTT CD player: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/553318161/hott-cd-player-rediscover-the-soul-of-music

A stand-up version of the wall player design! lol. Looks technically better than the Muji knockoffs. Headphone jack, optical port, etc.

lol at the image used to represent "Stereo High Quality Speakers" - an lp and a tone arm that looks like it wouldn't track

Ooh... if only the pretty lights also displayed CD-text somehow.

I know memes are the lowest form of art, but this made me laugh:

https://av-cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6nrz45lyato3e4obmzw5jez3/bafkreiacbzjwtd754wmq7jahomlbesz3654nkl5jqjja3mf7vzax2ye6qy@jpeg

Before all you hipsters throw out your cds, we have sold more cds in the past week than anytime in the past year, and more cds than vinyl for the first time in years! pic.twitter.com/G4ZXxlbPSm

— Simon Raymonde (@mrsimonraymonde) September 8, 2023

I like being able to buy like a dozen good secondhand CD's for the price of two brand-new vinyl records. If there was accurate and reliable data about secondhand sales, I'm sure CD sales numbers would be several times more than what's usually reported.

bought jewel cases from…. eugh… Acoustic Sounds because I needed some of those rounded corner SACD ones. The standard cases don’t close all the way and have different kinds of warps. One case back is so bowed that it won’t lay flat. Pretty sad for a company that caters to millionaires. I did pick up the SACD of Dylan’s desire for $20.

xxp lol i bought a vinyl of that anime recently. Kimagure Orange Road. Highest rec.

take me to Summer Side!

Okay, incoming rant here, but I'm increasingly annoyed by artists/labels who just really don't want you to have options to buy their music, or else erect so many barriers to make it not worth your while to try.

Example A - I read about this Philly band, Blues Ambush, who are putting out their S/T debut on Radical Documents, to be released this Friday from what I can see. It is only available on vinyl and the first pressing is sold out already, but there is apparently a second pressing of a whopping 20 copies according to the label's site (in all fairness, that second pressing seems to be currently available at this very moment). But the label recently killed their Bandcamp page, so no digital option anywhere to purchase and not even available to stream either. I get the challenges of physical copies and micro-sized pressings aren't rare at this point, but it seems extra boneheaded in 2023 to not offer a digital/streaming option at all.

Example B- unperson's great substack tipped me to a recent unearthing of an old Purple Trap (Keiji Haino, Bill Laswell, Rashied Ali) recording from 2005. It's digital only and this one IS available on Bandcamp... but only if you subscribe to Laswell's subscription only thing for $22 a month. I'm sure that's a value for some Laswell superfans, but I'm not paying $22 to access the one recording I'm interested in hearing. Seems like you could keep the subscription model going for the Laswell fans interested in the plethora of recordings he has up, and also offer a download option for those only interested in specific releases.

i know this is seriously bad, but ..
i have seen this re subscriber only releases.
what's to stop a bad'un from sub'ing for one month, downloading everything, and then cancelling the sub ?
i have never done it, but weirdly the thought did occur to me via the axiom/laswell thing ..

I suppose that's an option. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely get the appeal of subscriber only models and, to be very clear, I don't fault artists for trying to make a living in any way they see fit (which baffles me even more re: my Example A above) but one drawback seems to be that you are really limiting yourself to diehards only and aren't likely to expand your base much. To be fair, I know Laswell offers other stuff more openly on Bandcamp, but I guess I'm just annoyed about gatekeeping access to certain releases, as noble-intentioned as they may be.