Outdated Technologies: CDs and Vinyl Records

[Tsutarja]

Week #2: CDs and Vinyl Records​

This week's idea was sent in by adventure.

Yeah, remember when we had to go to a store to actually get our albums? It seems like nobody does that anymore, especially now that it's possible to download albums and instantly get them without having to go to a physical store these days. Services such as Google Play, Amazon mp3, iTunes, and even directly from artists allow you to get your music instantly. However, did you know that many artists these days still push out their albums to formats such as CD, and even vinyl?

So some questions for thought:

• Do you still go to stores to purchase physical albums?
• Do you own a collection of CDs and/or vinyls to this day?
• How much longer will it be until you think purchasing physical albums in stores will no longer be a thing?

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If you have any ideas for future discussions for Outdated Technologies, send me a message!

 

[Legendary Silke]

I seriously don't think CDs are that outdated at this point, to be honest.

When you think about it, audio CDs should be a perfect representation of audio data at the time of mastering. No compression at all, so nothing got changed. (Lossless compression exists, but audio CDs were invented when the processing power of electronics back then weren't exactly cheap to come by.) I'm sure some people still want to seek them out for "perfect" copies that are just good enough.

I don't really get the resurgence of vinyl, though. Aren't they proven to be mathematically inferior to any digital media, including CDs? The "fuller" sound is actually just vinyl imperfections.

I don't personally go to stores for CDs, and most of my music collection is fully digital (being never on CDs), but I do have a few CDs lying around - these tend to be CDs that I bought on-the-spot because of events or CDs that were made before, well, everyone had broadband. Or online music stores.

Physical media will probably stay on until, well, when Internet access gets really fast for everyone, and seeing as we're nowhere near that... *makes jokes about how in some circumstances, a delivery van or truck containing a hard disk drive can be faster than an Internet connection sending the same amount of data*

 

[Sonata]

Do you still go to stores to purchase physical albums?

No. I haven't for a long time either. The last physical album I bought was some deadmau5 cd. 4 x 4 = 12 or something like that. It's been so long I don't even remember. I tossed out the cd after about a month since I already had all of the two decent songs off of it and used the case to store my action replay cd.

Do you own a collection of CDs and/or vinyls to this day?

Not really. I have a binder of classic rock and stuff, but nothing too extensive.

How much longer will it be until you think purchasing physical albums in stores will no longer be a thing?

A year? 10 years? 20 years? Never? I don't know. Apparently there's still a market out there for people who like to have physical copies of things. So until they die, physical albums will still be around.

 

[Bay]

Do you still go to stores to purchase physical albums?

Like Sonata, not in a long while. The last album I purchased was probably one from Good Charlotte (so, several years ago @_@). I remember back when I was in high school many of my friends would bring our CD players and binders so we can listen to music during lunch. XD

Do you own a collection of CDs and/or vinyls to this day?

I still have some old CDs scattered around my room, but yeah I don't collect them anymore.

How much longer will it be until you think purchasing physical albums in stores will no longer be a thing?

The Wal-Mart at my area still has CD albums (though the selection is quite small compared to before), so there's still some interest for those I believe. Those will probably stick around a while longer.

 

[Astinus]

It doesn't even cross my mind at all to download songs. Whenever I'm looking for an album, my first thought is to look for the CD of it. I tend to look on Amazon first instead of in stores, because there aren't really any stores around here that sell CDs anymore. It's only when I find out that I don't like most of the songs on the album that I think about downloading the individual songs...to make my own CD. Because I use a CD player more than any of the ways I have to play mp3 files.

So I do have a collection of CDs. It's a pretty large collection. There are probably close to 200 CDs in my house, covering a multitude of genres. There's also a decently-sized collection of vinyls owned by my parents from when they were younger.

There's just something different about the sound of a song played from a CD, vinyl, cassette tape (remember those?), or downloaded from the Internet. There are also people who just like to collect physical copies of things (I'm currently searching for a vinyl that I know exists somewhere out there), so it will be quite a while until CDs and vinyls disappear completely. The technology to play them seems to be disappearing sooner.

 

[Bay]

There's just something different about the sound of a song played from a CD, vinyl, cassette tape (remember those?), or downloaded from the Internet. There are also people who just like to collect physical copies of things (I'm currently searching for a vinyl that I know exists somewhere out there), so it will be quite a while until CDs and vinyls disappear completely. The technology to play them seems to be disappearing sooner.

I still remember cassettes. :P My parents have a collection of those hidden in a suitcase and there were a few they bought for me when I was a child. My sister recently also has been collecting some vinyls here and there.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

CDs were a thing of my childhood. We listened to Creed and Paul Simon and Boston in the car, and sometimes the Police or Alice in Chains. It was just our jams when our car had a player.

Nowadays modern car stereos have a 3.5mm jack for digital input, and to be honest I'm even more of a fan of XM radio than iPods and such - because for actually less money all I personally have to do is pick any genre under the sun and listen to a lovely variety of commercial-free tunes without touching a thing. No manually purchasing, "owning," downloading, syncing, all that nonsense. It's the best.

 

[Gardevoir the Dragon Slayer]

Well lets start by saying vinyl's are outdated in terms of technology, however they remain highly collectable and any released vinyl will carry value than any other form of music storage system.

Moving on to CD's. At first glace they may seem out dated to the likes of mp3's/itunes, streaming or other digital mediums, but on second glace that not the case, CD's remain highly viable as a way to store music. They are cheap to produce, readily available and easy to play, for example most cars have a CD player, while many (older cars) don't have a means for example to play via an ipod.
Another plus in CD's favour is they are fully compatible with digital music (i.e. you can copy music from (or to) a digital devise (PC/ipod etc) meaning you have two copies of the music in case you lose one. Finally CD's can be sold as special editions or collectors editions etc with extra materials like photos, booklets and novelty items where as Digital downloads cannot be.

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[Sylphiel]

I've bought only one music CD within the past 5 years, and the one that I did? Was because I was browsing through a music store (I don't remember the reason why other than "just because") and I happened to find a CD that I liked. I don't even really have a collection other than that one CD, and I don't even know where that is at the moment. I'm more into streaming music nowadays, but if I were to buy an album I would far rather buy it online and download it than buy the CD. Discs around here, especially musical ones, tend to get lost eventually, and even if they don't I just copy the songs to my computer and listen off of there anyway.

I've never even though about buying a vinyl. I just don't see the point when I could just buy a CD or buy stuff online. Then there's the fact I don't have anything with which to play vinyls, and yeah...

I've never thought about how much longer I think they'll be around. I'd be surprised if they weren't around for at least a good while longer, though. They're not obsolete yet - and I figure if they haven't been made so by now, they won't be for a while.

 

[Tsutarja]

I buy all of my music online if I really want to own it. However, sometimes I receive CDs as gifts if I enjoy a certain artist. I don't own vinyl records either. My parents, however, own a whole collection of CDs and vinyls for their music library. Many of those came from when they were both teenagers/young adults and as they came out.

I still think CD and vinyls will be around for a long while! A lot of stereos these days are still built with CD players, and many people still own turntables to play vinyl records with.

 

[Oshawott501]

Do you still go to stores to purchase physical albums?

On occasion I do, but it's mainly online I buy CDs.

Do you own a collection of CDs and/or vinyls to this day?

I actually do, but 75% of it is soundtracks to Disney movies in various languages as that is something I have always liked. I have found it fascinating to hear Disney character voices in other languages.

How much longer will it be until you think purchasing physical albums in stores will no longer be a thing?

I don't think CDs & Vinyls will ever go away. I think they will be here for a very long time.

 

[Tsutarja]

So I saw cassettes being mentioned earlier, and wow are those things rare to come across! I wasn't even sure if singles were stored to cassettes or not since they were out of my time. However, I will say that my father has a collection of cassette tapes with songs, and a radio that plays them.

 

[Gardevoir the Dragon Slayer]

So I saw cassettes being mentioned earlier, and wow are those things rare to come across! I wasn't even sure if singles were stored to cassettes or not since they were out of my time. However, I will say that my father has a collection of cassette tapes with songs, and a radio that plays them.

Yeah they put Singles on cassettes.

 

[Oshawott501]

I still have all of my cassettes from my childhood. Most of them are Disney related like soundtracks & Read along tapes.

 

[obZen]

I don't generally care about physical copies; I just want my music.
Vinyls are interesting, with that 24-bit audio; I always wanted to try ripping my dad's vinyls, but I never put the $$ into it.

Cassettes? I have no idea where you even find those nowadays.
It's kind of odd how disc trays are getting phased out. I guess no one cares about their old DVD and CD collections?

 

[Gardevoir the Dragon Slayer]

It's kind of odd how disc trays are getting phased out. I guess no one cares about their old DVD and CD collections?

On PC's and Laptops? I won't buy a PC/Laptop unless it has a optical drive.

 

[Buoysel]

It's kind of odd how disc trays are getting phased out. I guess no one cares about their old DVD and CD collections?

On PC's and Laptops? I won't buy a PC/Laptop unless it has a optical drive.

Disk trays take up a lot of space for something that isn't used a lot of the average user. Manufacturers are removing them from devices so they can make them smaller and thinner.

I wonder how long it will before human driven cars will be obsolete.

 

[Meganium]

I used to be super obsessed with buying CD's at Best Buy or any music store like FYE. I remember the aforementioned stores had HUGE aisles of CDs where you can literally find any artist. Now with the expanding sales of digital music like iTunes and Google Play, the aisles have shrunk drastically. This one time, my mom wanted me to buy a physical CD of a Mexican songwriter, and went to Best Buy to see if they have it. The sales associate told me that the album was iTunes only and you cannot buy a physical copy. Later on I realized that most artists have opted out of selling physical copies of their albums and stayed with digital downloads.

The last physical album I bought was a Pentatonix album, PTX Vol III. Walmart had them for a limited time, so I couldn't let the opportunity pass up. Their albums were all digital, and I bought them all in digital...but I always wanted their albums physical. Why? Because I grew up in an era where we would burn our CDs and own CD players, and I get scared that I'll lose my digital music. So I always gotta have a backup.

Thankfully, with iCloud, it helps a lot as it backs up your music and purchases. But I will miss those glory days of owning a shitload of albums. <3

edit: I just remembered something...I get a little mindboggled that artists actually release VINYL versions of their albums. I thought record players were actually obsolete. I'm just amazed that people still buy them. Go to Hot Topic or a music store and you'll see what I mean.

 

[Cerberus87]

Vinyls have seen a resurgence with 24-bit audio capability. If possible, I get vinyl rips of popular albums. However, there are many rippers who don't get rid of the vinyl "imperfections" because they think it's the "spirit" of vinyl, and therefore their rips are useless unless you like to listen to cracks and noise every once in a while.

I think most albums are still being released on physical format because of expensive music players. MP3 is enough for your iPod, but sounds shitty on a serious music player.

 

[Hiatus]

Last time I had purchased any CDs would be about six to eight months ago, which is a long time.

These days, when it comes to music, I mostly rely on Spotify, Grooveshark, Last.fm, and other digital things. One, major advantage we have when it comes to them in comparison to CDs is, well, we aren't precisely limited. In latter, we're restricted to songs that only the disc contains, but former allows us to listen to almost anything we could possibly imagine.