The Reasons Why I Still Buy Cd's

[Gavyn]

My unpopular opinion: Spotify is bad!

Alright, so, with the internet came things like YouTube, and with Pandora, and Spotify on the rise in recent years, we are seeing lower sales in physical copies of music such as CD or vinyl. After all, you go "Why would we PAY for music when we can get it for free?!", to which I have to say sit down and I'll show you!

1. CDs have higher quality audio than streaming services.

CDs play at a bitrate of 1411 kbps, whereas most streaming services, spotify included, cap out at 320 kbps. While the difference isn't noticeable to everyone, to those who notice it (such as myself), it's a GREAT bonus.

2. Spotify doesn't pay artists jack-sh**

I read an post from Spotify explaining that on average, they only pay HALF A CENT (0.0065 to be specific) per play! That's an outrage! To make matters worse, they don't determine how much of that the label uses to pay the artist. That's just not fair to artists. Besides, you get infinite plays once you buy a CD!

3. CD Covers are badass!

This is the album art for the album Phobia by Breaking Benjamin, a CD I happen to own :)

This is the album art for the album Ember by Breaking Benjamin, a CD I happen to own :)

Come on, do I really need to explain this one?

4. No ads, and offline usage!

There will never be ads for CDs, AND you can rip them to your PC using Windows Media Player permanently! That way, you can access them later to put onto your devices or while your WiFi's out. Spotify can't beat that!

5. When the world inevitably goes to sh** and the internet's gone, Spotify will be useless.

We all know it's gonna happen, guys. When there's no more internet, Spotify will be useless. But as long as there's some form of electricity still being harnessed, there will be a way to play CDs or ripped files.

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That's it for my take. I hope I inspired you guys to go out and buy CDs instead of relying on Spotify. Thanks for reading! :)

[Lance1965]

Sound quality means everything to me which is why I always buy CD's and vinyl. Yes downloads are cheaper but the sound quality is also very inferior.

[Gavyn]

That was my main point of switching. Although, like I told someone else, you CAN find digital downloads in obscure places that have higher quality than cd. Like, the sample rate is 96 kHz instead of 44.1, it’s 24-bit instead of 16-bit, and the overall bitrate is about 4,000 kbps instead of 1,411 kbps.

[Gavyn]

But, you’d need expensive equipment to get the full benefit of such a file. Plus, it’d be MASSIVE.

[Gavyn]

Like, probably 100 megabytes easy lol

[Lance1965]

Yeah that is true but still not good enough if I really like a band. Plus I believe in supporting bands as much as possible.

[Gavyn]

I’m sure that at least SOME funds go to the band for those because in order to get that kind of file to sell, you’d have to get it from the source itself.

[Gavyn]

You can’t upscale audio, only images, so that means that since they got a higher quality music file, they must have gotten it from the studio.

[stormbreaker06]

what's not broken doesn't need to go extincted.

[Gavyn]

That would be CDs

[stormbreaker06]

that's what i'm talking about.

[Gavyn]

I wasn't sure, so I was just making sure.

[DamnSam]

First of all, best music quality comes from vinyl but no one can play vinyls in a car, plus you need the right stereo (thick cables get way better sound than the thin ones, bose is better than no-name, older is better than new one)...

But there is much knowlege about quality of music, I could talk hours about it

... but vinyl plates are getting new pressed since a few years

I use just online-radio from the digital possibilities... max 540kbps

With cds from the store you got the same problem like with spotify, biggest part goes to the label and managing, the artist gets almost nothing (5-20%)

I own a lot CDs
Most of them I got from little festivals or concerts where the band itself sells their own CDs
80% of them have the autograph signing on it, then I know I was there on the concert...
Plus the genres I like the most are, friendly said, unpopular, so most of it you can't find online or in store
(Because big labels won't give them contracts)

With the possibility to buy the cd from the band itself and get their autograph most times you can talk with bandmembers about their music, pros and cons...

With an orginal cd you got more than just music, the cover is most times like a litte book about the band and the genre, and often the complete lyrics (sometimes with guitartabs)

Rip a cd to digital and you lower the quality... if its played by instrument, electronic music not included

At make copies or rip to mp3 im bit different... I do download from piratebay because extreme popular band are allready rich...

If I play cds with autograph and someone asks for a copy, I deny that, because this cds I got from bands who invest most to all in their music (managing themselves, produce cds on own costs, rent the building for concerts on own costs, producing tshirts...) which costs a lot of time... but I remeber them when the concert is, or if they are a close friends I buy 3 of the same album and they get it on birthdays or so

2nd part I need to do in comments, too much for a opinion

[DamnSam]

Sidenote... best music quality you can get are concerts, and im not talking about the big ones. Go to little concerts, support the young bands, maybe local, you will be impressed how good they can play (every genre)

There are always new good bands arround the globe, new genres are there, some are mixed genres you can't define but pretty good sound

My Baby (NL)
First seen on a tiny festival in the woods... then on 2 concerts with free donation entry... that was 2012, now its like 35 bucks, but they still invest most by themselves and the sound is incredible...
I had their cd in my player for 4 months straight, then I switched to the 2nd album... yes there is a third one and "music in the club" comes out in the next weeks

never before there was a band I liked so much, and trust me, I understand a lot about MUSIC

[Gavyn]

Ripping to digital doesn't always lower quality, that's what a "lossless" format is for, like. flac or. wav, or even. alac

[Torari]

Rip to Flav and you get no loss. That's the entire point of a lossless format. And Cd's can get far better sound than vynly, though modern ones don't because of the loudness wars. Even so, they sound a hell of a lot better than spotify. The bitrate on a cd is 6x higher than most streaming services, more bits=more room=less compression=clearer sound.
5-20% of 20$ is a heck of a lot more than 0.13% of 10$.

[Gavyn]

@Torari This guy explains it well. Although, if you know the right places, you can get like 4,000 kbps music files as digital download. If you have the right equipment, that’s the only time I condone a digital download. Besides, I’m pretty sure that would sound much better than a vinyl record. :P the Audio is 24-bit instead of 16, and the sample rate is 96 kHz instead of 44.1.

[MrOracle]

About Point 1: you aren't comparing apples to apples, though.

I can take a CD audio file (PCM audio at 1411 kb/s) and compress it with FLAC down to about 800 kb/s. Much smaller bitrate - but EXACTLY the same audio result. Which goes to show that bitrate can't be directly compared.

Yes, MP3 is lossy, and yes, it IS possible to hear the difference between PCM/FLAC and a 320 kb/s MP3 with some music on a really high-quality system (or high-quality headphones and a good DAC). BUT... the difference is small, the file size savings is large, and the universal compatibility is very useful.

Having said that, i buy CDs too, and I have a massive collection of about 3400 right now. I don't like to BUY compressed files, because occasionally I want that extra quality or I need to edit the files for some reason.

As a mobile DJ, there's not really an option NOT to have the songs physically in your possession when you go to a show. Many places I play, there's no Internet signal at all, and even if there was, you can't count on it in a live situation where music MUST come out of your speakers, because you're getting paid to make sure that it does.

Now, if you want to argue about listening to those old 128k MP3s that you downloaded from Napster back in 2006... well, yeah, those suck and should be deleted and replaced by something better.

[OldSchool_Metalhead]

nice take man XD I do use youtube and pandora BUT I love CDs and Records like they are my children and use them more often. Like I use the streaming services for the music that I haven't bought just yet. always good to support fellow musicians :)

[Gavyn]

Yep! I'm a drummer myself, music is hard work.

[TsundereMatrix]

Good points. To add one of my points, I have an older vehicle that doesn’t have Bluetooth but has a CD player so I can play CDs but I can’t play music on my phone while driving. Also, with CDs, you pay once. No monthly subscription!

[Gavyn]

Yep! :D

[ItalianGuy777]

You don't need a monthly subscription to Spotify and they have got mostly everything that I want.

[TsundereMatrix]

@ItalianGuy777 but ads get annoying

[Gavyn]

They really do. With CDs, once you collect a bunch of CDs and rip them, you can take your absolute favorite songs out of them all and burn them to a/multiple blank CD (s) to effectively create a custom "playlist" that has absolutely no ads whatsoever.

[Eqīos]

You can still see CD covers on Spotify. And half a cent is quite a lot when you're getting millions of people listening to 10 of your songs a day. And if the sound difference is so small, who cares. As for the Ads: you can get premium, and that even comes with better sound options. And with premium, comes offline usage. And Spotify is about 20x easier to use than CDs, plus you can make playlists and stuff.

[Gavyn]

It's not small for me. The note changing feels a lot more dynamic and the drums and guitar riffs sooooo much clearer!

[Gavyn]

Also, about the CD covers, I know that, but there's just something about physically owning the cover that does it for me.

[Torari]

The artists don't even make half a cent. That was just a rough guess.
The real number for a small artist is something like 0.007 cents. And even that might be generous. Because spotify distributes the money evenly between all artists (regardless of the artists I listen to with my 10$), Selena gomez and other popular artists will get 4.9$, leaving the remaining 0.1$ for everyone else.

[Torari]

Rip your Cd's and you can also organise them into playlists on virtually any music player, be it hardware or software. The difference in sound quality is very noticeable with decent equipment. Even with good 100$ earphones you can hear it. Nor is spotify premiums sound quality much better, only 320kbps (as opposed to standard 248kbps, vs the 1411kbps in a cd

[Torari]

Cd's are just as simple as spotify, just put it in the player and press play.

[Gavyn]

@Torari This man gets it! :P

[ItalianGuy777]

Spotify rules and is the only music app I have ever used or ever wanted to use!

[Lance1965]

Same here. If I can't physically hold something it feels like I haven't paid for anything. Paying for a digital file is almost like buying air to me. I want the complete package and not just a small percentage of it.

[Gavyn]

Oh by the way, I know you posted this a while ago, but CD art is something you can’t see on Spotify, and both of the CD arts for the two CDs I showed the covers for are amazing.

[HARDendMeat]

I agree with most of it. I do however have a ton of cds, already ripped to my computer, and though covers are badass, they are nothing like vinyl. See Alice Cooper From The Inside or similar "concept" albums to see what i mean. So my cds have been collecting dust. I
Rarely have time to listen so am selling them. I dont want to break this sites terms of service so i ask for you to inbox me if interested in getting a list. It is mostly rock, alternative, and punk. No rap, hip hop, house, country, or blues.

Why did you have to go there about end times? I am hoping AI will take over soon enough so we dont destroy ourselves. Sophie will do that for us when she streamlines the world and finds us obsolete. Am i off topic again?

[tartaarsaus]

2. Spotify doesn't pay artists jack shit.

> Spotify paying more is unsustainable. They don't have the premium payers, like Apple, or 260 billion on the bank, like Apple, to pay far more to artists. So for artists either accept or negotiate a bit (for significant artists who actually have power, half a cent per play is fine) or Spotify is gone and they lose a big part of their income.

3.

> CD covers tend to be on the cover of a song on streaming services. Only difference is the feel, which is something different than 'CD covers are badass"

5.

> The likelihood of this happening is incredibly small. Actually, it's a neglectable chance. Especially in our lifetime. Hence, neglectable point. Also, you can often download the song from a streaming service.

/

How am I going to take CD's on my almost daily commute of 2 hours in the train? Streaming services are more convenient

[tartaarsaus]

Of course I could rip the songs from the CD.

That requires a DVD-drive (20 euros), my time and constantly buying CD's.

I don't have good enough headphones to get more out of music, so the quality argument is pretty pointless. So then, assuming I do the CD thing, I'll be stuck with a less convenient, far more expensive solution

[Torari]

I have 5000 songs with me, cd quality in my back pocket at all times. Just rip your cd and put it on a dap (for example, the Sansa clip or fiio x3) it takes 5 minutes. And I don't have to worry about losing connection in a tunnel, or forest, or more obscure road, or anywhere because it's all offline.

[tartaarsaus]

@Torari I already explained, the costs are far higher and its inconvenient to rip off music from CD's. I have to buy the DVD-drive and all the CD's and the extra time. It costs too much money and us inconvenient.

Also, any person can download music from Spotify are apple music if they own premium. That's 9 euros per month for unlimited, instead of that money for every CD. Then you never have to worry about losing connection.

[tartaarsaus]

Oh joy, and a Sansa clip is another 40 euros.

So CD solution is a) far more expensive, b) far more inconvenient and c) doesn't have any advantages for me except for sound which I won't really notice nor care about

[xBec14x]

I have a cd and DVD collection. It's useful cause for keeping them on things like your laptop or iTunes I don't wanna risk having to buy them again. Yeah it'll take forever to upload ALL of them but at least I'll still have them if something like that were to happen.

[Torari]

Agreed, spotify is the cancer of the music industry. Makes it nearly impossible for small artists to make a profit. And it sounds like ass (yes, even with premiums "high quality" option which is only equivalent to 320kbps mp3s).
Also, doesn't work if you have a slower connection.
For years now, I've been buying new Cd's every month, ripping them into Flac, and putting them on my FiiO X3 (dap). I get a week of battery life easily, nearly limitless space (a 256gb SD card) and superb sound quality anywhere i go.

[Rangers]

Then don't waste your money on spotify. Just buy the songs on Google play music and download them.

https://youtu.be/M5OasbWk78U

[Gavyn]

I actually forgot to address iTunes and Google Music, but uh... Point #1 applies to those too... Plus, they're less portable overall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5OasbWk78U

[Rangers]

You can't play CD's on your phone, so if I want to go longboarding and I want to listen to music, I have to take a cd player that is not only very fragile, but often unreliable and to my knowledge, they won't run bluetooth, which we've shifted to from wired headphones. They can get scratched and not run properly, and you have to seek the tracks, instead of just selecting the song you want to hear with one touch. About the cover, you get the same cover when you buy songs on Google Play Music, and the only space it takes up is memory, instead of desk space. As long as you have your phone, you can listen to as many songs as it can hold, rather than a couple dozen at a time.

[Rangers]

If you want to buy a song, you don't have to go anywhere, you can just buy it and download it right there, you don't have to worry about going to a store where they may or may not have what you're looking for, or buy empty CD's and spend an hour on the computer buying them and putting them on. If that wasn't enough, Google play doesn't make you buy songs you don't want, if your'e buying a CD, you're paying for the entire album.

[Gavyn]

You CAN however rip them to your computer and transfer the file to your phone to get a higher quality song :) Plus, I'm pretty sure MP3 downloads these days are more expensive because you're paying for the convenience, when in reality CDs are 99% of the time a better alternative. Especially when you consider that I've only ever seen 1 modern car radio that doesn't play CDs. Plus, if you ever have to replace your phone, you've got to go through the whole sign-in process to access your music, whereas if you have the files stored elsewhere (from CD rips) you just have to transfer them again, which is usually faster than downloading.

[Gavyn]

Also, the time it takes usually depends on what you're looking for. If all you need are MP3s, it takes probably 5-10 minutes for the entire album, due to compression. Lossless, AKA the better-than-mp3-quality, only takes an extra 5-10 minutes for the entire album. Hardly an hour. If it takes you an hour, you may just have a terrible computer, because those are the speeds that my low-end all-in-one does it in.

[Rangers]

You can download songs for free with some apps, as far as I know, you can't do that with CD's. And let's say you like a band that isn't well known at all, your chances of finding a CD for them is low. Again, you can put songs onto the CD, but that means no cool case for you. Most new cars have bluetooth so you can have a passenger connect their phone and play music. Or you could just hit play and listen through your phone's speaker. There's no doubt that CD's still have plenty of advantages over mp3 music, but I'd rather use mp3 music because it works better for me.

[Gavyn]

Bluetooth is highly compressed, thus losing sound quality. Downloading songs for free is stealing (a look back to point #2). I get it, it's a convenience thing. But from a technical standpoint, there's no arguing that CDs are better than mp3s lol

[MariaDeLuna]

I do agree with this. Although, it is good to have a way to preserve the music from your bought CDs as they are physically fragile, unlike vinyl records. Here's an article about how to rip music from CDs using ZEUS. zeus-app. me/tips/tips-screen-recorder/rip-music-from-cd

[jmstarling]

I agree. My only problem is that I live in a homeless shelter, and so most of my CDs are in storage at any given time, and most are buried, included most of my favorites, since I can reach only new acquisitions. I'm listening to a CD as I type this, though. Moving out into a space big enough to hold all my stuff will be expensive as hell, and the system tries to screw you, especially if you're single, by making you take a shared room instead of a 1-bedroom apartment.

[jmstarling]

The one downside to CDs is scratches. I am trying to listen to a copy of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. I bought at a thrift shop. I examined it carefully for scratches before I bought it, but both discs skip. :(

[Iamagoodguy]

I completely agree but cds have 1 problem space if you have a lot of music it would be best to buy the cd download it onto a hard drive and sell the cd or you could just do that as a backup

[Gavyn]

CDs are thin, and they make semi-compact CD carriers and protectors that allow you to have about 50 CDs stored into one big book case.

[Gottabsavagee]

I still download them... lol the quality isn’t thaaat bad

[Gavyn]

If you can hear it (all it takes is training your ear), trust me, it’s a lot lower :P

[AynonOMouse]

I still buy CDs on Amazon. They are often cheap, like $8 and they come with the digital download instantly too.
I load them all into my media player on my PC/laptop. I don't use any music streaming service. I like to have stuff I can keep.

[WeirdoWerdo]

I have offline use on Spotify? And I support Spotify fully because well it's a local business...

[Gavyn]

Point #5 stands above all else.

[WeirdoWerdo]

You know you can download music both illegaly on dare I say where? and legally on spotify? No ads for me either...

[Gavyn]

I am not going to promote piracy. You can choose to support or commit it, but you won't find me telling ANYONE to do it unless it's LITERALLY their only option for music. And even then, it's extremely difficult to pirate lossless music. That would either require using tor**** clients (which require you to pay for a VPN as well as running the big risk of viruses), or knowing where the right obscure places on the internet are. As it would happen, I know two of those places, but I don't give them out nor do I use them very often. Only time I resort to them is when I want foreign music. Just pay for music, dude...

[WeirdoWerdo]

I do... I use spotify so technically I do pay to listen to music.

[LegateLanius]

I usually buy songs to place them on my phone. I am a klutz.

[Gavyn]

We all have our preferred methods, this is just the most sensible in my honest opinion.

[AdmiralBailey]

I buy songs on iTunes and put them on an external harddrive. Sure all my songs are gone if I drop the harddrive but we all take risks. You can't carry your super expensive CD collection out of a housefire but all I need to do is grab my harddrive and run. All songs saved.

[Anonymous]

I have a free version of Spotify with all the benefits of premium.

[Gavyn]

That's called stealing. You're not only ripping off artists, now you're ripping of Spotify. That's just despicable! XD

[Gavyn]

off*

[ItalianGuy777]

No Spotify gives it to us for free that is not stealing anything.

[Opinion Owner]

No, I have a hacked version

[Coastjammer]

I agree with you and have a ton of CDs but I also use premium Spotify rn haha