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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 9:52 pm 
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In Defense of the CD

I expected David Bowie's death to make me nostalgic, but not this way.

Like many people, I spent the days after his passing relistening to Bowie records I hadn't played in years. One night, it felt time to revisit Low, his 1977 plunge into Berlin weirdness. I plugged in my swanky new wireless boombox, called up the album on a streaming service and, as I'd done numerous times before, prepared to be enveloped by sound. Instead, I was swallowed up in a digital nightmare. Whether it was the wireless connection or some other technical gremlin, it took what felt like an entire day at Coachella for the music to start up, and when it finally did, the connection cut in and out, the volume lurching from soft to loud each track.

Finally, in frustration, I returned to a now-archaic ritual: I went to the shelves, pulled out my copy of Low on CD, slid it into the player and – boom! – listened to the album straight through, with zero issues and lusher sound. As it was playing, I couldn't help but wonder: When and why did the CD become public sonic enemy Number One, the most reviled audio format since quad? Why, again, are we abandoning these things?

I know it sounds insane at this point in time, but it wasn't that long ago – two decades, more or less – that many of us actually lauded the arrival of those shiny round discs. Our vinyl was growing scratchy and warped, and cassettes, for all their portability, had serious audio flaws and could break easily. Those gleaming sonic coasters weren't just smaller than LPs; they made music old and new sound clear and clean. Proud anti-digital warrior Neil Young will disagree, but it was time for an audio upgrade, and what we heard – clarity of sound, separation of instruments – was damn impressive in those early CD days.

Yes, a CD cost more than an LP did in the late Eighties and early Nineties, and those soon-dispatched cardboard longboxes were a massive waste of paper. Every so often, I'd buy a disc – the initial pressing of John Mellencamp's Scarecrow, for instance – that sounded brittle and shrill compared to its vinyl predecessor. In its first CD incarnation, Derek & the Dominos' Layla was picked so clean that the desperate, sweaty passion of its performances was almost lost. But in my experience, those were exceptions. And thanks to the way labels dug into their vaults to exploit the CD format, a tremendous amount of out-of-print or never-released material was suddenly made available. (Elvis Costello's Live at the El Mocambo, originally a rare promo, jumps to mind.)

Right now, nobody seems to remember any of those upshots. In fact, people don't seem to be just tired of the CD; it feels as if they're actively calling for its demise. When vinyl began dying off in the early Nineties, many people, me included, mourned its passing on many levels. But we didn't dance in the streets that it was in its death throes, the way so many seem to be doing these days with the CD. A friend recently called to ask what he should do with his shelves of discs, since many of his friends were strongly urging him to chuck them. That's right: People were actually saying he should throw his CDs in the garbage. (You can recycle them, you know.)

Where's all this hate coming from? Partly it's about cost: You don't always have to pay (or pay much) for music anymore, and even the monthly fee for a service like Spotify is the same price as a single CD. (On Amazon, for instance, you'll still have to shell out $12 or $13 for the latest Adele, Bowie and Charlie Puth albums on disc.) If I were to do an extremely diligent vacuuming of my home, I would probably find dozens of broken plastic tabs from CD cases that hit the ground and broke, so there's that annoyance, too. No wonder CD sales continue to drop with each year; not even those two-plus-million CD sales of Taylor Swift's 1989 can stave off its imminent death.

In some ways, CD loathing feels like a manifestation of anger toward the music business establishment – the Jeb Bush of entertainment media. As anyone who bought new releases or replaced old vinyl on CD will tell you, the major labels experienced a huge financial boon thanks to the compact disc. And as those Amazon prices dismayingly prove, CDs didn't really get much cheaper later on, despite what we were once told to believe. In a world in which "major label" and "A&R executive" are often considered evil phrases – no matter all the momentous, enduring records released by majors and all the wheat-and-chaff separating done by skilled A&R execs over the decades – the CD is the symbol of music biz avarice, the one-percenter of pop.

All this said, I do love streaming. My boom box usually works just fine, and I don't remotely miss the thought of carting along a small container of CDs on buses or airplanes or to the gym. But as I experienced that night with Low, it's time to hit the pause button on CD disgust.

Despite dire warnings about oxidation ("disc rot") that would make the discs unplayable, they still sound damn good – better audio than most streaming services, at least right now. (Old CD-Rs, on the other hand, are problematic.)

They still offer up music-geek necessities like credits and liner notes if you want to know who wrote that song or played that guitar or which song was sampled within the track.

They remain the last format to truly honor the idea of the album, which, for those who still care about long-form works, matters as much as cherry-picking a few songs off one record and then another.

And they still take up less space than LPs.

So remind me again why we're sending the CD to the firing squad?

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/featu ... d-20160204


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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 10:48 pm 
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I'll remind the author:

Because all the "cool" kids say so.

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 11:41 pm 
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Proud enemy of the United States--again!

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DanO wrote:
I'll remind the author:

Because all the "cool" kids say so.

The message I'm getting from this article is that it's more important to be aligned with some perceived collective than to reach one's one conclusions based on one's own thoughts and experiences: "We mourned the loss of vinyl, but we now hate CD's, yet we love streaming, but we don't remember the 'upshots' or whatever..."

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 12:54 am 
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I love Music & hate brickwalled audio

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The other side..............

I remember after hearing the industry phrase "perfect sound forever" I just HAD to replace my large LP collection (including lots of Japanese pressings) with cd.

His Bowie reference is apropos: The first time I ALMOST realized all wasn't well in mudville was when I bought the original RCA Bowie Ziggy Stardust cd. It sounded real "phasey" (early lame a/d convertors were the likely cause). Even though in an a/b comparison my Japan LP destroyed the RCA cd sonically, I decided it must just be me & sold the LP & kept the cd (I've never liked having more than one copy of a title unless each had different bonus trax, etc).

2 or 3 years later I learned the truth; on a QUALITY turntable, vinyl destroyed early cd by comparison, especially on the garbage early cd players (my first 2 were real garbage: a Kenwood followed by a Denon).

Now with hi-res digital we've ALMOST caught up with Vinyl sonically, + no scratches, warps, inner groove distortion, etc. That's why I've gone there.

I also freely admit that by the mid 90's NON-BRICKWALLED cd's started sounding pretty decent because the hardware at both ends had finally discovered quality.

Re early cd's: even before the bright, loud ones (the first I heard of those were the Ryko Bowies, which sound tame compared to today's "DR5's"), a lot of the early cd's were done on crummy early a/d convertors, & often from a 5th generation safety copy. One of the worst sounding cd's I ever heard was the 1st edition of Jackson Browne's superb Late For The Sky.

And if anyone ever heard the early ESD Bruce Cockburns, they were mastered so quietly, I'd be surprised if they even used 8 bits, much less 16!

That's one of the biggest reasons I bitch so much about brickwalling: for the last 20 years or so we've had the technology to make cd's sound pretty darn good; but a small group of IDIOT engineers with destroyed hearing sabotage the sound quality, & make many releases unlistenable for me.

It's especially STOOPID with hi-res releases at DR4-DR10; where almost the entire purchasing audience agrees with me!

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 3:42 am 
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I was just talking with students yesterday at school about how what they do with music is impersonal and unfeeling, and they actually listened to me and told me the reason they take music for free is because they think the idea of paying for it is just plain bizarre.

I asked why they feel it's OK to pay for tickets to a concert and why it's OK to steal new music and put it on their phones and iPads and they said they consider the new music a way of getting them to the concerts.

Not sure what that means but at least we had a good talk about it and a few of them do listen to CDs and vinyl-but just a few.

Let's face it-this is what they are growing up with, so they are just doing what everyone else does...

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 3:54 am 
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I love Music & hate brickwalled audio

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For quite awhile, all but the very top sellers have made most of there money off touring & especially merchandise (t-shirts, etc) sold at shows. Even before downloading, unless an artist was a very good seller, the record co's made 99% of the money. Especially since the mega mergers.

Pete, I didn't know you were a teacher. What do subjects you teach?

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 12:03 pm 
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So stealing music has become the new radio?


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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 12:38 pm 
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David Beller wrote:
So stealing music has become the new radio?


No, it's the new sense of entitlement.


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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:45 pm 
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Geff R. wrote:
For quite awhile, all but the very top sellers have made most of there money off touring & especially merchandise (t-shirts, etc) sold at shows. Even before downloading, unless an artist was a very good seller, the record co's made 99% of the money. Especially since the mega mergers.

Pete, I didn't know you were a teacher. What do subjects you teach?


Middle school-all subjects.

I am a student of life ha ha.

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:47 pm 
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Mark MN wrote:
David Beller wrote:
So stealing music has become the new radio?


No, it's the new sense of entitlement.


That's the problem.

The kids think it's actually there to be taken!

That just isn't going to change. The damage was done by Napster and the record industry wasn't prepared for it.

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 2:19 pm 
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And people were mad at Metallica for taking on Napster.

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 3:04 pm 
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The Last Hippie

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i'll never forge the line in "the social network -"you wanna buy a tower records, eduardo?" shawn parker lost, but the record companies had no idea what they did when won, they effectively cut off their noses to spite their faces. at least with napster, people were still buying stuff and then downloading it on the internet, now, there is no 'buying' anymore.

i, like IP, talk about his all this all of the time with my students, and they so noting wrong with "stealing" music, they grew up with it and it is the norm for them.

and as for the original post, this is just my opinion of course, but i think that the record companies really thought that could make just as much money with downloaded music as they did with vinyl and CD's, so they backed downloading: lock, stock and barrel....and no one bought it.

the old people said - "i bought this twice (or in some cases more than twice), i am not going to buy it a third, fourth or fifth time and not even have a physical product to show for it. which is why., in my opinion again, we still see so many CD's being reissued every week. along with every new album of any consequence that gets released, gets released on compact disc....you know why? because people still fucking buy them, that's why. i remember when they said that they would no longer be making vinyl, if you want it, you have to buy it on CD they said, they never said that about CD's yet....hmmmmmmmm, i wonder why. because people still fucking buy them. if they weren't making money they wouldn't make CD's. and i don't give a shit what the vinyl adherents say, vinyl is a nostalgic, very expensive, prone to wear out, niche.

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 5:47 pm 
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Invisible Pedestrian wrote:
Mark MN wrote:
David Beller wrote:
So stealing music has become the new radio?


No, it's the new sense of entitlement.


That's the problem.

The kids think it's actually there to be taken!

That just isn't going to change. The damage was done by Napster and the record industry wasn't prepared for it.

In fairness, most people are using Pandora and other streaming services and not downloading illegally as much anymore.


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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 6:37 pm 
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I love Music & hate brickwalled audio

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Invisible Pedestrian wrote:
Mark MN wrote:
David Beller wrote:
So stealing music has become the new radio?


No, it's the new sense of entitlement.


That's the problem.

The kids think it's actually there to be taken!

That just isn't going to change. The damage was done by Napster and the record industry wasn't prepared for it.


I've been told by several people who have studied the "millennials" that the "sense of entitlement" does not just apply to downloading; the consensus of the small circle i run in is that they tend to be that way about everything. Though being on disability myself, i don't know how much I can legitimately criticize them.

Renny, if you're reading this thread, I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts as being a teacher like Pete you must be exposed to this.

I do feel that (at least hypothetically) that many of us here on ICE who have PAID $50k-$100k over our lifetime for music & movies & have faithfully paid to "upgrade" to every stinking new format of the same titles do deserve a break; how many time are we supposed to pay for an inferior copy of the same intellectual property? At least Pono has a policy that if they issue an upgrade of something you've previously bought from them, the upgrade is free of charge. Unfortunately, too little, too late imo.

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 6:40 pm 
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Geff R. wrote:
At least Pono has a policy that if they issue an upgrade of something you've previously bought from them, the upgrade is free of charge.

Have they had to make good on that offer yet?

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 6:48 pm 
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I love Music & hate brickwalled audio

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I think on CSN #1. They did do a 2nd superior, exclusive hi-res remaster on it. I don't go to there site often. Oddly Neil Young's site has CSN in hi-res, but last time I looked NO CSNY!

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 7:41 pm 
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Renny wrote:
i'll never forge the line in "the social network -"you wanna buy a tower records, eduardo?" shawn parker lost, but the record companies had no idea what they did when won, they effectively cut off their noses to spite their faces. at least with napster, people were still buying stuff and then downloading it on the internet, now, there is no 'buying' anymore.

i, like IP, talk about his all this all of the time with my students, and they so noting wrong with "stealing" music, they grew up with it and it is the norm for them.

and as for the original post, this is just my opinion of course, but i think that the record companies really thought that could make just as much money with downloaded music as they did with vinyl and CD's, so they backed downloading: lock, stock and barrel....and no one bought it.

the old people said - "i bought this twice (or in some cases more than twice), i am not going to buy it a third, fourth or fifth time and not even have a physical product to show for it. which is why., in my opinion again, we still see so dad many CD's being reissued every week. along with every new album of any consequence that gets released, gets released on compact disc....you know why? because people still fucking buy them, that's why. i remember when they said that they would no longer be making vinyl, if you want it, you have to buy it on CD they said, they never said that about CD's yet....hmmmmmmmm, i wonder why. because people still fucking buy them. if they weren't making money they wouldn't make CD's. and i don't give a shit what the vinyl adherents say, vinyl is a nostalgic, very expensive, prone to wear out, niche.


Renny's right here and it's not an "old man gripe" or anything like that.

Kids and most people (especially us) truly love music.

So, why is it so acceptable to kids (and adults) to just steal music?

It destroyed an industry.

Spotify and other streaming services are now getting artists some money, but it's peanuts.

Vinyl is for hipsters and will not save the industry.

It's such a crime to see music as the one art form that somehow got to be seen as "up for grabs".

CDs are not the reason that the music industry is dying.

In fact, like Rennys says Cds keep coming out because people are buying them-mostly us!

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 8:01 pm 
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I love Music & hate brickwalled audio

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I really don't agree that downloading destroyed an industry. At least the film co's have FINALLY figured out the charge for streaming model; it may kill the over the air TV stations & even possibly the HBO's of the world; but the studios are goping to do just fine thatnk you. It's been shown that lots of folks will pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.

As far as music, I feel that mp3's are similar to a tape of FM radio in quality. I used to record broadcasts on a cassette deck when i was a teen, & if i liked something I bought it.

Consolidation, lack of growing quality artists, lack of education on why mp3's suck, lack of diversity at radio, lack of promoting new QUALITY artists & overpriced new releases (until very recently) is what destroyed an industry.

And other then NEW ARTISTS who may be denied the chance for mass exposure; it really mostly hurt the corporate labels (my heart bleeds); as for years almost all artists have made most of there actual revenue from touring, doing there own releases on there own label (i.e. cutting out Universal & Sony) & selling non music merchandise (t-shirts, etc).

And the issue with new artists not getting the exposure they need was 100% caused by the corporate record co's supporting pop crap like Britney instead of supporting the next Thin Lizzy, Scorpions, Bob Dylan or The Beatles.

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 9:05 pm 
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Geff R. wrote:
Though being on disability myself, i don't know how much I can legitimately criticize them.


You've already paid your way. My buddy lost part of his leg 3 yrs ago and had to actually hire a lawyer who specializes in Social Security suits. My buddy finally won his due (SS Disability). He paid his way for decades.

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 9:07 pm 
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I love Music & hate brickwalled audio

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I was very fortunate, in that I got approved on 1st try & didn't need an attorney.

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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 9:09 pm 
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Geff R. wrote:
I really don't agree that downloading destroyed an industry.


It did. The rise of torrent sites helped it immensely. It's easy to get a new album that way.

On the other hand, yeah, the quality of newer bands is in the shitter. I downloaded off of torrents sites a long time ago and it was specifically to check out what so and so sounded like. If it didn't turn my crank, I deleted the shit. If I liked it, I went and bought it.


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 Post subject: In Defense of the CD
PostPosted: Sat Feb 06, 2016 9:09 pm 
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Geff R. wrote:
I was very fortunate, in that I got approved on 1st try & didn't need an attorney.


That's good for you. :thumbsup:


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