http://variety.com/2017/music/news/eigh ... 202395630/



Now that Record Store Day 2017 is history, it’s way past time for you last remaining Luddites to get busy. Sure, you’ve been collecting those shiny, silver discs since the epiphany of hearing “Sgt. Pepper” or Steely Dan’s “Aja” inspired you to replace all those scratchy LPs with pristine, “lifetime-guaranteed” compact discs. But now that streaming has taken over, they’re probably either gathering dust on seldom-touched shelves or, more likely, sitting in boxes in your attic, basement or garage. While it’s possible that CDs could have an unexpected second act like vinyl has, don’t hold your breath. So, short of a garage sale, what’s an inveterate CD collector to do?

Marty bought my promo copies for years until I finally parted company – painfully – with the entire 3,500-odd collection when I downsized from my house into an apartment. As he kept warning me while I foolishly clung to my collection, my CDs went from being valued at $10,000 to $3,000 in less than five years – a 70 percent drop that mirrors what’s been going on in the marketplace. Chart analyst BuzzAngle Music reports CD sales dropped another 11.1 percent in the first quarter of 2017, from 20 million copies to 17 million. Meanwhile vinyl is up 22.5 percent and even cassettes are rising to the tune of 64 percent — but both are still small players in the big picture (just 11,000 cassettes were sold in the quarter).

One thing is true, the value of a CD collection dropped like a stone over the past few years.

I would just pack them in a big box and send them to Jimbo.

I always wonder what will happen or does happen to people with these large collections that do pass away? I doubt family members swoop in and say "yay, I've always wanted his first press mint Sgt Pepper"!!

And we really haven't seen a rise in used CD stores anywhere.

I don't have all that many CDs myself, but yeah, I have decided that with my comic
books that I will be slowly divesting myself of them in my remaining years. Not many
would be able to fully appreciate what I have, so I am really the best person to see that
they go own to others who would appreciate them.

You know, like Jimbo.

Nobody should be collecting for some imagined resale value. Collect what you love because you want to own it.

Kind of what happened to vinyl in the 80's and look at it now. Will CD's ever return to it's heights, no expectation for that BUT if inventories decline AND if the discs are above the generic version(s) you still have value. Remember, you need only one buyer for that asset.

My biggest concern is not so much about the delivery device (CD, LP, streaming) as I am in people's overall interest. Personally, there's just too much of everything out there. And it's not just in CD's, it everywhere. Deflation continues... I'll stop here before I turn this into an economics conversation.

Obviously we should will all our CDs and comic books to Jimbo since he would appreciate them the most and will out live all of us.

Ever notice how every discussion eventually ends up with Jimbo being the last survivor of us all, and getting all of our CDs?

But would he play them?

He's kind of the Keith Richards of CD collecting.

If anybody needs my mailing address, send me a PM.

Anybody who wants to just dump their metal or prog CDs can feel free to donate them to me.

I wish every time I was looking for an older CD that I could find a copy for a buck or two. Every time (and I mean every time) I am looking for an old pressing back from the 80's I generally end up paying at least $20 for a VG+ copy or better.

went to 3 stores last weekend (CD exchange, a big chain in northeast ohio) and for the first time since i have began going there 45 years ago they had the prices of CD's lowered via a black sharpie over the price tag..

most $5 CD's were marked down to $3, and Most $8, $9, $10 CD' were marked down to $6 and $7....and i still did not buy a single thing used.

however, i got $13 for 7 CD's i traded in, which i thought was quite high, and i bought the new van morrison CD for $12 + tax.

and no none of the 7 i traded in were anything special at all. i'm pretty sure that they are now buying strictly on what they need, as they turned down 8 other CD's that i offered for trade. they never do that, they usually just super low-ball like 25 cents or 50 cents, they never say no like they did that day.

so, that tells me that they are also cutting back. even their vinyl bins were overflowing with product.

on another note, it seems to me that the 'buybacks' chain has gone under, at least around here. a year ago there were 7 buybacks stores within an hour of my house, and now there are none.

I'd never sell my CDs.

That's just crazy.

Although at first the CD format’s benefits included both durability and portability, George jokes about the initial “lasts a lifetime” promise, pointing out radio stations found that repeated playing “diminished them and made them difficult to play.” The metal in CDs eventually oxidizes, he explains, crucially losing digital information that can never be recovered, making them inferior to vinyl for long-term musical data storage. “Like a leaf, it goes brown,” says George. He also points out CD players are rapidly disappearing from the marketplace, with one of the final death knells sounded when car manufacturers removed them from auto dashboards.

I don't know if people read this paragraph but this affects everyone who has a large collection and hasn't played those really old purchases from years ago, do CDs really last forever?

Also the real fact that new cars will not have CD players anymore.

THIS! In a big way. I see this question a lot on guitar boards - "which of these guitars will be a better investment?" And the answer inevitably gets to "If you're buying it for an investment, don't." It's nearly impossible to predict what will become that unicorn that everybody has to have in the future, and even if you do luck into it, you'll probably hold onto it for too long hoping the price continues to rise, then hold it too long again thinking the inevitable decline in price can't continue.



I suspect my family will spend several hours getting fingerprints on discs then putting them back in the wrong places.

I have never encountered "CD Rot" or loss of content. Not ever. My guess is that happens to people who don't take care of their discs, leave them in hot cars, have them covered in fingerprint grease, scratched, etc.

I remember when I was so anal about CDs, that I knew if anyone had touched one or if the label wasn't exactly horizontal as it lay in its holder.

If I cared about collecting value, I wouldn't be a music fan.

Thing is, there are loads of rare titles on CD that go for a lot of $ still, and do we really need to even have these discussions when every week has loads more Deluxe CDs, remasters and box sets released?

Weren't CDs supposedly dead 5-10 years ago?

I will always buy them because I couldn't possibly catch up with all that I've missed due to finances.

One thing I should do one day is play all my "original" CDs and see if they have suffered any loss. I have one wall of CDs that are essentially my initial foray into CDs and are my oldest. Now some were replaced with remasters over the years so it wouldn't be prefect but it is interesting.
There has to be thousands of CDs in my collection that haven't been played since the 90s.

Btw...the author isn't saying that CDs were bought to have a resale value one day but is just stating a fact that the CDs you bought over the years at plus $10-15 a pop have not retained that value and are essentially monetarily worthless. Like all things, they depreciate.

But people do have to put some kind of value on them as they are sold in secondary and third party sites.

I personally never bought a CD thinking one day I would be rich.

We have had threads about how "the compact disc is dead" every year, multiple times per year, since the ICE boards joined IMWAN. Eleven years' worth of these doomsday articles written by mainstream writers who frankly sound like they never cared much about music in the first place.

The funniest one was when John found a blogger who had literally made up a story in which "a record company executive" told him that CDs would no longer be manufactured at the end of the year ... however many years ago that was.

Yet the number of releases on CD seems to be holding steady based on the number of threads we do every year -- it might be increasing a little! -- even as sales are transitioning down into a niche product. But that niche is where compact discs will safely remain for a long time yet to come, continuing to be produced for people like us who want them. Seriously, don't worry about it.

But I really don't want to see these kinds of articles anymore. I couldn't care less about what's supposed to be cool or the next big thing or the latest hip media format or delivery system. We should be focused on continuing our enjoyment of collecting CDs, not mourning them.