- cross-posted to:
- music@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- music@lemmy.world
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CDs are just digital files plus waste. Vinyl is a musical ritual.
CD is still the only way to buy a digital popular music in most countries.
Don’t forget digital music stores like Qobuz and www.bandcamp.com.
Artists get more money when you buy their music outright instead of stream it.
Bandcamp was bought by Epic Games, who fired half the staff and sold off the remainder to some kind of nebulous music licencing platform. I wouldn’t cheer them on much longer, I see dark days ahead.
Seriously? Fucking hell, that’s depressing.
It isn’t owned by epic games anymore, it was bought by Songtradr. https://www.songtradr.com/blog/posts/songtradr-bandcamp-acquisition/
Yup that’s the “nebulous music licencing platform” I was referring to
No it’s not. The iTunes Music Store is available in the majority of countries in the world. Plus there are other services that cover some of the other countries. Vanishingly few people can choose only a CD.
You don’t own the music you license through iTunes though.
Pretty sure it’s DRM-free.
Only since 2007…
EMI was the first domino to fall after Job’s famous Thoughts on Music open letter.
The other labels followed suit shortly after.
That open letter will be old enough to vote in less than ten months.
No, I’m certain 2007 was just six or seven years ago, right? Right?
You don’t own the music you buy on a CD either. You are buying a license to the music and physical storage of it. If you want you can burn your iTunes songs on a CD and you’re in the same situation.
You own a copy of a copyrighted material. The copy is yours. No DRM, no remotely removing your ability to use it.
You own your own hard drive. That copy of an iTunes song is yours. No DRM, no remotely removing your ability to use it.
No DRM, no remotely removing your ability to use it.
Yet.
How is that different from iTunes?
You do know that the content in the iTunes Store isn’t the same in each country?
I am aware, but unless you’re saying iTunes doesn’t sell pop music in most markets, it’s not really relevant.
Many people don’t listen to local music or pop music. It’s very relevant if you can only get real music on a physical medium.
And out of everything available iTunes is your first choice too?
Soms people here on Lemmy are even more insufferable than any other social media.
Don’t you dare buy a cd with the music you like. BUY FROM ITUNES, while in the next thread they say FUCK APPLE.
You completely missed the point of what you are replying to. The point isn’t that you SHOULD buy music from online sources instead of CDs. The point is that CDs aren’t “the only way to buy a digital popular music in most countries.” They are directly contradicting a point someone else made by saying CDs are not the only way to buy digital popular music in most countries. They even specifically said popular music, not whatever niche music some random person is into. They also mentioned iTunes because it services 119 markets, which directly counterpoints the statement about being available in most countries. They never advocated for iTunes like you imply.
It’s almost like you lack reading comprehension. “Soms people here on Lemmy are even more insufferable than any other social media.”
Many people don’t listen to local music or pop music.
I was responded to a comment about the availability of pop music.
And out of everything available iTunes is your first choice too?
Yes, the largest digital music store is, naturally, the first one I searched for availability numbers for (119 markets).
I don’t really understand the rest of your rant.
I think you can use iTunes as a catch all for sales of digital files, including bandcamp. As opposed to a physical disc or a subscription. FWIW I was just looking this up on the RIAA website and you can run reports by year or year over year comparing media options. It’s really interesting to see which year each format peaked. Eg 8track 1978, cassette 1989, CD 2000, digital file 2012. It doesn’t include limewire /napster (non-revenue) so the unit counts are a bit depressed. I wish it included pre-iPod mp3 players and blank CD sales.
Internet access and existing devices would also play a role, but I don’t know a region like that to comment further
The music on iTunes is compressed and doesn’t sound as good as a CD does.
Not to mention they can revoke your access to your music on iTunes. No one can take away your CD unless they break into your house!
Even a human with very good hearing and knowledge of how a song is supposed to sound cannot tell the difference between CD quality audio and 256k AAC like iTunes uses.
Don’t believe all the nonsense audiophiles keep spewing out. Human ears suck. If we hadn’t had our giant brains to compensate, we’d be practically deaf.
This. People assume that because it’s “compressed” it must sound flatter, less dynamic, or just vaguely worse than uncompressed audio, despite the fact that audio compression specifically uses psychoacoustic models to remove the bits of data that our human ears and brains cannot hear to begin with.
Expectation bias is a helluva drug.
Even FLAC is compressed. Which is how I procure my music because I have the storage space.
FLAC is compressed, but unlike lossy codecs like AAC and MP3, FLAC is fully lossless. Lossy codecs delete information the authors believe you won’t notice, lossless compression keeps all the data and just tries to fit it in a smaller space. The original recording can be perfectly reproduced (taking into account sample rate and depth).
Yup, although that doesn’t stop some weirdos out there claiming that CDs sound better than FLAC.
psychoacoustic models
Sometimes they mess up. Actually only ever noticed it once and that was years ago CD vs. ogg vorbis at full quality level, this track. Youtube version is even worse, it seems (from memory): The guitars kicking in around 30 seconds should be harsh and noisy as fuck like nothing you’ve ever heard, they’re merely distorted on youtube.
Then lossy codecs are a bad idea for archival reasons as you can’t recode them without incurring additive losses – each codec has a different psychoacoustic model, each deletes different stuff. Thus, FLAC definitely has a place.
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Killer samples do happen, sure but vorbis at Q9? I’m highly dubious. That track in particular just sounds badly recorded to begin with. If you have that same version in FLAC i would be interested to see some ABX test results or test it myself.
For archival purposes, though, I agree FLAC is the way to go.
I would guess that the fact that people aren’t all using some kind of standard-response reference headphones is probably going to have a considerably-larger impact on the human-perceivable fidelity of the audio reproduction than any other factor.
This is true. That said, I’ve seen people claim that nobody can tell the difference between lossless and 128kbps mp3, but that’s complete bullshit.
Though once you get above 192, it’s pretty indistinguishable.
Would really depend on the version of MP3. The first versions had some major issues with artifacts being introduced. People probably listened to that and concluded all compressed music must be shit. Later versions were much better, even though I would think 128k is probably too low and would be noticeable with some effort. I agree, starting at 192k and people can’t tell anymore.
Does anybody use MP3 anymore? I don’t really know to be honest.
Not to mention they can revoke your access to your music on iTunes.
iTunes got rid of DRM a decade and a half ago.
Sure but if you don’t have the song downloaded on your PC and they remove it from your library you can’t redownload it.
Most people aren’t backing up the songs they buy on iTunes.
Thank goodness they’ll let you redownload your CD if it gets damaged…
I don’t agree. It depends how the song was ripped and how the original was mastered. I did so much A/B testing at the time and found I couldn’t tell the difference between VBR 256 AAC and the CD. 128k mp3 sounded worse, 320k mp3 is pretty safe, but there were a lot of improvements to LAME over the years so newer files sound better. The biggest difference is the mastering. Generally 1980s reissues of 1970s analog masters sound worst, 1990s is best, 2000s everything got remastered to make it loud and crush dynamic range. The only real innovation since is Dolby Atmos on Apple Music which really brings alive the promise of 1970s quadraphonic.
iTunes music store is not available in mainland China, which is 1/5 of the world’s population
Yes, but this is about what is available in most countries, not what is available in all countries. That still leaves 119 markets and 80% of the world’s population being available. Pretty sure that counts as “most.”
Also, the point isn’t about iTunes, it’s about alternatives to CDs for digital music. China likely has some online store to buy music, but I have no idea.
To make the claim 80% of population has it you have to have the numbers, since South Korea doesn’t have it, a lot of African countries (just going down the list, Algeria, Angola, Benin, etc) don’t have it
It looks like half of the world doesn’t have iTunes music purchases
They do, maybe, but the streaming services often can’t get the original master so they play rerecordings of the songs
I just pirate it
vinyl is cool, but cd is the digital recording, mastered in a known manner, to a high degree. It’s the most consistent form of product you will get from music. Plus it’s a physically collectable thing. And it’s cheap.
I’m not made of money over here.
I’m not made of money
Capitalism: “Oh, yes, you are.”
the thing that capitism doesnt understand about me, is that i don’t care about money.
deleted by creator
If you’re going for quality, you’d just buy the flac file though
If you’re going for quality, you’d just buy the flac file though
Audio CDs are also lossless, often cheaper than buying the FLAC files, and can be extracted to FLAC files. Only reason to buy FLAC is if you want the convenience of not buying a physical product and the quality of said physical product.
Maybe I should have written a longer comment to elaborate on what I meant. What I meant to say is that if your primary concern is sound quality rather than the experience physical media gives you, I would assume a flac file would be a more popular option due to its convenience.
CDs often ship WAV audio to my knowledge. Doesnt really make sense to encode anything down anyway. Unless you’re shipping a box set in a CD maybe? Even then 320kb MP3 is basically imperceptible to even the most astute listeners.
I didn’t mean to imply CD stores sounds files of worse quality, only that if you aren’t after the experience vinyl provides, digital files is a more convenient form of media.
i mean yeah. But if you’re buying an album already. CDs are really easy to find used for like 10 bucks or so. You can buy them new for only a few bucks more than the digital price. It’s a great option if you want something physical.
You can still rip CDs straight to wav and dump em to a media player in like 12 minutes though. It’s basically free.
Vinyls break easily and sound kinda meh, even with decent equipment. CDs have fairly good quality and are easy to store and handle. Honestly I get why people like vinyl, big discs are fun and tinkering with analog stuff is its own hobby, but when it comes to collecting I prefer CDs.
I like old vinyl because these are my grandparents’ and parents’ records which I have heard myself a few times in my childhood.
I don’t get recording digital data, then writing it to an analog medium which is then sold 15 times more expensive than it historically was.
No one can take the music on your CD’s from you. I bought loads if sings and albums from Google Music and they are all gone now
This is a reason to avoid DRM, not digital files in general.
(My condolences for being bitten, though.)
Google Music had DRM free downloads, so the DRM wasn’t the problem - it was that they didn’t download them before Google Music was shuttered.
No one can take my flacs either. 🐷🧇
RIP
🐷🧇
😢
I’m glad I saved my CDs, as I was able to rerip them to FLAC and undo the mistake my juvenile self made of ripping to WMA. I still keep the CDs to play in my car from time to time
CDs are digital files plus ownership.
Once you download a music file, nobody is taking it away from you.
And CDs can have DRM just like any other digital media.
No, a CD that carries the actual CD logo cannot have DRM. It is true that the music industry has often pushed ‘enhanced’ formats that look like CDs that do; SACD, for example.
Ownership is different to possession, and I want to actually own my music, not just possess the files.
No, a CD that carries the actual CD logo cannot have DRM.
Is this true? If so, I’m guessing it’s purely due to limitations in the hardware, rather than lack of will? I can’t imagine CDs coming out these days and not having some sort of DRM.
Nintendo was able to figure it out with GameCube games…
You can definitely put DRM-protected content onto the physical CD media - that is exactly what SACD is. But then it isn’t an audio CD, even if it will play on a regular CD player. Search for “nonstandard or corrupted” on the Wikipedia page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio .
It’s my understanding that only conforming CDs can carry the CD logo. It’s usually on the case, not the disc itself, and it isn’t always there, particularly when the case isn’t a jewel case. All the same, I think that most things that look like CDs are conformant.
Yeah, but I imagine that CD logo is a “stamp of quality” of sorts that tells you that the disc inside fits an agreed upon, unified set of standards. And one of those standards is “no DRM.”
Point was, if that standard was created or updated today, there’s no shot that they wouldn’t require DRM.
Maybe I’m wrong though and that’s not at all what the CD logo means.
That’s true, but they did already try it and it didn’t catch on. There’s a section about it on the Wikipedia page (“Copy protection”).
That section also mentions that Philips stated that these discs couldn’t have the CD logo on them. Since Philips was behind SACD, together with Sony, you’d think they wouldn’t have imposed that restriction on themselves if they had the choice.
I download my MP3 and FLAC files and then I own them and play them on any device I want.
There certainly are some services where you can legally download MP3 and FLAC files. Bandcamp, for example. If you download your music like that then, yes, you do own it.
But I’m not aware of anywhere you can get music from the major music labels nowadays (Amazon used to sell MP3s and so did Google Play Music, but neither does any more). If you do, I’d love to know.
On the other hand, you can still - although it’s getting harder - buy CDs for major label artists and then you own the music (that copy of it).
True, CDs are the most reliable way to get the digital file.
7digital is a site where I’ve bought major label music and get the files. If it’s not on bandcamp it’s often on 7digital. They don’t have everything though.
Thanks for the tip - they do seem to have a lot. I had assumed that the labels had made it unprofitable for that type of service to exist. I guess maybe it’s simply that there is more money to be made from streaming.
Amazon does still sell digital music files, you just need to find the “digital music” section in Movies, Music and Games if that link doesn’t work for you.
But you’re right about google music, it got turned into youtube music and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t allow purchasing and downloads. I’d imagine apple also still lets you buy music, but I’ve never actually used them before and don’t plan to start now.
While I agree with you, I still want to be able to buy CDs.
I do miss caring about my CD collection. I still have them but I have nothing to play them on.
What is everyone’s opinions on the sound quality of vinyl?
I understand the collectibility of physical media, and the novelty of owning a vinyl and the machine that plays them. The large art piece that is the case (and often the disc itself). Showing support for your favorite artists by owning physical media from them.
Those are great reasons to collect vinyl.
But a lot of my friends claim vinly is of higher audio quality than anything else, period. This is provably false, but it seems to be a common opinion.
How often have you seen this and what are your thoughts on it?
Technically CD quality digital is superior, but the recording and mixing can have a lot to do with it. For example, it could be that an decades old Dark Side Of The Moon on vinyl (played on proper equipment) could sound better than a modern remastered CD with maximized loudness (See the “loudness wars”).
It’s not impossible, although the loudness wars are pretty much over nowadays. All major music services and players have volume normalisation, many by default, so there’s not much point to it any longer.
Also it’s pretty tough to find a decades old record still in mint condition, and the sound quality of vinyl gets worse every time you play it.
and the sound quality of vinyl gets worse every time you play it.
If you handle them correctly, it will not happen to any noticeable degree in any of our lifetimes or the following generations. It is durable material.
Higher audio quality than CD? No, that is demonstrably false.
More pleasant to listen to than CD or other digital formats? Yes, that I agree with. It’s entirely subjective, but I’m definitely not alone in the feeling. The fact it is hard to quantify is why lots of people don’t “get” vinyl until they’ve sat and heard it on a decent system. Something about it is pleasing. As another commenter mentioned, it might just be the imperfections.
So I guess it’s a bit of a philosophical question. If CDs technically sound better, but vinyl sounds more pleasing: does the vinyl then sound better? People tend to chase pleasure, and in the time it takes someone to explain how much lower the noise floor is on CD or how we can only perceive so many samples, etc, etc – you could have been chilling with multiple records and had a great listening experience.
If it was just about the sound, then you could get the exact same results by recording the vinyl player directly to a lossless format and playing that back, but it wouldn’t be quite the same. Big part of it is just the fact that you are using a vinyl player and these huge fragile disks that makes it an enjoyable experience by itself.
Yes, totally agree. Vinyl rips still lack something. A lot of it is about practice, which makes it harder to quantify.
Of course. There is no doubt that the ritual of handling the record and playing it on the turntable is a huge part of it. Personally it makes me appreciate the music more because it is kind of an effort to get it playing in the first place, and you just want to listen to the record in a session, instead of just having it as a backdrop which so much streamed music is.
IMO is just placebo effect. In a blind experiment, all else being equal, I doubt you would be able to tell the difference between a vinyl and a CD. That’s my two cents
I know for a fact I would hear the difference – but primarily because of the imperfections in the vinyl, as well as the different bass response. I can rule out placebo.
Something about it is pleasing. As another commenter mentioned, it might just be the imperfections.
I think it’s the slight hissing sound you hear as the needle drags. That faint, slightly pink noise isn’t dissimilar from white noise people use to go to sleep, and I think human brains like that sort of sound.
I know it’s not highest quality.
For me, the imperfect sound is what makes a nicer experience. Slight hum, little pop once in a while, teensy skip, etc.
Not to mention that I’m far more inclined to listen to an entire album because of the need to interact with the vinyl to set the needle and flip sides.
At the risk of sounding critical of your hobby, to argue the imperfections improve the experience sounds somewhat culty.
I understand there is something akin to “character” which you don’t get from something highly polished. I know when things sound too clean it can feel sterile.
I accept vinyl has a collectors value, but anything claims regarding preference come across as either pretentious or deluded (to me, as someone who probably can’t tell the difference).
I don’t proclaim that vinyl is superior or something everyone should listen to.
Just trying to convey how I hear it.
98% of my listening is my MP3 playing from my phone’s Bluetooth.
Vinyl has a slow progression in quality degradation due to friction that creates a certain kind of sound warmth that is pleasing to our ears. This can also be relicated digitally, but the imperfections and feelings associated with the physical ritual actions of loading a record can’t.
Vinyl just has more engagement going on despite the sound quality being lower. Kind of like how some people have fondness for fireplaces despite central heating being technically better at maintaining a warm temperature.
Some people confuse the extra engagement with sound quality because a lot of people just don’t think things through.
Vinyl has a slow progression in quality degradation due to friction
With conventional record players with a mechanical head. I suppose that you could probably use an optical one – I remember reading about that being used by archivists.
google
Yeah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable
The thing I think I remember reading about was apparently this related thing:
The IRENE system uses a high-powered confocal microscope that follows the groove path as the disc or cylinder (i.e. phonograph cylinder) rotates underneath it, thereby obtaining detailed images of the audio information.[9] Depending on whether the groove is cut laterally, vertically, or in a V-shape, the system may make use of tracking lasers or different lighting strategies to make the groove visible to the camera. The resulting images are then processed with software that converts the movement of the groove into a digital audio file.[10]
An advantage of the system over traditional stylus playback is that it is contactless, and so avoids damaging the audio carrier or wearing out the groove during playback.[1] It also allows for the reconstruction of already broken or damaged media such as cracked cylinders or delaminating lacquer discs, which cannot be played with a stylus. Media played on machines which are no longer produced can also be recovered.[6] Many skips or damaged areas can be reconstituted by IRENE without the noises that would be created by stylus playback.[5] However, it can also result in the reproduction of more noise, as imperfections in the groove are also more finely captured than with a stylus.
considers
If you can get multiple physical copies of an analog recording, you could probably scan them and use statistical analysis to combine information from the physical copies, eliminate damage from any one copy.
Yes, I was referring to the most common way of playing vinyl records with a physical needle.
Combining multiple records could give you an average, but it would both lose the things that make vinyl and experience like pops from dust specs and imperfections. Plus a cleaner copy could be had from the masters used to press the vinyl records. You know, the same master that is used to make exact duplicates for CDs.
Recreating an approximation of a lost master recording from multiple vinyl records with voice reduction on the imperfections would be an interesting idea, so my guess is someone has already done that 😉
that engagement materially impacts sound quality because you’re actively listening.
It impacts the perception of sound quality, not the actual sound quality.
You could get engagement through digital audio files too, though.
But I’d argue that it doesn’t affect the sound quality, but the enjoyment of the sound. The sound waves themselves don’t actually change because we’re actively engaging.
The best explanation I’ve seen is that music is mixed differently for CD/streaming and vinyl.
For mass market, the move has been to mix for louder bass and similar things. The idea being that it makes the music more popular. But it also makes it difficult to appreciate anything but the bass.
On vinyl, you can’t max out bass like that, it won’t work on the format. So they have to give it a normal mix instead, making it sound better. In theory CDs should sound better than vinyl, but because of the music production trends, it doesn’t currently.
This is correct, although it’s not the bass that is limited on vinyl; it’s the dynamic range compression (or ‘loudness’) in general.
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So you have to fiddle with the volume less on vinyl?
That’s the one good selling point I’ve heard for vinyl so far.
I like this take. it’s probably also why I’m gravitating towards cassettes now, you don’t need a special mix but you also can’t just max the volume because magnetic media saturates and distorts quite quickly.
A new record sounds pretty good when played on a good turntable with a good cartridge, but it’s not as good as a properly mixed CD or lossless audio file. A worn or dirty record sounds like crap. A cheap turntable will also sound like crap and a ceramic cartridge wears out records fairly quickly.
With a CD, there is very little difference in sound quality between the cheapest player you can find and a high end player. The CD will always sound the same until it’s too worn out to play at all.
I like to buy older albums that were mastered for vinyl, like Steely Dan, some prog rock like Yes or Pink Floyd. It gets a lot closer to listening to how the artists would have been hearing their product
CD sound is better. But I like how big the pictures of the albums are with vinyl. Vinyl is more about the ritual though. With all the pop sounds and stuff I wouldn’t prefer it over CD.
Either 0 difference from digital or worse due to skipping/bad record quality. Rap records are especially bad and I stopped buying them.
Personally, I buy them because my internet is unreliable, it makes for some nice decoration and it’s nice to actually own something in 2024 (especially since Spotify keeps deleting random artists/songs from my playlists).
I enjoy the warmer sound of vinyl but I buy the albums I love on it because of the lack o convenience. I can’t shuffle and I have to actually interact with it every 20ish minutes to flip or change discs. It makes me actually listen to music, track order, mix, and properly enjoy the work that went into the whole album making process.
So I use streaming when I just want something on in the background and vinyl when I want to properly listen to an album.
Vinyl is worse quality, the vinyl disk’s height is a physical constraint that CDs / DVDs do not have.
Define quality.
Not an audiophile, but had experience with vinyl and CDs while growing up in the 90s and imo vinyl COULD sound better if you spent a lot of money on high end equipment. But with the equipment us normies had, the cds sounded much better. It had a much lower barrier if you didn’t have a large amount of time and money to invest. I’d suspect things are similar now.
First problem would be defining what “quality” means. On one hand vynil just has a continuous grove which needle follows. For this reason it’s infinitely precise, as there’s no interpolation or sample frequency. But on the other hand if master was digital and of shit quality, then benefits of analog mean nothing. Also widely used 44KHz sample rate is no accident, it’s exactly double of what human hearing can perceive. So even if you go higher, average listener wouldn’t be able to hear the difference.
Music is also mastered differently for vynil. Base is centered and audio is processed to reduce chances of skipping tracks. This is why decent phono amplifier is needed to revert those changes. Digital stays good or shitty no matter how many times you copy the file.
Overall sound quality is good, in both digital world and analogue. I have both high quality FLACs and some really great records which people would struggle to figure out if the sound they are hearing is digital or not. Personally I prefer vynil because the centered base. It makes other instruments more pronounced and you get to experience same music in a bit of a different way. Vynil being manual as it is also forces you to listen to entire side since it’s not easy to change tracks and authors by clicking next.
Vinyl sounds good, but has too much noise to be the best. Although that could just be my cat’s fault, realistically - i spend a lot time removing hair from records.
Too much noise? Older records sure. But new stuff? On mine you can’t tell the difference. There’s no hum, no crackling, no noise. It is recommended to brush your records before playing though. Perhaps that’s the problem?
The records are new, and I brush them before each use. I’ve used different carts so that’s probably not the issue either. Maybe I just got all bad records… Maybe I could hear a difference on yours. Who knows at this point
Odd. But yeah, many factors.
I read somewhere that about 50% of vinyl owners don’t have a player. Presumably that 50% only have very few records and bought them for the looks, but still.
Vinyl records sounds great despite their technical inferiority to CDs and streaming (with the right equipment of course, but that applies to all formats). They do not necessarily sound better, but there is an element of customisation with them which you can’t get with CDs or streaming. Most importantly the cartridge on your turntable. Different cartridges have different soundscapes. There is of course an element of quality connected to price of cartridge, but over a certain price you are not necessarily buying a better sound but a different sound. Many vinyl record listeners, especially audiophiles, have different cartridges which they can switch out on their turntable, based on which kind of sound you want coming out of your system.
I know it may be difficult to comprehend for people who haven’t personally listened to such differences themselves, but I assure you it is not audiophile snake oil, it is a very noticeable phenomenon. That is a pretty unique capability of vinyl which I can’t really compare to anything with other formats.
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Its worse in the best way IMO.
The main reason I buy vinyl is for the other reasons you mentioned, but the imperfections of vinyl gives it a less robotic and sterile feel. It’s like listening to digital drums vs acoustic drums.
There’s also the ritual of playing vinyl that’s real satisfying
people are idiots, possibly from inhaling the toxic fumes of unregulated PVC
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It’s good.
And I bet horse carriages outsold the Ford Model-T this year too
Because CD is a medium for data shrinking in popularity and vinyl is a token of being cool growing in popularity, of course it does.
I think of this clip every single time Chris Pirillo pops up in pop culture somewhere.
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Just waiting for wax cylinders to come back
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I want to know what “other” is that is also clobbering CDs. Can’t say it’s streaming because it’s physical media. The article mentions that half a million cassettes were sold, but that doesn’t really answer the question. That “other” takes up a lot of space relative to CDs so I’m pretty curious.
I dug into the RIAA Source PDF the article references for what “other” means:
“Includes CD Singles, Cassettes, Vinyl Singles, DVD Audio, SACD”
Ahh, perfect, thanks, I genuinely appreciate it. I should have done that myself, shouldn’t I?
Eh, I have a lot of questions after articles, few are worth going down the rabbit hole for unless others show interest, no worries!
Not something I follow, but I recall reading that SACD is favored as being the highest-fidelity format generally available today (well, physical format…if you get something online, could be at whatever resolution you want).
I also recall reading – probably a more-meaningful factor than the actual physical constraints – that because the people who were buying them were rabid about audio quality and were annoyed by dynamic range compression, that the people mastering didn’t make hot recordings, so the media format avoided the “loudness war”.
googles
Hmm. Apparently not any more, at least not always:
At least for a little while SACD/DSD/24bit 96k releases were immune to loudness wars. However over the last 5 years or so I’m noticing a lot of high res releases, either remasters, remixes or new releases in high res have become victims of the loudness wars. The latest release of Electric Lady land is a prime example, horrible clipping and single digit DR ratings.
Why? These releases are not meant for portable headphone consumption why are they doing this? Why are supposedly trained audio engineers going along with this? Clipping and low DR ranges is a quantifineable error. People that buy high res releases will want full DR to play on their home audio system.
Why has this horrible practice infected what should be audiophile class recordings?
Honestly, digital music vendors should just include a dynamic range metric. Hell, let artists sell different versions of a song if they want. MP3 and I think all other popular formats have ReplayGain or equivalent, so one should be able to optimize the recording for reproduction accuracy rather than to just achieve a desired volume.
I’d assume it is for digital downloads.
If I am not purchasing LPs, I try to purchase MP3s/FLAC that I can copy and move around as I please.
Hm, digital downloads count as physical media? I might? be able to see the merit in that classification but I’m not entirely convinced.
I should comment AFTER I read the article.
If it is for physical sales only I would have to guess we are looking at things like cassette, USB drives and limited releases on other obscure formats like minidisk.
I knew piracy was eating into music sales but poor artists and distributors only generating less than $2 of revenue in the US per year? That’s like 1 CD in a clearance sale. They should start a charity.
If you’re curious, nearly half a million cassettes sold last year, too, according to Billboard.
I’m more curious about who’s still selling music on cassette and who’s willing to buy it.
Prisoners.
Someone else told me that. What bullshit. “You can’t have audio technology that was developed in the 1980s” is a fucking stupid punishment. Why not just make them listen to Edison cylinders?
I see a lot of folks on bandcamp who sells cassettes for instance
Do you know why they choose to sell cassettes rather than or maybe along with other formats?
Cheap to produce and stand out for folks getting into some bands.
Not for sure, but I have a few leads.
I’ve heard and discussed with artists who mentioned that producing vinyl was very expensive compared to cassettes, which are cheap and easy to DIY.
Then I’d add that cassettes have a retro appeal nowadays. Lastly, they are an analog format, opposite to the CD which is the 1:1 copy of the downloaded FLAC album downloaded from Bandcamp.
Analog, sure, but very low quality. 1/8" tape is not enough to reproduce sound accurately and there’s a lot of tape hiss. There’s a reason why professional analog multitrack studios use 1" tape.
Ehh, all those 1” tape machines are 8-tracks and designed for editing, not playback. Magnetic tape fidelity has a lot more to do with medium, bias and processing than the width of the tape itself.
Hell, plenty of analog shops use four and eight track machines that run 1/4” tape!
Compact cassette also has the potential to sound very good. If you would like a demonstration, look up the vwestlife yt channel or listen to a good tape on a good tape deck.
Cheap short runs. National will do 50 unit orders and you can sell em at 5-7$ and you’re still doubling your money on tour tapes.
But do enough people still have functional cassette players?
idk how many people have functional tape decks but you can still buy new production component and portable ones and there’s a healthy used market.
I think there was a 99% invisible podcast episode about that, it’s prison inmates. For some never-changed rule they are only allowed music on cassettes, so they are probably the target audience mainly.
Just a few years ago I had an old car with a cassette player/radio, and from time to time I enjoyed the cassette player with some leftover stuff, but in most cases I just used an FM transmitter
The prison system sucks in so many ways. Legal slavery with archaic rules that would be considered hate crimes or human rights violations if they happened to people in the U.S. who aren’t incarcerated.
As far as old cars with cassette players. Like you said, you can use an FM transmitter, but I also remember having a fake cassette with an aux cable so you could plug it into a CD player headphone jack. I would bet they have a bluetooth version these days, so you don’t have to listen to cassettes even in those cars.
That reminds me of something though. When I was a kid, we had a Toyota Corona station wagon with an 8-track player. My father had this converter device that you plugged into the 8-track and it had a little tray that you laid a cassette into so you could play it. I don’t remember if the sound quality was worse than playing a cassette in a player designed for it.
Sure, there are transmitters without Bluetooth. I somehow preferred the SD card, as it would hold a few Gb of music and needed no internet connection. The only downside was if I was driving short trips only for a while, and it stuck with a 20-min long Deep Purple concert track every time :)
I had a friend with the cassette adapter for his 8 track player. I just brought my boombox with me in high school. It sounded better than the shitty stereo that came with my dad’s 1972 Mercury Capri.
I’ve seen a few bands release a limited number of cassettes recently. For example, Rancid is selling Honor Is All We Know on cassette.
https://rancid.store/product/17864/honor-is-all-we-know-cassette
I guess it’s just a promotional thing then. That makes sense.
some bands, and their fans. you can make a cassette look pretty dope.
and i’ve heard prisoners often only have access to cassettes.
Vinyl, which tends to be pricier than the newer format, also far outstripped CDs in actual money made, raking in $1.4 billion compared to $537 million from CDs.
Vinyl is definitely overpriced these days. I do love all the art and care that artists seem to put into their vinyl releases, but typically I’m spending $30-$50 on a new vinyl release. But what am I going to do? Not buy that limited edition colored vinyl gatefold with art and lyric pages?
Well, you could always just download the music, art and lyrics from the internet, since it is the year of our lord 2024
Yeah, at this point you’re paying because it’s a collector item, or to support the artist, not for the actual content of the package.
I also just really like the physical media. Putting on a record is ritualistic at this point.
I buy mine from the merch stand at the artist’s show, they usually go for 20€-30€, even the limited edition ones.
I view vinyls as collectors items, not something you actually listen to. I still buy CDs because I hate the idea of subscription services.
Depends really. Seller am buying from has for example AC/DC records for 26$ a piece or 16$ a piece for CD. You simply can’t compare the two and the difference is 10$. They of course have 50th anniversary edition for 42$, but that’s up to you.
I’d buy the vinyl as a collectors item, but the CD to upload on to my phone.
Wow. What is that ‘other’ physical medium? Is MiniDisc also coming back and beating CDs?
Some artists in the punk scene are putting out cassettes.
There are things like Super Audio CDs and MACDs etc… I believe there may even be some blue ray audio releases.
Those are kind of rare, though; can they really be outselling CDs by so much? Or maybe the author mislabeled the key and ‘other’ is supposed to be the sliver on top?
I don’t know how widespread it is outside of metal, but I’ve been seeing more and more bands offering tapes. Sometimes a release is only on tape, other times the tape might be $6, the CD $15 and the LP $25, so there are different ties available for those who want a physical copy. I probably got 10 tapes or so within the last year.
Tape makes a lot of sense audio-quality wise especially for people who insist on analogue for some silly reason, the prices don’t make sense, though: Tapes are expensive to manufacture. CDs and vinyl are pressed whole while tapes need to be run through a machine, centimetre by centimetre. Though maybe for small runs it does make sense as you don’t need a physical master.
You hit the nail on the head. Even ten years ago people would use national audio and get the shortest run possible (50 units).
I never got below $2 unit cost, but there’s good money to be made selling short runs of tapes after a set.
A whole $1.91!! Wow!
yeah, because if you buy something digitally, it will get stolen from you.
CD’s are real objects and not digital goods.
That wasn’t the point being made.
Please explain. I’m still not seeing the point. Vinyl is outselling CDs because… digital goods will be stolen from you? I don’t get it.
The comment above ignored the article and is just talking how digital media can be revoked.
Then why did it start with “yeah, because…”?
I always thought it had more to do with the aesthetic of vinyls rather than any sort of ownership dilemma. A good chunk of my friends own multiple vinyl records but no record player. I also wonder what the production rates are like for vinyls vs CDs, are we producing about the same quantity of them?
For some people it’s definitely the aesthetic/collectible nature of vinyl. Anecdotally, for me, it’s for the listening pleasure. I’m no audiophile. I’m listening on potato speakers on a sub par turntable, but I like listening to records like I did when I was younger.
I do also love the much larger album sleeve artwork, but my primary drive in purchasing an album is to listen to it on my turntable.
Me too…I hate it when a band releases a record and they don’t do anything to the jacket though.
Yo…I love vinyl but just because it’s nice to have an analog physical copy…it doesn’t sound “better” or worse. I just enjoy records.
I listen to lots and lots of streaming on bandcamp.
Vinyls are great, but I can’t copy them to my phone so I still have to buy a CD with it.
I don’t really buy vinyl to listen to it, but for the larger cover art and liner notes
One of my favorite things about vinyl is having to flip the record over. I think it demands more active and respectful listening.
Many albums, especially comedy albums, relied on you flipping over the record. They would have jokes that talked about things on the other side. There’s a Firesign Theater album where one of the characters says, “wait a minute, didn’t I say that on the other side of the record?” There’s a Monty Python album with a locked groove that says, “oh sorry, squire. I scratched the record.” Which is brilliant.
Edit: There’s another Monty Python album that has two sets of grooves and what you hear depends on which groove the needle hits first. Again, absolutely brilliant.
More famously, the end of the Beatles’ peak album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band contains a locked groove which was snippets of recordings mashed-up in a bit of short multi-track recording experimentation. The CD only repeats it 2 or 3 times. The record was designed to play indefinitely.
So yeah, CDs took that away from recordings, but on the other hand, it’s a lot harder to damage a CD and get an unintentional looping segment.
I love that on the CD version of Full Moon Fever they added a bit to the end of Running Down a Dream telling CD listeners they’re going to take a break so that people on vinyl and cassette can switch to the other side.
