Metal Reviews

Looking through my CD collection as part of the Great Move, I realised that a small part of me regrets the thousands of Pounds spent on them when everything could just fit on a single 1TB external hard drive. I'm now going to have to transport 10-15 boxes of CDs, set up shelves, put them all up - is it really worth the bother? Does collecting CDs have a future in this modern age of instantly downloadable discographies and limited space, or does having lotsa CDs somehow give me some sort of limited cred that I could have maxed out on if I'd have spent the money on vinyl instead? It's a shame that their only value is to me, really - I'll never recoup the full value on eBay or whatever, even given some rarities I have, and I'm not sure I want to bother. Oh well, van hire here I come.

Every time some new technology appears, the previous one is said to be doomed. For example, when CD appeared, vinyl was said to be a dead thing but, now, it has returned and became something connoisseurs and collectors value greatly. In this time of virtual data, is cd doomed or is it still something special? All I can say is I greatly value my cd collection (about 1.000 pieces) and don't plan on going "all mp3" like some others. As for the future of the object, I have no clue but I wish it doesn't die.

I rip songs to my iPod simply for the convenience. As long as CDs are produced I will continue to buy them.

I do exactly the same.

Download songs, put them on my iPod, until I find the time/money to buy the cd.
It would be a shame if cd's and vinyl would dissapear. I don't see that happening anytime soon though.

I haven't bought a CD in a really, really long time. My entire collection is digital. I have like hundreds of CD's from when I used to buy them, but really I kinda find them to be a hassle anymore.

Oh you crazy people...

I've got my vinyls as treasures. Is the only thing I buy now. I've got a lot of cd in boxes that I never listen to. All are now into a 1Tb Hard disk.

I don't have much to say on the death of the subject, personally I just buy the albums from the bands I support, and use my zune to sample from other artists, I'm waiting for the day prices really go down so then I can splurge on artists I don't normally buy from.

I bought about 800 CDs between 2000-2007. I haven't really bought much since. Personally, I think i've paid my dues. When money becomes abundant again. I'm sure I'll end up collecting them again just to have a "master quality" version of the albums.

I listen to all my music on Spotify where I can listen to basically anything for free, legally. That's the future of music.

I like having CDs. Even if they are monetarily worthless, I kinda like having a collection. Plus, CDs do come in handy for when I'm driving.

Also, having your entire music collection in MP3 form seems a little... I dunno, risky. What happens when your hard drive crashes, or your computer breaks or something? At least with CDs you have a form of physical backup.

Plus, as far as collections go, I like having something physical instead of a bunch of digital anomalies. I only really download for when an album is out of print or charged at insane import prices.

My take on this would be a combination of what howlin' wolf, Metastable To Chaos and Legacy Of The Night said.

Well, this is not exactly what I do. My philosophy is to download 2 or 3 songs from an album and then decide whether or not if I want to buy it based on how I think those songs are. Basically, it's like watching a movie trailer and deciding if you wanna go see it in theatres.

And I agree 100% with Legacy.

CD's are dead, I think. To me, they don't have the same vintage appeal that vinyl does. Whether they will have this appeal eventually, I don't know, but to me it seems like they will always be second fiddle to vinyl in terms of physical music. This is just because vinyl is the original physical medium and will always have more vintage appeal because of that.

I download all of my music now. When my living space permits it, I'm going to get a vinyl setup, and then hopefully I'll pay all my dues. For now, I buy t-shirts, see concerts, and even own some CD's (used to be CD-only) from my favorite bands. I understand the importance of supporting musicians, but I also see that CD's and physical music in general are just an inferior method of music distribution unless you're going for some sort of collection. I'd gladly pay $20 a month or more for the torrents I download, but that's not an option at this point. Hopefully it will be!

I've bought like 10 CDs in the last three years. Ever since buying vinyl, they've kind of lost their "physical object" appeal because, compared to an LP, their art is way smaller and they don't have the ritual of flip, dust, needle, ???, profit that records have.

That said I haven't been listening to my record collection all that much the last year or so. I think my ideal form of music buying is digital downloads like CDBaby where the artist gets a big chunk of the money. As much as I like album art and stuff I mainly want to give them my money to encourage them to make more music. I tend to forget what I buy when it's downloads though.

I have been thinking about starting spending money on vinyl, the main reason being because LPs are such pretty things in comparison to CDs. But, then I think, isn't that just sentiment? Is the prettyness factor enough to justify the extra expense etc.

Some people say vinyl has other advantages e.g. better sound... I don't really understand that kind of thing- if anyone could summarise the arguments for and against in words of one syllable that would be very helpful.

I still spend vast sums of money (more than ever) on CDs because it is important to me to pay for music and I have the means to do so more than I used to, and I'm not going to pay for some copies of some mp3 files.

Vinyl sound is warmer, more organic.
That said, it's nothing a good pre-amp cannot solve.

I've been buying vinyl for three years and this is what I've found:

pro:
-Sounds better. Especially bassy sounds are more full and present and tasty for the ears. This is the main reason I buy them. I can think of at least 5 albums off the top of my head that went from "good" to "fucking amazing" after I bought them on vinyl and listened to them. That said I've never bothered doing any kind of rigorous comparison of vinyl vs CD. There's a few albums I own on both and I'm pretty sure I like how they sound on vinyl more.
-Sounds different. They're usually mastered differently. Less loudness war!
-You can download mp3s from The Internet that I for one cannot distinguish from CDs, while you cannot do the same for vinyl.
-Bigger art.
-Cooler thing to collect. (Somewhat related to bigger art.)
-Cooler thing to listen to. I like the process of flipping sides and cleaning them off before playing. It keeps me focused on listening to the music and every 15~ minutes I have to ask myself whether I want to keep listening to the album, rather than just getting distracted and falling asleep or something.
-They smell nice.

cons:
-stereo set-up can be expensive
-25$ average instead of 15$
-Crappy records. I've had two that had too much music on each side, so the extra bass sound that makes vinyl special was not there. It's usually pretty easy to avoid this by knowing the album length and how many LPs the vinyl edition has. Over 40 minutes on one disc = do not want. Then I bought one that skips (it was 2$ from a thrift store though) and one with a mysterious 15 seconds of silence in the middle of a song.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the audio on a vinyl is uncompressed which is why the sound is better.

I like CD's. Call me old fashioned but I like a physical product. I like cover art, liner notes, lyrics and all that jazz.

I also found that with digital downloading the sound is poorer as the music is often compressed. As the file is shared around it seems to degrade the sound as each user compresses it even further.

At least this was the case 5 years ago when I last downloaded music.

I also like to support the artists that made the music so they can continue making music. Even if they only get $0.05 out of each CD sale, that's still more than they get out of people downloading entire catalogues for free.