DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Music CDs .....

Yeah, so I had bought a new tablet that turned out to be wi-fi only from Best Buy on eBay. Super easy return, and while I was there, I decided to look at their music selection. Nothing. I mean, blank shelves. I asked the girl if they were no longer carrying music CDs, and she said no, and that they had were all in a bin.

I went and looked, and found some crap, and some decent stuff.

I wound up getting 3 CDs, and I had a $5 off certificate, so I got the 3 of them for less than $13.

Anyway, I knew that CDs weren't really popular anymore .... but I didn't know that they were almost completely gone. Guess I am getting old.

Guys our age have nearly seen it all from the music industry! Live, vinyl, reel to reel, 8 track, cassette to digital and am willing to bet I missed at least two mediums!

Ugh I hated 8 tracks. Music fade out .... **CLUNK** music fade back up again. ....... Bleh.

Remember having to rewind the cassette if you wanted to hear that song again?

Kids these days will never know the struggle.

When I bought the Jag, I couldn't find the CD player. I asked the guy where it was. And he was like "There's not one, it's all bluetooth now."

I kinda wanted a CD player, but oh well.

LOL I remember when "music search" was a great new invention. Just hit it, and it would rewind or forward to the next song.

I do, quick way to wear out your tape.

whats an 8 track?

The 8 trace was the predecessor to the cassette tape, and used similar magnetic tape encoding/recording. They were about maybe 2/3 the size of a VHS tape. They were popular from my early teens (maybe 74-74 or so) up till about the time I got my 2nd car, then cassettes took over.It was the 1st truly portable music. Up to that point, you were dependent upon whatever the radio played.

I just loved when the 8-track would double track and you could hear two songs at once. LMAO

You take it out, beat the damn thing against your thigh while your driving, reinsert it, and hope for the best while lighting another joint.

I remember when 6 disc CD changers were a thing in the car. All gone.

I remember that terrible *squaeklch ...** sound, and then spending 10 minutes gently extracting the cassette tape itself from the player, and rewinding it somewhat tightly, so you could get the tape straightened and flattened out, so you could play it again. lol Or ... other times when you just had to hold back the tears, and cut that beloved tape that got way too tangled up in the deck, and pull it out.

I had a 12 disc in my old convertible.

Yeah, always had to have a pencil in your car to rewind the cassettes. Those were the days...

LOL That reminds me of an old friend of mine from way back. He could rewind a cassette with a pencil faster than the tape deck could.

Oh man, I did that, too! I suppose a lot of us did.

I always enjoyed when you’d pull out the cassette and the tape would stay in the player. Good times.

In the digital age the physical medium is a waste of money. Why manufacture and distribute music on cd's when you can just sell the tunes online.

I mean, the cost in making the cd, distributing the cd, shipping them, the store has to stock them, and really, no one is buying them; so you're spending a bunch of money to offer a product in a format that just costs way too much money on the way to market.

Selling the music digitally, you've just cut your overhead by damn near 100%.

Its kinda sad, cuz I used to have so many cd's, and there was something cool about looking at the sleeve, and popping in a new disc. But it just doesn't make $en$e anymore...

Places like the exchange, and gamestop, and fye, these places are hanging on by a thread, the market has evolved, they haven't.....its just business I suppose....

Yeah, good thoughts.


I think people are missing out not having the actual album, the artwork, liner notes and lyrics, but I've grudgingly accepted that digital music is the new reality.

I agree w/everything you said, but you have to admit...........it used to be cool as can be to go to a record store and spend an hour or two browsing through the merchandise.

Now THAT is impressive! 12 discs! Why would you need 12?

The breaks in the 8-tracks drove us crazy. Like we were listening to Mountain or Hendrix or something heavy and right as the piledriving was good -- dead stop, wait for it -- and then back on in a frenzy. Just inconvenient media. We did have some great 8's though!

I never liked the CD sound. I thought there was too much separation between bass and treble, and a general loss of any sense of ensemble by the musicians. Vinyl was always best for that, but even cassettes sound better than CD's to me. Especially my cassettes which were mostly recorded from vinyl. I have a fairly large collection of cassettes that I made over the years, so when I bought my F150 a few years back, I had the CD player taken out and put in a tape deck. And, by the way, get off my lawn.

Since about 2000 I've always been a step behind.

Like 5 years behind.

From 2011-2013, I had a CD walkman and was buying CDs out of the huge Walmart CD bin.

Music I really like. Greatest Hits of Doobie Brothers, Grand Funk, Three Dog Night, Creedence, etc...

And I listened to these on a CD walkman while walking.



Boy did that suck. Most of those CDs are typically ~ 35-40 minutes long.

So if you listen to music while going for a walk, and if you were out longer than 40 minutes, you had to replay the disc.

Also those CD Walkmans were finicky and sometimes skipped or battery went dead. And they were inconvenient to carry and easy to drop.

In ~ 2014, I bought an MP3 and transferred all my CDs over to it. Probably about 30 CDs.

And I've been buying individual songs from Amazon ever since at ~ $1.29/song. Probably averaging 10-15 songs a month.

My MP3 now holds probably ~ 700 songs. All songs I like. And if I want, it will keep playing songs for hours (I use the "Shuffle On" so the MP3 randomly selects what song is played next which is a lot of fun.)

This is my actual MP3 model and this image is very close to actual size. Maybe 1 inch by 2 inches.



Now I don't have to hold anything, I just have the MP3 in a shirt pocket.

Here's a song I bought this past week. A great summer tune.

I get it... the nostalgia.

I bought a new car last year, and the thing I love most about it is the new head unit. I just put all my music on a USB flash drive and use it. My entire library available without the hassle of having to dig a CD out of the gigantic book I use to have.

Not to mention the Android auto app is the bees knees.

That's why a lot of rock bands are no longer creating new music. Most are doing "best of", with a new song or 2.

However, there are a lot of rock bands are producing their own albums, and releasing them through a more minimalist type label, (like Frontiers Records, out of Italy) that probably produces and distributes in smaller numbers, because they don't have the massive overhead labels used to have. One good thing is that Facebook and other social media does allow for promotion of bands' new music, at a minimal cost. Styx and Night Ranger are 2 bands I know well who might be considered "classic rock" types, but who have released completely new albums in the past year or so.

One other good thing is that a lot of classic rock bands have massive appeal overseas, especially in Japan. That makes creating new music worthwhile for bands.

I wonder how many great songs I would have missed out on if I had only downloaded a single here or there from a favorite band. Man, I have whole albums I really enjoy from 1st to last track, that I would have missed out on if I'd bought only the songs I knew I liked, and that I heard on the radio. I wonder how many albums would never have been made if there was no ability for a band to "build their brand" through a more extensive library of songs that are only available on an album release.

Music, unfortunately, is largely dying in the digital age. According to the following article, the only areas that are growing is streaming and vinyl. I wonder when the whole streaming system has to increase its prices in order to ensure that new music continues to be made.

Report: Physical Albums Sell Significantly Better Than Digital Ones
https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyr...y/#738b51d7b538


While streaming figures are growing by leaps and bounds every year and powering the music industry to expand by double-digit percentages, other sectors aren’t doing nearly as well. In large part, people have stopped purchasing music, as it’s available to them on a number of other easily-reached platforms at a fraction of the price. Sales have been falling for years, and 2017 continued the unfortunate trend.

According to the RIAA’s (Recording Industry Association of America) annual year-end report, downloads fared the worst, with the total category falling by just under one-quarter (24.7%) and totaling only $1.33 billion, which is down considerably from its heyday, which was only a decade or so ago. It won’t be long before paid downloads are worth less than $1 billion.

Track sales and album sales are the two major kinds of downloads, and both lost a lot of ground in 2017, with single and song sales suffering the worst. Purchases of individual tunes dropped over 25% and Americans bought 553.5 million songs. In 2016, that number was just under three-quarters of a billion units, and in 2018, it likely won’t even be half a billion.


Digital album sales fell considerably as well, though they’re holding slightly better than individual tracks. The field shrunk by 22% from the year prior, and in 2017, music lovers in the U.S. bought just over 66 million digital records, which is down from just over 85 million in 2016. Digital album sales totaled almost $624 million last year, while songs brought in $650 million, as albums sell for a much higher price.

People have been saying for a long time that the physical album is done, but the category is responsible for more money coming into the music industry than digital album and song sales combined. All forms of physical purchases added up to $1.5 billion in the U.S. last year. CD sales experienced a big hit, losing 10 million sales from the year prior, though at 87.6 million copies moved, they still performed better than their digital counterparts.


As has been the case for several years now, vinyl remains the one format of music that must be bought outright that continues to grow by any noticeable measure, though it’s still not responsible for much money pouring to the industry. Vinyl sales increased by fewer than 1 million copies in 2017, and total purchases now stand at just over 15.5 million.

I listen to 90 percent vinyl today. I have a couple thousand CD’s and a digital music collection that is about 700 GB...

The garage has a 200 disc player, and I have a 300 disc that is on loan.

But Stevie Ray Vaughn is playing as I type.

I don’t watch much TV except for news and home shows. Reality and contest shows are not my thing.



I hated 8 track as well.

And the need of a wooden pencil.

I still miss my phonograph

[img]https://cdn0.rubylane.com/shops/1324396/RL3029.1L.jpg?80[/img]

j/c

To me what's missing is the effort involved by the artists. It may sound quaint or antiquated, but back in the day an artist actually had to come up with 10 to 12 songs that when put together convinced you to invest in an entire album.

When you bought and listened to an album you got a complete sense as to what an artist is all about. IMO, hearing a single from an artist is akin to listening to a sound bite from someone and never listening to them actually speak about a topic. You really don't get much insight from a sound bite.

While I could name hundreds of artists and albums to make my point, I'll just use two for the sake of expediency. Steely Dan's Aja and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. There isn't just "one hit" or song on such an album that make it great. It's the cumulative impact of the entire body of work. You can't simply buy one track on I-Tunes and get the weight of it.

For decades I found artists in varying genres where you could play an entire album and get joy from every song. You didn't "skip songs". Give me the days of Leon Russel's Willow of the Wisp and I'll be happy.

]



We used to always have a spare book of matches that we would stick into the opening while the 8 track was still in & playing. It may have needed to be placed above the tape or below, but one almost always adjusted the position enough to get just one song to play.

I also had a 3-4 inch screwdriver type tool that you used to turn a small screw inside the tape opening that moved the player head up or down to eliminate the issue. Unfortunately, each tape seemed to have it's own personality so we just quit and went with the matches.

For you young people who postdated this marvel of science, playing 2 songs at the same time was not a bonus like 2 songs for one, just a royal pain.

What I like more tan anything is that albums have song placement that was chosen to create mood and flow.

In the day of shuffle all, it is fun to listen to an album as it was intended.

My gear is modest by audio enthusiast standards.

A Thorens and Technics Turntable
Yamaha THX receiver
Sony Es cassette
Monitor Audio Speakers and Polk surrounds

But it’s pretty dog gone good, and my friends say it’s amazing.

Nope no McIntosh, clear audio VPI or Maggie’s in the mix, but it serves its purpose and is better than most.

I have a Thorens 160 and a Pioneer PL-12 (both originals from the early 70s). The Pioneer was their VW bug range...an affordable, but sturdy Turntable made for the people, but it is so damn sweet sounding they simply don't make "entry level" TTs like it. Well, Rega and Pro-Ject make nice entry level decks, but they also cost a fair amount.

Regarding Thorens, with exception to the Linn Sondek, I think Thorens are the best Turntables one can own. I stumbled on a Thorens 145 earlier in the summer, great price, excellent condition and picked it up for my 18year old son (it replaced a late 70s Fisher TT). Amazing what Thorens can sell for these days. I was glad to find both mine and my son's for cheap!

CDs never captured the depth of music particularly well. The mid-range, in particular, is almost lost on a lot of cds. That said, I have a fair amount still, however, records are by far my choice of media and I own far too many (my wife will agree with this admission), but used record stores are my happy place. Always have been since I was a 7 year old kid.

The CD player in my ATS is in the glovebox! It's a $300 option from Cadillac.

That said, I've had the car over a year and I've never used it once...

True....I used to spend hours in Borders just perusing their music selection because they had a great selection....a lot of obscure artists...

There were a couple of really cool "record stores" when I was younger. One was called Strange Daze Music and the other was Quonset Hut.

Both had a ton of albums, books, drug paraphernalia, jewelry, clothing, incense, etc. They were places where many of us would kind of hang out and meet new people, striking up conversations about music and drug culture that accompanied it at the time.

Cool days at Strange Daze, fer sure.

I feel lucky that Portland has about 25 or so independent record stores...7 of which I frequent, but 4 in particular I go to a lot (not always to buy...I just love thumbing through the bins) and one that is without a doubt the best record store I have ever been in (and I make it a point to go to record stores in every city, state, country I visit).

Heard about that place a lot in the 80's, even though I was from the opposide side of the state..

My Sis In-Law and her man lived in Dover/Strasburg/New Phil area. It was the go-to place for all things counterculture- not just 12 LP's. Never got to shop there, but I heard it was The Bomb.


p.s. My side of the state had Mind Dust Music, Skoolkidz Rekordz and Finder's Records & Tapes. Same deal. Folks is folks wherever there's folks.

This is to you and PDX. Yeah man, the ambience of those places just oozed "cool." I remember Tina, who dressed like Stevie Nicks while singing Rhiannon or Gold Dust Woman. Mike, in his Dark Side of the Moon Floyd t-shirt. Buying Rolling Stone Magazines to find out more about the music world.

Y'all..........you know what amazes me at times. I have become so internet dependent [I'm even taking two online college classes as we speak] that I sometimes wonder how the hell we ascertained information back in the day?

Dag.......we had to work at it. Read this. Listen to this. Talk to this dude. Converse w/this chick. Read, read, read. And most importantly.............go live freaking life. Not behind a keyboard, but we experienced s... live, up-close, and personal. Travel across state lines to see concerts. Congregate at huge rock festivals. Attend protests. March on campus. That s.... was fun and educational and our generation produced the greatest music in the history of mankind. I think that has something to do w/having to go out and create your own stuff, rather than having it all handed to you.