Does anyone buy CD's anymore or is it digital music all the way?

Physical CDs FOR LIFE!!!!!!!! I still regularly buy CDs. I will buy digital music on occassion, but only ever for conveniance. I'm someone who likes physical possessions so I still like to buy and be able to read the lyrics in the booklet or buy CE's to get extras along with the album. I often pre-order.

I bounced back and forth, it usually comes down to if I really care for the band. I usually just buy digital off amazon, google play and bandcamp. If I go to a show than I will pick up a copy, even if I own it digitally. I feel different about films/TV though. I am going all digital on those, for sure.

I buy both, at this point. In fact, the last piece of musical media I bought was Journey's Greatest Hits on CD. Money well spent, if you ask me.

I can honestly say i haven't bought a physical music cd in about ten years, i buy everything digital.

@Slay3r1583 said:

Probably 95% of the music I buy is CDs. In fact I just bought two yesterday. Corrosion of Conformity's self titled CD and Nattfödd by Finntroll.

That Finntroll album is incredible!

I still buy cds. I don't have a nice stereo setup or anything yet, but I still enjoy owning music on a physical format.

I like a lot of older bands and some of them have not made their music available digitally and, of those who have, not all of their music is available digitally.

Plus some albums are cheaper on CD, so my digital vs. CD is based on price and availability.

@familyphotoshoot said:

I will freely admit to being a terrible person and having almost exclusively pirated music since like 2005.

Yeah, I'm the same way. I buy a lot of concert tickets to acts that I like but I'm not gonna pretend like it's the same thing. If it weren't for piracy I wouldn't be half as into music as I am now.

I still but cds for game soundtracks and certain movie scores. For songs from bands and such it's pretty much all digital as I almost never want the whole album.

Digital, but I just bought a months use of spotify and man. I'm liking it. Although I may end up getting the premium version for the mobile stuff

I tend to buy CDs fairly often. Most of that is not feeling any exceptional affinity to the currently available online stores.

ITunes would be a decent steam analogue, but Apple is no Valve in terms of warm feelings toward toward a corporation.

I buy CD's and Vinyl. Lossless 4 lyf.

I'll do either. I find CD's just sound way better in my car even though i can connect to my stereo directly with my iPod. Sometimes I'm too lazy to go to the store though.

I buy CDs if I want the full album, but if I want only a couple songs I buy digital because there really is no other way. I am not the biggest fan of digital content.

I buy all digital music.

Digital only. I use Pandora to find stuff I like then I go buy it at Amazon. The only time I pirate is when I'm combing through an artist's back catalog. If I become a fan of the artist, I'll pledge to buy their next (and future) albums. If I don't, I'll just keep what I have and never look back.

I'm fairly picky with music and I'll usually end up liking only a couple of songs, so digital makes sense for me. I have Spotify, but I used it way back when it was invite-only and it didn't have a Pandora-esque feature in it, so I stopped using it. Does anyone know if they have created that or not? I'm too lazy to check (and I kind of should be doing homework right now).

Digital downloads can never really hold my attention and I usually end up deleting them for whatever reason, so I only really by CDs just so there's a physical thing that reminds me that I've bought the music and somehow it then becomes *meaningful* and *lovely* and *translucent*. It kind of sucks if I'm trying to track down music from labels that aren't re-releasing their old catalogue like Def Jux or Rawkus Records, though. That shit costs far too much to obtain these days.

@buwchbach said:

Digital downloads can never really hold my attention and I usually end up deleting them for whatever reason, so I only really by CDs just so there's a physical thing that reminds me that I've bought the music and somehow it then becomes *meaningful* and *lovely* and *translucent*. It kind of sucks if I'm trying to track down music from labels that aren't re-releasing their old catalogue like Def Jux or Rawkus Records, though. That shit costs far too much to obtain these days.

I know that feel man. Got a fair few rares in both CD and Vinyl format. Some of that shit I've had to pay out the arse for. £90 for a sealed copy of a rare jazz album here... £65 for a sealed copy of an oddball Lovecraftian Death metal band there... I dread to think how much my collection has costed me altogether.

I buy physical copies only if the artwork warrants it. For instance, I will ALWAYS buy a physical copy of a Tool album until they stop selling physical copies. The same goes for Gojira, Machine Head, and a few other bands. The only other reason is when I want to listen to something in my car. I still have a CD player, and my damn phone's headphone jack is screwed up, so I can't just plug it up.

Otherwise, digital more than suffices for me.

When you are an audiophile and you have nothing but top-notch CD and vinyl players, digital cannot come close to sound. CDs and vinyl all the way.

I haven't bought a CD in about 7 years and I probably will never buy another CD again.

@d_breeze said:

I greatly prefer CDs to digital. There is something about having a physical copy that I just love...

Exactly. It's been a while since I counted but if I were to guess, I probably have more than 400 CDs now.

I bought 4 CD's on the weekend ;)

I buy used CDs, but not often. Recently I've been buying more than usual since I've been getting into some new bands (Silversun Pickups for days).

Vinyl and digital here.

Digital because it is easy to store or listen to with headphones and I can throw it on an old 80gb I-pod and have some tunes for my car.

I use digital because I was given boxes of vinyl and a player a couple years ago. Most of my CDs from my teen years were lost, destroyed, loaned out (never coming back), ect. I only had digital until this sudden influx of hundreds of records. So whenever I find something I like I pick it up on vinyl for roughly the same price of the CD. I usually only buy half a dozen records a year and everything else is digital. Vinyl also gives me the excuse to go looking for some old use stuff. I'm no retro-grouch or sound snob, it just kinda worked out that vinyl was the way things happened.

I'll buy a CD if the band I'm seeing is selling them, but otherwise I pretty much am strictly digital.

All digital baby!

I buy mostly CD's, but some stuff that isn't real common on CD (or things like the Game Music Bundle) I'll get on mp3. The quality of the sound is just too good on a CD to not have that. Having the factory bose radio in my truck really helped me notice the difference compared to my crappy PC speakers. a lot of my friends disagree but then they take a ride and change their minds, at least temporarily. Hauling around CD's isn't easy for most of them with ipods and ipod connections on their radios, which I admittedly don't have. My next vehicle may have that and I may just start ripping everything as soon as I buy it on disc. (have to look into hacking firmware for FLAC playback on an ipod classic when that happens.)

Will buy the CD if it's cheaper than the Digital Download, which 90% of the time, totally is. Then I'll rip it, put it in the CD box in my Garage and not touch it for years.

I can get CDs for $8-12 from the artist website or directly from the label's website for any band I care about. Then I rip them to a high bitrate MP3 or sometimes FLAC. Store the CD. Sometimes you can get a deal of CD + immediate download, usually for less than retail. CDs are still great because of the quality. It doesn't matter with headphones but on even a cheap home stereo, yeah, even 256kbps MP3s kinda suck.

@tourgen said:

I can get CDs for $8-12 from the artist website or directly from the label's website for any band I care about. Then I rip them to a high bitrate MP3 or sometimes FLAC. Store the CD. Sometimes you can get a deal of CD + immediate download, usually for less than retail. CDs are still great because of the quality. It doesn't matter with headphones but on even a cheap home stereo, yeah, even 256kbps MP3s kinda suck.

It totally matters on headphones... you just need the right headphones :P

I'll get certain CDs. I own the Beatles in Stereo because I liked the set, and I'll do the same for other bands, but I only ever use them in the car. Otherwise, it's all digital for me.

@myketuna said:

Digital only. I use Pandora to find stuff I like then I go buy it at Amazon. The only time I pirate is when I'm combing through an artist's back catalog. If I become a fan of the artist, I'll pledge to buy their next (and future) albums. If I don't, I'll just keep what I have and never look back.

I'm fairly picky with music and I'll usually end up liking only a couple of songs, so digital makes sense for me. I have Spotify, but I used it way back when it was invite-only and it didn't have a Pandora-esque feature in it, so I stopped using it. Does anyone know if they have created that or not? I'm too lazy to check (and I kind of should be doing homework right now).

Me too. Pandora is the best, they just expanded to Australia too! Of course it's when I've already left the country, but still.

I've never bought digital music. Just not interested. I buy CDs, either in the store or online, I'll rip it on to my PC because in the case of a fire it'd be easier to to pick up 2 external hard drives than all my discs. But yeah, I want hard copies. When I'm in employment I tend to spend a large chunk of my salary every month on music, big part of my life.

Actually, this reminds me that I bought the X-Ray Spex album last week & still haven't put it onto my PC yet. Should get on that.

I still buy CDs, I just like collecting them plus my dad has a huge amount of music already so I might as well buy them too.

I only download music if it's really hard or expensive to find physical versions.

I still buy cds...in fact I have yet to buy any music digitally

I buy digital. I burn copies of cd's I want from my public library.

Each time I bought a CD it was just a hassle to get it onto my MP3 player which is pretty much my iPhone.

I'll buy the CD if I can. I like having the physical copy of it. I may pay a little more, but I think it's worth it.

@Ghost_Cat said:

When you are an audiophile and you have nothing but top-notch CD and vinyl players, digital cannot come close to sound. CDs and vinyl all the way.

The funny thing is that digital audio can sound just as good as CD if you have a good DAC. In fact, making a distinction between the two is sort of silly, since CDs use PCM, which is a digital audio format. Unfortunately, almost no online retailers sell audio in lossless formats. It's a bummer, since I would totally pay more for that.

I don't have a top-notch CD player though, so I have to make do with downloads. My Grado SR325is weep.

@tourgen said:

I can get CDs for $8-12 from the artist website or directly from the label's website for any band I care about. Then I rip them to a high bitrate MP3 or sometimes FLAC. Store the CD. Sometimes you can get a deal of CD + immediate download, usually for less than retail. CDs are still great because of the quality. It doesn't matter with headphones but on even a cheap home stereo, yeah, even 256kbps MP3s kinda suck.

I take issue with that. Headphones reveal flaws at a much lower price point than stereos.

@Scrawnto: It really is a shame, but those are some great headphones. Do you have an amplifier for them?

I can give the CD away, I can sell it, I can pick it up 20 years later and listen to it all over again because I own the CD and it together with its contents are right here.
 
Fuck digital music, all the way.

@Ghost_Cat said:

@Scrawnto: It really is a shame, but those are some great headphones. Do you have an amplifier for them?

Sort of. I've been meaning to get a dedicated amp, but I've been plugging them into my A/V receiver in the mean time. It does an alright job.

both. i'll buy a physical copy of pretty much any type of media if i like it a lot.

@rt1959: I love to physically feel my music too, so I just slowly run my fingers along the keyboard and squish my cheek on the monitor when I listen to digital music. I was a huge wax cylinder buyer but one one of my prized cylinders melted all up in my cassette player. Josh Went - joshwent1984.improbablyreplyingtospam.com

I honestly don't see the point of CDs. When it comes to music I want as much of my collection available as easily as possible...and CDs do not offer this. I have a 30 GB ipod I keep in my car at all times and its perfect for playing music.

The service I used for digital music purchases shut down and I didn't have a local copy of the songs I "owned" - so at this point I only subscribe to digital streaming services.
I also listen to way too much music for physical media to be an economically viable option.

Let's say the average price of a CD is $11.90 (point of reference: The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden for £7.24 and free delivery through Amazon, price converted from GBP to USD) and I crank through an average of 2 albums per day (one on the way to work, one on the way back), it would mean, in February of 2014, that I'd go through 28*2 = 56 albums = $666.4 spent on CDs during the month of Feb. I don't make that kind of money.

Can't believe this year old thread was brought back to life by a spam account.

/golfclap

Same here. If a vinyl isn't available then I go for the digital release in stead of a CD.

Unless I can find FLAC files of an existing album, I will buy the CD since it's the next best thing in quality.