On music programmes, magazines etc etc - they're bleating on and on about how shite Cds are nowadays - when back in the day they were the crystal clear platform of excellence.
I saw the other day someone said "Cds were cheaper to produce and more compact therefore LPs had to go"
I'm thinking it's another marketing ploy - LPs or "vinyl" as they like to call it has been sold to my generation as sounding better and "fuller" sales have rocketed.....it's also the only format where you can't make your own and therefore you're forced to buy.

CDs sound just superb to my ears - I'm keeping my 25 year collection thanks.

Vinyl will be more expensive now.

I've made the point earlier, that when CDs came out in the mid eighties, they cost a fraction of that of LPs to produce, yet were sold at a much higher price.
The poor music enthusiast was ever ripped off.

LP production was labour intensive.

This was in the sixties, given which album sleeve they're stuffing.


http://i1120.photobucket.com/albums/...psjv1iyp66.jpg

CDs take up less space than vinyl too. Of course, lossless downloads take up less space than CDs

I have actually bought my first vinyl record in my 32 years recently

http://stonerider.bandcamp.com/album...aster-download

I have noticed a slight snobbery about buying CD's. I am like the only person my age I know personally who buys physical copies and still has a stereo. I love my stereo and i don't agree with the fact that Music to people these days are just files on a computer, where i love it for the artwork, the case and the booklet.

You can't connect with the music by downloading like you can with a physical copy. As you say, studying the album artwork, actually choosing to select an album from your library to physically play and enjoy whilst having the booklet is delightful. I don't see the point of having thousands of songs downloaded on a computer and just playing random track after random track. That's why music is a dying industry. No one appreciates artists anymore.

This. I still get a buzz from buying a physical copy of an album. I'm pretty obsessed with lyrics, and reading through the booklet is just as enjoyable as listening to the music for me.

1. Yes you can. It is easier than ever to connect with music and musicians than ever, it is just very different to how it used to be. One thing has not changed though, the best way to connect with music is still to go hear it played live.

2. No it's not. For one thing, I don't believe it is dying, but it has changed and that is no bad thing. There has been a democratisation in music in the past 20 years and that has led to more creativity and more diversity (if you ignore the top 40 which hasn't been relevant in years).

3. I think Bandcamp and the artists who use the service and interact with fans on social media would disagree with you on that.

They are referring to a technique known as shredding where the audio is deliberately clipped to make it sound louder. Unfortunately this will have been done to the master file so it affects both CDs and downloads. Sometime an older CD version from a charity shop sounds better than the latest "remastered" version as a result.

Come back in 10 years time when most of todays current artists are working in Tesco's and people only support an artist for three minutes instead of five!

There are some people who still connect with music via downloads, but younger people tend to just listen to what is relevant and move on. It is todays youngsters who will be the deciders of artist's fates in the future. We were lucky in the 70's and 80's to be able to go into record stores, spend hours choosing and listening to the latest music by artists we enjoyed. These artists came and went as now, but many of the artists of the 70's and 80's are still around making music for the fans who supported them religiously 30 or 40 years ago. With everything being instant, anticipation and patience being a virtually non existent thing now, music is readily available 24/7. You don't have to wait for an album to be released before you hear it so when the album is released there's no point in buying it. Artists come and go quicker than they ever have done and it is telling that the major artists still selling records such as David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey, Madonna, Cher, Paul McCartney, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton to name just a handful, do not originate from this modern era but from a time when records were something physically purchased. You held their work in your hand. You felt connected with what had been produced. I do not feel any connection with any download unless it's from an artist i have followed throughout my life. But, I believe you still can't beat a physical copy.

Couldn't even read past that nauseating crap

OK. Fair enough. Perhaps it was a point badly made but there is an element of reality about it. Sadly.

Great post.

I think that a person should be able to connect to their favourite artist, and legally buy music in whichever format they prefer.
I personally love CD's, I love collecting them, I love the artwork, the feeling of putting a CD in a player for the first time etc, maybe it sounds sad but this adds to the whole experience of when a artist I like releases something new.

I have a healthy CD collection and I won't be getting rid of it any time soon. I love being able to see the artwork and various info the artists put into their sleeves and booklets.

This may be true, but nothing beats owning your own jukebox, scanning the title cards under the dome glass, dropping your coin in, pressing the combination of buttons , hearing the big latch solenoid click in and then the record carousel whirring as one selector on the wobble plate activates a pin and the one on the other side searches for it, then the noise of the gripper arm placing the record on the turntable, the sound of the needle tracking in when the amplifier mute cuts out ,then the record starting with the sound coming out of the two big 12" bass speakers and the two eight inch treble speakers. Pure nostalgic bliss for those who remember them.

All this technology, four motors, lots of gears and leaf switches replaced by a chip in an iPod..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=morLkJDxWyg

I have to say that mankind have created some magical things in the past, a Jukebox is one of them. They look beautiful too. A micro-chip, no matter how clever it is, will always look ugly.

I've a memory stick with a few thousand mp3s in it in the Pansonic Viera in our front room, (which is really my den), So I can play any one through the telly and the sound bar with just a few presses on my TV remote.

But I much prefer to use one of these, I rigged up a few years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_i...referrer=watch