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CD nadir/ time to invest?

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Obviously prompted by the post by @pawsforthought on whether we are at peak vinyl, I wonder if we have reached the nadir of the CD yet?
Even before the aforementioned post, it was fairly obvious to me that the CD was being squeezed between the convenience of streaming and the re-emergence of the good old LP (I refuse to call them vinyls!) for physical formats. New releases, and certainly re-releases, seem to be concentrating on selling us the retro format, often with a download included, and back catalogue of CDs is drying up big time, so is the CD doomed? Those back catalogue items that are still there are often cheaper than the mp3 download, so they can’t be selling.
The exception appears to be the mega de Luxe type box sets where the capacity of the silver disc trumps LPs, and for major artists where it is economic to offer as many formats as possible (collectors will also buy the lot ….even bloody cassettes).
So….do we forget the things, or buy them up while they are still around? As soon as things disappear they seem to be desirable for some people (head over to eBay for evidence), so my instinct is to keep buying them while they available – I hasten to add as a listening experience rather than as an investment. I find streaming a mixed bag, and my hifi is set up for records and CDs, sounds bloody great, and I’m not getting rid of that.
I know you can store them all digitally, and I have done for loads of my collection, but there is nothing quite like scanning along the shelves and picking something out you haven’t played for ages.
Will the CD die completely..? I hope not.

2

Comments

  1. I am not sure we have reached the nadir – I don’t think we are near it. Physical sales in the UK are still dominant and cd’s account for a much bigger portion of those sales than vinyl. I hope they don’t disappear completely as I have got thousands of them. Not sure what sales are like in other countries but judging from the queues round the block every day since the new Amoeba opened on Hollywood Boulevard there is still a healthy market in the USA. I hope to be there in September so will let you know.

    • Agreed, we haven’t reached the nadir. The nadir will be in 10-15 years (probably before) when CDs will surely stop being mass produced at all.

      Here’s an interesting graph:

      https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/17244.jpeg

      CDs have never sold so little since their invention. There surely can’t be any doubt that they will soon be phased out entirely, or else become super expensive collector’s items, priced similarly to vinyl.

      Streaming has grown hugely and it’s clear the industry now, finally, has found a way to monetise digital after the failed experiment of downloading (which is also now nearly dead as a technology).

      Vinyl has grown hugely in % terms compared with itself, but compared to streaming it’s tiny potatoes (and even tinier compared to the CD’s imperial phase). In real terms, vinyl sales are a bit less than 8-track at its peak.

      Streaming is close to the only game in town when it comes to the mass market now. I suspect CDs are only kept afloat by a small cohort of older consumers, and soon that cohort will either stop existing as any kind of mass market, or will adapt to streaming.

      Users of this forum are outliers of an already outlier cohort, I’m afraid, so we probably shouldn’t trust too much to anecdote when considering this stuff.

      For most people, I think CDs probably = ugly clutter. Why would anyone under, say, 40 own any?

      If you’re 35, the music industry has been in a panic about digital since you were about 12 years old. You probably got an iPod for your 16th or 18th birthday. You’ve had an iPhone since you were 21, and before that you probably illegally downloaded music rather than buying it, in your teens. In your mid 20s you maybe switched to Spotify, or – if you wanted to stay with downloads for a bit – waited until Apple Music, aged 28 or so, to adopt streaming. In other words, your whole adult life has probably been CD-free but for a couple of well-meaning stocking fillers.

      I suspect for the vast majority of younger Gen X and all Millenials, CD buying is probably a total anachronism – something Dad does. So I don’t think it has any kind of future at all.

      • Oh how depressing! But you are probably right. People who don’t like owning CDs (or records) are just on a different brain frequency from me. I just don’t get it. Why would you NOT want to own CDs?

        But I do recognise I’m an outlier of an outlier… a minority, basically. A dinosaur!

        • I have to confess that all my CDs are in boxes in the loft. I moved house about 7 years ago and never could be bothered to unbox them.

          I dabble with vinyl but mostly not. It’s all on my phone. Almost all my music listening happens when I’m running. 45 mins every morning, I run 10k and listen to something. I’ll sometimes listen in the car and very occasionally put a record on at home. My car doesn’t even have a CD player: it’s digital or nothing. There’s no CD player plugged in anywhere in the house – most of my home listening is Alexa / Sonos.

          I’ll admit that I hate clutter, though, which is probably why I’m demographically atypical on the subject. The only things on shelves in my house are books, which I think I feel the same way about as you do about CDs.

  2. Keep them, they make decent coasters.

    I agree they are better for archive box sets. Wonder if anyone here bought Prince’s Sign O The Times on 14 slabs of vinyl or whatever it was. As these kind of sets often contain many takes of the same track to be able to easily skip is useful. I buy much more vinyl, but do buy the odd CD, I rip it losslessly to a hard drive and then put it away.

    I still have probably a couple of thousand CDs, but almost no cases as I discarded them and placed them in multi disc wallets where they generally remain untroubled for years on end.

    • That is what I did about 10 years ago.

      Recycled all the plastic cases, put the discs and covers into plastic wallets. Thought I would then rifle through them like I did with vinyl records in record shops the 1980s and rediscover the joy of music/discovery.

      Never happened.

      I play CDs in the car only now but as I have been working from home for the last year that has not happened either.

      • Remember when i replaced all the jewel boxes in my then approx 1,000 CD collection with plastic sleeves abour 10 years back.

        It took forever and left my hands and nails in a very sorry state. Now almost every CD i order seems to come in a cardboard mini gatefold sleeve that is inexorably eating up all the space i saved.

  3. CD is still a very efficient carrier of music. I hope and truly believe there is a demand for physical product. I can store them on shelves and browse for inspiration- I can’t do that with a collection of 1s and 0s
    I get streaming of films and TV, and yes this means we’re probably at DVD nadir, but not for music.
    How can you buy a download from a bands merch table at a gig?
    I like vinyl, I like the sound, the ritual, and the ownership. But I think I prefer my music on CD

    • I can browse my full CD collection (with artwork) on my phone. Choose what I want to play and listen losslessly through my Squeezebox Nothing could be easier. I used to have a CD changer that held 300 discs in the last century. That was quite good to choose what you wanted to play quickly too.

    • I’m not sure I know what you mean by efficient.

      74 minutes of music held on a 12 x 12 cm piece of plastic doesn’t seem very efficient compared to ∞ minutes on a 14 x 7 cm multifunctional supercomputer.

      • Actually, I’m not absolutely sure either now you mention it.
        Maybe “effective” rather than “efficient”?
        Or maybe just my preferred carrier.
        I like physical – I can see the obvious benefits of downloads/streaming (space efficiency, portability, easy access etc), I just like having product and filing shelves (and the looking at them).
        Me … luddite!

        • Yeah, I think we tend to want things that work for us to stick around. Why wouldn’t we?

          I suppose I’m lucky in that my favourite media technology – the book – has never been surpassed, at least so far. It came close with the kindle, and I daresay the successor to the kindle will one day actually be readable on, but for the moment I’m quite safe. I’ll be very reluctant to let books go, though, once the technology catches up and makes them genuinely redundant.

          • Kindle perfectly readable, well Paperwhite that I have is. I can take several suitcases worth of books on my device when I go on holiday, saving a ton of weight. I can read in bed in the dark without disturbing my partner, and it’s not a problem if there’s no bedside lamp. I don’t have to support the weight of an epic, 1000 page paperback or hardback when lying in bed. I don’t lose my place. Books have their advantages but have been surpassed for many. A lot of people prefer audiobooks these days anyway.

            • And yet ebook sales have been steadily falling for several years against a backdrop of slow but steady growth in the physical book market. Device-wise, e-readers have seen a rapid decline in sales. 3 out of every 4 books sold are still paper, and that figure is rising, not falling.

              The theoretical advantages you outline are all true, and yet the reader market overall isn’t all that keen. So there must be something about the tech which isn’t capturing readers’ imagination: there was a decent amount of early uptake which has now seemingly peaked, and now fewer adults (19%) own an e-reader than in 2014 (32%). Some of that will be people preferring smartphone apps over a dedicated device, but clearly by no means all, since the content is selling less too.

              Btw – I love an audiobook. My preferred reading methods are paper and headphone.

          • I think what you say about books is reminiscent of how I feel about CDs. Dai says he can browse his music with artwork on his phone, but compared to thumbing through a physical collection of music, I think that’s like the difference between a kindle screen and feeling the pages between your fingers, folding the edge of a page to keep your place, etc. Some people just like the tactile approach.

          • I’m finding that I’m reading more and more on my Kindle Paperwhite. I have absolutely no trouble whatsover in reading on it either in daylight or darkness; indeed, having a disability of my right hand, I find it much easier to hold and manage than a thick paperback or hardback. Still love buying posh coffee-table books, mind.

            • Books with a lot of illustrations don’t usually work well on the Kindle.
              Ditto the sort of book that has lots of short factual pieces that you might want to browse around in.

                • Yes. I buy lots of Kindle books, but very rarely buy actual paper books these days. Two more from the Kindle store yesterday to add to the backlog.
                  Need to replace my Fire tablet with a Paperwhite. I had a paperwhite when I started with ebooks some years back, but I trod on it and broke it. A much better reading experience with the paperwhite.
                  I do also have a nice stack of books (mostly crime/detective stuff) from my brother’s house clearance when he downsized last year.

              • As mentioned above, like BC I use the kindle for novels and bios.

                A paperwhite is never going to be able to replace the pleasure that comes from being able to open up and flick through an image-rich book on art or cinema.

            • I have a kindle yet have absolutely no interest in reading from it. Thankfully neither do the bulk of the population in the UK where book sales are very healthy. My daughter takes the piss at my CD buying but is still happy to buy books herself. I think physical books are likely to stay around for many years yet.

              • Books on a Kindle (or Kobo in my case) are still books containing words written by an author who gets paid when someone buys them. Most physical books I own are vintage, stuff I collect, but I still buy new ones if I think I’m going to want to add them to the library (libraries, rather, since I have one on each continent) and read them again at some unspecified point in the future. Books which will probably just clutter the place up when I’ve read them go on the Kobo. I’m happy reading either way.

                • The thing about the book is that it is a very old and well-established technology. It combines both functional and sensorial attributes. A well-designed book is very pleasant to read, from both the visual and tactile point of view – cellulose has a warm, flexible feel that is difficult to replicate with e-readers. As hedgepig mentions, that may change one day. Until then, the book is going to be a difficult technology to displace.

  4. Not many people – apart from historic performances – wanting to go back to vinyl for classical. I’m munching my way through the complete Sibelius symphonies at the moment in a CD boxset from Warners (Helsinki SO/Berglund) and enjoying it very much. I say gather it while ye may.

    • I’m a recent convert to classical (I posted about it last year). Hm, I’m in two minds. I’d say I roughly buy half vinyl half CD. There’s just something lovely about old vinyl, even mono recordings from the 50s.

      Sibelius, for example, I prefer on vinyl. No real idea why to be honest. What are your favourite of his symphonies by the way? I fell for him in a big way last year, and my favourites are probably 5, 7, 2 then 3. But 6 seems like a grower once I give it a chance.

  5. I don’t get the fetishism about vinyl. I know the sleeves are better but let’s face it they can be a bit of a pain. Easy to damage, have to be stored perfectly and unless you have a great system can you tell the difference between them and CDs? My CDs are ripped to FLAC and then I can listen anywhere. Through Sonos, on Headphones, in the car, on my rounds, van or walking. It’s the convenience which means I listen to more stuff than I ever have.

    I love my albums as much as anybody and listening to them is the main thing isn’t it? CDs let me do that more often.

    • I like vinyl for (yes) the sound, the larger artwork and readable sleeve notes/lyrics. They also feel better in my hands than CD cases. It is easier to stream my ripped CDs/downloads though.

      • If you are buying discs you probably don’t want to subscribe to a streaming service though. I have a Spotify subscription but almost exclusively used by my daughter.

        • I have a Spotify account for checking out stuff that I’m made aware of before buying on CD or very occasionally on vinyl. I’m currently amassing a classic jazz collection via cheap CD box sets. 17 albums on 10 CDs for 15 quid is a no-brainer. Two Oscar Peterson boxes and a Paul Desmond box last week. Niiiiiiiiice!
          It all gets ripped to lossless files which I can call up and play through my (fairly) Hi Fi as the mood takes me. These days I tend to create a long playlist of albums (I’m over my random play thing now) and then hit play and sit back.
          I’m pretty much over the tactile thing as regards music collecting. Nice to see the cover art come up on a screen but I won’t be gazing at it for the duration of an album these days.
          In the car, currently, it’s BBC Radio 3. Or silence. Used to always be Radio 4 but I’ve started to find it a bit annoying.

          • I did exactly the same when I started getting into jazz last year. I went from having about 6 jazz albums on CD to several hundred very quickly, mainly by buying a shedload of those boxes. Some of the boxes have had me cursing the day I bought them though. These are the ones where the half dozen discs are in a traditional great big fat Jewel case, housed in a flimsy cardboard box. It takes me ages to get into the box. I’ve ended up ripping most of them.

            • This is where collectorist habits become problematic, Paul.
              The likelihood of any of these multi-artist boxes becoming collector’s items is pretty remote, I think.

              With those “Enlightenment” CD sets, the flimsy cardboard box has exactly the same information on it as the front and back of the multi-disc jewel case inside it. I’ve chucked away the superfluous cardboard from all of mine.
              The cheap jazz CD boxes I prefer are the “Intense Media” ones, because with them you get 10 CDs in cardboard sleeves in a fairly robust clamshell-style cardboard box.

  7. I still like CDs as a music format, but I don’t tend to buy that many these days – preferring digital lossless downloads. I still like the idea of owning the music I want to listen to, so streaming for me is mainly to check out albums before I buy, rather than a primary source.

    My main reasons for downloads is that it gave me instant access to new albums rather than having to wait 2 weeks for Amazon to get them to me here in Singapore (although Burning Shed have amazingly managed to get me albums by release day by posting early on a couple of occasions). Added to that the fact I digitised my CD collection anyway for ease of listening around the house and portability, then downloads was the obvious way to go. I only really buy for the “extras” (e.g 5.1 mix, SACD etc) or ones that are not available as downloads. I do wonder though whether direct downloads will disappear with the rise of streaming.

  8. My CD player packed up about four months ago and I’ve largely been “Alexa-ing it” since then. I take it that is streaming? Then, last Sunday, I found a new CD player outside someone’s house (it’s the way the Cornish do business) and I so much more prefer it.
    For a start, huge swathes of what I want to listen to is not available to stream (Ace compilations – 25% of my listening experience – aren’t anywhere to be found) and I like picking a specific item and reading the sleeve notes.

    Here’s the thing, if shops stocked CDs I would still pay £12 for quality, e.g. Ace compilations, and if the Record Fair goes ahead in May, I’ll do my usual 3 or 4 rock ‘n’ roll, surf, ska purchases for about £30.

    The record industry has been nuts for as long as I can remember.
    Fifteen years ago they’d have poured scorn on anyone mentioning LPs, now, following one or two films/books about a very, very, very minor resurgence in vinly sales, they completely trash a format which the vast majority of the population still have a playing device, for an older format for which the vast majority of the population do not have a playing device!
    Totally 100% bonkers.
    It’s like inventing a new can for baked beans, so that no one can now eat baked beans.

    Personally, I find vinly a pain in the arse. I just haven’t got the space. That said, following a cull of books and unwanted CDs (individual CDs, not the format), I’m planning to get to work on reducing it, and, as I mentioned on another post, then go round asking people born mid-1930s to late-1940s “‘ere, do still have any records?” I reckon if I ask ten people, six will say yes, and none of them would still be playing them.

    So, ironically, I do plan to get more vinly, I just don’t plan to pay for it.

      • What?
        If the Beatles flexis don’t come out on CD, I don’t buy them.
        The industry doesn’t earn £12.
        Whatever you do, Dai, don’t enter to go on the Apprentice!

        • Now all you’ve got to do is persuade all the people who could buy CDs and don’t want to, to also pony up £12 for a product they don’t want.

          You aren’t a typical consumer. What you like self-evidently isn’t what the music-buying public at large likes.

          • We’re talking about a Beatles record, not some indie band who once got to no. 65 in the charts.
            Plonk it on a CD, tell the public you’re doing it, stick it on a supermarket shelf, and it will sell. As much as it would have done in 2001? No, but all the people who bought “1” still like the Beatles and will still have a device on which to play CDs.
            Do not throw the baby out with the bath water.

            • “Plonk it on a CD, tell the public you’re doing it, stick it on a supermarket shelf, and it will sell.”

              Mostly it won’t. Which is why supermarkets don’t carry anything other than a very select handful of obvious sellers – it’s deliberate.

            • I don’t think The Beatles are really relevant to the majority of people who either buy or stream music. I did check and they sold well in the first half of 2020 but isn’t that due to a remastered release? I wouldn’t mind betting that if anyone under 30 bought Abbey Road, it was to display it, not play it.

              • Uh?
                If the Beatles (in the context of supplying the High Street with a version of a cheap, easily stored, disc, by a famous act the average Joe can play on a system they still own) can’t sell reasonably well, then who can?

                I’m not talking about queues round the block Beatlemania, I’m just saying supply the product.

                The local green grocer stops selling oranges, and very soon people, because of inconvenience, because of finding something else to buy, because of getting out of the habit… stop buying oranges.
                It is that simple.

                  • Toast, yeah, but what is this website’s obsession with young people?
                    Hate to say this but I couldn’t give a shit what young people want.
                    Wish ‘em well and all that but, er, yeah, don’t want their verdict on Gene Vincent or, er, anything, ever. No offence.

                    I’m talking about supplying a product that people used to buy – very, very recently – and many of whom would still buy if it was staring them in the face for a moderate price (they have… erm…. a house and money… slightly more money than a “young” person has) next time they are in a supermarket.

                    Stick on the shelf and if they don’t want it fine, but stick it on the shelf.
                    Otherwise it’s just a self-fulfilling prophesy, but maybe that’s the aim.

                    • It costs money to “stick it on a shelf “. The record company has to produce and ship it and the shop has to give space to it. Even if the retailer can send unsold items back, they have lost the opportunity to give space to items which would have sold. Welcome to the world of modern retailing.

    • You’re looking at it the wrong way around – consumers drive industries, not vice versa. Demand dictates supply. As evidenced above, they’re not “trashing” CDs. You can still buy them, the supply is there if people want it. It’s just that people mostly don’t.

      • I don’t understand the reason why, but if you can’t get an item on CD how can you buy it?
        Anyway, I don’t think it is consumer led, I haven’t led it, and I’m a consumer.

        • You buy it on vinyl, as a download or stream it. And as everything was better in the 50s and 60s you should still be buying vinyl, maybe 78s or reel to reel tapes?

          • The 60s was the best time. By miles. You know it, I know it.

            Now, try and concentrate on the issue at hand, Dai.
            If you do not stock an item, the potential punter can not buy it.
            It’s very simple. Do not complicate it.

            Besides, as I just said above, unlike yourself, who is prepared to fork out hundreds on box sets, I’m going to go out and just ask people if they want to get rid of stuff that 95% of them will not be able to play.

  9. Streaming.

    Abrogate the responsibility for curating the music of most importance to you in your life to a combination of cloud storage services and an internet service provider, run by some breadhead dudes who don’t give a shit about music and have zero soul?

    Boy, why the fuck would anyone sane do that? When the shit hits the fan and the internet implodes, I’ll still be able to run my stereo using solar power and blast out the choons I love from my extensive collection of vinyl and CD titles.

    I’ll be eating my home grown vegetables on the porch, headphones on, rocking along to some Neil and Crazy Horse, keepin’ my ammo dry and watching out for any jealous critters trying to raid my music stash. You have been warned!

  11. I am sticking with CDs: I don’t have the living space or money to switch back to vinyl collecting. Many recent box set genre compilations on Grapefruit/ RPMetc. have been CD only, so presumably have that market in mind. And as mentioned above, I see no imperative for classical or jazz recordings to return to vinyl formats.

  12. I remember a conversation with someone 10 years younger than me in around 2010.

    Him – “have you heard the new record by …?”
    Me – “it hasn’t been released yet. has it?”
    Him – “no – but it’s available online”
    Me – “ is it pricey?”
    Him – (aghast) “What? I haven’t paid a penny for music for years”
    Me – (a small lecture about stealing music)
    Him – “that’s all very noble and I agree, but no one buys music now”.
    Me – (I continue my small lecture)
    Him – “Again, completely agree – but I now have a free record and you don’t. “

  13. Having recently moved house and added an extra shelving unit on my CD wall, allowing me to have almost all my CDs out and easy to find (apart from the ones in thin cardboard sleeves that sometimes take an age to find), it has been really irritating me when people who have very little interest in music have said “what do you want all those for” or “why have 3000 CDs when you can stream anything at the push of a button?”

  14. I agree with you Paul. I spent as much on the shelving for my music and book collection than most people would spend on a family holiday. I have been on this site since its inception and this is probably about the 6th time this subject has come up in those years . Guess what – cd’s are still around.

  15. Ironically it was the Record Collector, more than any other publication I remember reading, that was at the forefront of the “CD good, LP passé” angle.

    Now the holier than thou, born again, Record Collector comes over like a reformed alcoholic as soon as vinly is mentioned.
    They weren’t saying that in the dire 1980s.

    I didn’t believe them the first time, I don’t believe them now.

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