Compact Discs

Will Compact Discs go the way of Vinyl and Cassettes. Ie fade to the point that many new albums will not be available at all on this format... then later make a nostalgic come back ? I have noticed many albums already are only available as downloads. I've bought some (wanting a CD or even a vinyl but could only purchase a download).

Will the CD make a return ? It's still the best medium as its small enough to go mobile, also doesn't disintegrate like tapes do. CDs are tangible unlike a download. 

Your opinions ?

Hard to tell. I don't think they will go away completely. Some bands don't have record deals and can't afford to make their own so they release digital files. Downloads are very easy to deal with and I have many albums I have downloaded (the last 3 Stryper albums) but I still buy physical CD's and lately more vinyl than anything.

Some basic background on the goods and bads of music sources: 
Vinyl = great sound, too bulky and therefore not mobile, skips when lightly bumped, no skip button.
8 track = poor quality, tape gets eaten by player, some tracks change during songs, no skip to next song button.
Cassettes = poor quality, warps too easily, players love to eat tape at one point or another, no skip button.
CDs = good quality, can skip if not treated with care, bigger than tapes to read insert info, smaller than vinyl, mobile, can skip to any song quickly.
Mp3 = fair quality depending on one's space capacity and download availability, can burn to CD or use on players as small as a quarter, can lose on failing hard drive unless backed up.

Personally,  I like cds. It's cool to have a nice, organized collection, especially a big one. My favorite thing about digital is having so much music readily accessible. With just the mp3 on my phone, all I have to do is hit the Bluetooth and I have access to a little under 4000 songs on my car's sound system. That's still only about 30 percent of my collection. Cd is good for home but not so good for mobility. I like both, but for everyday use, give me digital.

Mikeinfla, vinyl, 8tracks, and Cassettes at one point have almost completely gone away with Vinyl making an astounding comeback (that I think surprised all of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s and witnessed the demise and subsequent resurrection)
 I hear tapes have made an underground comeback, but not enough to be substantial. 8tracks died and rotted (quite literally)

But CDs seem to be hanging on for dear life. Despite the new technologies, the Compact Disc seems to still be going strong. Not as before, but enough to wonder if it will make a complete come back ?

Metaldude- that's exactly where I'm at right now. Digital surrounds me, but at home I love to pop in a CD or drop a needle on a record.

I think CDs are going to stay around for a while longer. They're a cheap/easy way for bands to distribute their stuff at shows and what not while still maintaining having that physical "something" merch. Not everyone has vinyl players and cassettes are far from ideal.

I doubt CDs will ever make a "comeback" as vinyl did because there's no real reason they would. But they're convenient, cheap, and easy enough to stick around. We'll see though! I am certainly quite proud of my CD collection and it'd just irk my OCD tendencies if I had to have multiple other media types I had to work with haha.

I think in 10 years they'll be collectors items for the most part. The new generation doesn't care much about whole albums and by then, us old guys will be too busy chasing the kids off the lawn to care.

I love the ease of listening digital but want the physical format.  I've only purchased a few album downloads.  I would rather have a CD on my shelf, too.

I like CDs. I like to read the booklets, the lyrics.
My CD collection is very organized.

When you have CDs you have to rip them when you want music on your phone. 


My thought is that CDs will be go the same way as the vinyls and the cassettes.

I know walmart and Best Buy, for example, still sell new release CDs. Some even carry vinyl.

Technically I guess CDs haven't "gone away" so much as they've simply been heavily shadowed by digital delivery. 

I think our generation will stubbornly hold onto CDs despite any new technologies that attempt to replace them. 

Like Kerrick, I too am very proud of my CD collection. The one advantage digital has over physical media is in the case of a fire or other calamity. If u have your collection backed up in the cloud or on a HDD away from the disaster, then u still have your collection.... can't say that for my vinyl or CDs! 

I want albums, not singles.  I don't ever shuffle my playlist.  I start an album at the beginning and listen all the way through.  So hopefully CD's don't go all the way out until I'm gone.

"....we had teeth !"

Guilty/Forgiven wrote:

Cassettes = poor quality, warps too easily, players love to eat tape at one point or another, no skip button.

I remember a guy who had a "skip" button on his car's cassette player.  You would press the fast-foward button while the tape was playing and it would reduce the sound and skip forward to the next audio break in the tape (so it only skipped one song at a time).  The two problems with it were that if a song had an especially quiet interlude it would often stop there and think it had the next song, and you could faintly hear the music squealing at quick-time as the tape ran fast-forward and played at the same time...I figured that had to be murder on the life-span of the cassette.

I remember that ! I had a home tape deck that had that function. While it worked pretty good, it wasn't ideal for albums like Pink Floyd The Wall 

MikeInFla wrote:

WE HAD HAIR!!

CDs, for the most part, are already dead.  Box stores like Walmart, Target, and Best Buy are almost the only places to still get them.  The local stores have all dried up from lack of business.  The box stores are cutting their music sections back a little more each time they shift the dept. around to make it look fresh.  Face it--the physical medium is dying whether it be CDs, movies, or books.  The younger generations that everything is being marketed to want digital everything.  CDs are just a novelty much like vinyl.  In time, they will be only a collector's item that some fans will still buy just like with LPs.  The market as a whole is not buying physical media anymore.  With sites like Pandora and Spotify, many people aren't even buying music--they just stream it.

True alldat. I buy mostly used from Amazon and it's ridiculous how cheap some discs are. I think there are people like some of us around here that prefer a CD but of all my friends, there are very, VERY few that still buy CD's.

The kids in my youth group, if they get a CD, will rip it to MP3 for their phones and then either give it to a friend or chuck it in the trash.

alldatndensum wrote:

The kids in my youth group, if they get a CD, will rip it to MP3 for their phones and then either give it to a friend or chuck it in the trash.

Shame on them. The first, at least, is illegal and unethical.

BearDad wrote:

alldatndensum wrote:

The kids in my youth group, if they get a CD, will rip it to MP3 for their phones and then either give it to a friend or chuck it in the trash.

Shame on them. The first, at least, is illegal and unethical.

+1. I also hope they know the importance of backups. It isn't a question of IF, but WHEN their drive or flash memory will go bad.

I don't think that they care.  Music is disposable to most kids these days.  If they lose it, a new song will take its place eventually.  That is the music business these days.

alldatndensum wrote:

I don't think that they care.  Music is disposable to most kids these days.  If they lose it, a new song will take its place eventually.  That is the music business these days.

That may be true, but I think some important lessons about ethics and morality are getting missed. You say these are youth group kids; IMO it is their leaders' responsibility, as well as their parents, to instill in them a proper undestanding of right and wrong.  Never mind that they don't care about the music; they need to care about their actions and what it indicates about their faith. Someone that doesn't see file sharing as stealing probably tells "white lies", another example of how sin can hide in plain sight.

Why do you think it's illegal to rip a cd to mp3? I'm just wondering not fighting. If they own the original format they can put it on their devices.