I have two old tape decks in boxes. I may junk them soon but the reason I've kept them is that I have six attaché style cases full of cassettes that contain music from when I was a young adult. Sentimental value I guess.

The tape decks are quite old and eat the tape from time to time. it's a pain in the arse to reel them back inside the cassette housing.

Yeah, that was an issue with tape. My deck has VU meters and mic inputs. It was great for recording live. No need to worry about clipping

I love the simplicity.

Sure, and many people can jump in with anecdotes of what THEY do. But you're the exceptions.

The vast, vast majority of listeners are streaming, and very few proportionally are still buying CDs.

For perspective, 10 years ago when I lived in the UK, HMV by that point had gone from having 2 1/2 floors of music to less than a floor of music, with the rest dedicated to computer games and video content. With the advent of Netflix, the Blueray/DVD is next.

Out here we have Sanity and JB Hi-Fi - JB still has a substantial collection of music on CD and vinyl, but the doors are kept open by electronics, computer games and so on.

At least in these 2 markets, the only record stores "being kept open" by the sale of physical are specialist stores - who probably sell as much vinyl as anything else.

The day of the high street retailer selling physical copies of music and picture are long gone. I work for a major label, and when I was first here 8 or so years ago, we were producing physical singles - now, that's very rare, some acts don't even get physical copies of their albums (and if they do, it's more likely to be vinyl than CD).

Hence my tongue in cheek comment. As I said, as a 40yo few of my friends have working CD players, and many don't have DVD/BD anymore either.

And if you wanted to ask CDBaby, I'm sure they'd tell you the vast, vast majority of their work is digital aggregation.

I'm sure that eventually, they'll stop making CD players much like turntables were phased out. Now with the limited return of vinyl, manufacturers are making them again.

In the end though, I think all physicals media will meet its doom and be replaced with cloud streaming. Kind of sad but times change throughout our lifetime.

It makes me wonder if CDBaby will rebrand to StreamingBaby

I think CDs were fine and a good bridge for technology. It combined the conveniences of vinyl and cassettes. I mostly loved it because unlike with audio cassettes it was easy to skip a track you didn't like. I suppose my phone is the new physical storage medium. I still prefer to "own" my digital files, and it's much more convenient to have them on a phone than on a few hundred compact discs. I also use streaming services more and more now that they're integrated into my iPhone. I often wonder if I'll just give up and stop buying music. It's already starting...

That said, I have a pretty large vinyl collection and still buy stuff from my favorite artists on vinyl, though I'm more likely to listen to the album on my phone.

Well, all of my favorite artists are still making CDs and I'm still buying them. I like to have artwork, photos and notes about the CD, as well as the physical medium to hold in my hands.

Sure. And as I said, we’ve probably got a higher percentage of physical buyers here than anywhere else.

But you’re still as a percentage of the population, in a massive minority.

It’s not really worth arguing with is it?

https://www.statista.com/chart/12950...les-in-the-us/

Still think CDs are a big part of the market?

No, I totally agree and have been aware of that for some time. I'm just saying the CD format is not completely dead yet.

As a commercial format it totally is. I suppose the slight irony is that one of the bigger markets would be self funding musos who want something physical to “have” - whether or not they’ll sell any!

Although I’ve had my independent work on vinyl more than CD these days.

I saw a few articles about the decline in CD's :( It's sad but true.

I'm the same boat as Rob, the bands I still listen to are still printing CD's in addition to their music available for stream. I'll continue to buy them. I have CD players throughout the house so I can play my discs in the different rooms I hang out at. 💿👍

Yep.

And when (not if) the internet goes down or is blocked by your government, Me and Rob will be laying back sipping whisky, laughing and enjoying our music, and talking about the good olde days.

Oh yeah, and when you try to contact your isp, well you won't be able to because your phone won't work. Then you'll start to wonder if today is the day that you better run down to the local river and fill up any empty containers that you have.

Not if, but when.

Let’s not proceed down the political commentary, other than to say I think we might all have bigger issues than Spotify access at that point!

Cheers. What I said wasn't meant as political - it was just a silly joke. Sorry about that. :facepalm