FMD — Wither CDs?

There was an article this week that Best Buy will stop selling CDs sometime this summer. I'm sure Spooky has good insider info on this but its no surprise, the CD section in BB has been shrinking for years. Quite the switch from maybe 10 years ago when there were aisles of CDs. It was the place to go to get a wide variety of music.

http://www.startribune.com/billboard-report-says-best-buy-will-stop-selling-cds-this-summer/472797583/

The article also stated that Target is still selling CDs but increasingly asking the label companies to provide the discs on consignment so that they aren't holding unsold music.

Do you still buy CDs? If so from where? If not, do you just stream or download music from iTunes, etc. Or have you have gone all vinyl? I'm a mix of buying CDs, streaming, and downloading. If I stream something enough, I typically go and a acquire it. I also still get music from the library as well.

Drop your lists.

21 thoughts on “FMD — Wither CDs?”

  1. I went into Best Buy last weekend for a camera and hoped to maybe score a CD from one of several artists. None I looked for were there. Now, my tastes aren't that common, but still.
    I didn't even look at prices. I know that when I was a teenager, BB had the best prices on CDs, even the obscure-ish ones. I think I got Jimi Hendrix/Band of Gypsies for 11.95 or something.

  2. 1. Horse Lords “Truthers (Live)” 2015-02-05 Union Pool, Brooklyn, NY
    2. Jan St. Werner “Osho” Felder
    3. The Bug feat. Ricky Ranking “Judgement” London Zoo
    4. Vessel “Punish, Honey” Punish, Honey
    5. Coil “Red Queen” Musick to Play in the Dark, Vol. 1

    6. Sylvan Esso “The Glow (Live)” Echo Mountain Sessions
    7. Nisennenmondai “B-2” N
    8. Vic Simms “Poor Folks Happiness” The Loner
    9. Sylvan Esso “The Glow” What Now
    T. The Knife “Heartbeats” Deep Cuts

        1. It's one of my goals in life to avoid Cracker Barrel, but my wife recently got a CB gift card from the neighbors , so at some point we'll have to succumb.

          1. I have never been, but EAR apparently had a bad experience in one as a teenager, so I keep wanting to eat at one when we drive by.
            We're going on a family road trip to North Carolina in March, so I'll have the opportunity to get told "absolutely no" again soon.

  3. I totally still buy CDs, but then I'm old. Pretty much get everything through either Amazon, Amazon Marketplace or Half Price Books. I will search through used CD bins where or whenever I find them.

    1. Roller Derby - Leon Russell
    2. Tenderness On The Block - Warren Zevon
    3. Lotta Love - Neil Young
    4. Lookin' For Me Somewhere - The BoDeans
    5. Happy Doing What We're Doing - Brinsley Schwarz
    6. House of the Rising Sun - The Animals
    7. Small Axe - Bob Marley & the Wailers
    8. (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures - The Rezillos
    9. A Message To You Rudy - The Specials
    10. Monkey Gone to Heaven - Pixies
    B. Perfect Day - Lou Reed

  4. I usually buy music from Amazon. Many times the CDs are cheaper than the digital versions so I go with the CDs.

    I also buy used CDs at Down in the Valley.

    Question: Why do places like Down in the Valley have new CDs for $16? Do they actually sell any?

      1. Yeah, same here. I usually buy the CD if I'm fairly certain that I like 50% of the songs of more. Anything under that, and I buy the couple that I like.

        But I do love purchasing CDs.

        1. I'm the same way with books; I'll go the library route, but if it's one I really enjoyed, I'll hunt down a nice used hardbound of it for my library, such as it is.

  5. I buy more vinyl than CDs these days. But I still occasionally pick up CDs.

    I like quality. We can argue about why I'm buying vinyl in that case, but there are other things I like about vinyl as well.

    I've recently tried a couple SACDs. They sound nice, and I enjoyed a few that are in surround. Blu-Ray discs of Steven Wilson are silly good.

    But I've been toying with "Should I get SACDs of albums I own that are well mastered and I really love?" these past few weeks. I'm coming around to…meh. A well-mastered CD is sounding pretty damn good on my system and maybe I shouldn't bother double-dipping for things I already own that already sound great.

    I also just picked up a 3-month free Tidal Hi-Fi subscription through Groupon. Could I tell the difference between their lossless and master recordings (and my lossless recordings)? Not so much. And I shouldn't probably buy an expensive DAC to make absolutely sure I'm getting the best version of their master recordings, especially when the odds are I'm not really going to hear much difference.

  6. I buy CDs because I want a physical copy of the music I own. I don’t actually play them (and, in fact, don’t have a CD player other than the media drive on my eight year old laptop), but I do rip every single one I buy. iTunes Match means my library goes wherever I go, even if it’s (ahem) a recording not available through a digital music retailer. I get them either from Amazon or my local independent music shop.

    That said, if more vinyl LPs came with a download code, I would be much more likely to purchase those instead of CDs for the same purpose. (Assuming I can get ECM recordings on vinyl, which I’ve not explored. I listen to more stuff on that label than anything else.) And because I have a turntable and a pretty sweet Sansui receiver (thanks, antiques mall!), I would be exponentially more likely to play music in the house off physical media.

    Funnily enough, we bought the Poissonnier a boom box for her (upcoming) birthday. She’s shown a distinct interest in music, and she has been given CDs by people, so she already has her own little music collection. Of course, we could’ve simply used a small Bluetooth speaker & an old iPhone for her music, but we wanted to give her some of the physical experience of music, and to limit the complexity that comes with a device that has All the Music! on it. I was surprised that a decent boom box still runs over $50, and pleasantly surprised when the Sony unit we bought her came with a cassette deck, which means I can dig out some of the tapes I listed to when I was a kid. I think Mrs. Hayes has tapes of her dad reading stories that he mailed to her when she was little, so we can play those, too.

  7. I really like having physical copies of some of my music, because I'm not clouded and iPods can break and hard drives corrupt.
    But my CD buying has sagged as I stopped getting to live shows with the same frequency (buying direct from the artist is my preferred).
    I haven't replaced with buying online, just with pirating. I know it's a debt I have to pay off.

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