Easily, with how much people’s digital download or streaming libraries are being stolen from them at will by any given storefront.
CDs.
How about a new format: large optical media. That way, we get the cover art, lyrics on back, without degradation or wearing out.
Audio laser discs.
CD’s. Already have a sizeable collection in storage and honestly never got the fascination with vinyl.
large format cover art, lyrics on back. It was part of the experience, plus cost. You did a lot more research into an album when it was that expensive. Today, people just collect a lot of digital crap.
Nothing can beat a wall of a CD/Cassette/Vinyl collection.
Nothing can beat making a mix tape/CD.
Mix MDs have a bit of a coolness factor to them, though. Even if they’re lossy audio.
Mini discs! They never really took hold in the US but I had one and LOVED it. Rewritible media, but better quality than cassette. Sony made a killer player that only somehow sipped a single AAA battery, which was a big deal for a kid.
All hail MD.
I’ve got both and prefer vinyl. If I was starting from zero now I would focus on CDs. Not everything is available in every format but I think CDs have the most coverage.
Vinyl is cool and cozy but I couldn’t be bothered. It’s a bad tech / product overall.
Too much space, too clunky of a tech to not lose interest in a few months and I don’t believe there’s an audio difference a human ear can notice. So you’re just having a bunch of square posters that you sometimes look at - might as well just do posters then.
crack…pop…pop…skip…crack …pop…pop. Pretentious media.
I still buy music CDs, and rip them to digital media. CDs are a lot easier to rip to digital media, but vinyl is cooler, but I listen to local music mainly through strawberry media player (or USB stick in a car)
Hard no. Hauling this shit around and finding a spots for it is not something I would’ve chosen if I didn’t already have the nostalgic attachment.
That being said! Can’t lie I do still love it.
If I ever need to move…I might just donate most of my things. I love things and I have too much.
These days I try to buy either DRM free flax files. If I really like the art or the artist in addition to wanting to regularly actually listen to as an album, then I may try to buy vinyl + flac files. If it’s at a show I’ll buy whatever is available that I can play because at that point it’s more about the merch than music. I’m probably going to pass on the wax cylinders and I may think long and hard before buying a cassette.
Neither. CDs are only useful as a digital copy and 700MB is a quick download, and many discs can fit as FLAC on a microSD the size of my pinky nail. It might even be cheaper nowadays for them to mass produce 512 MB micro SD cards to put FLAC albums on them. If anybody wanted physical albums. It would be hilarious to just have a QR code on a tiny cardboard envelope.
If we want analog music, which is a cool idea, we should replace vinyl with something better. We can still use an optical laser disc but encoding stereo audio tracks as analog laser etches rather than zeros and ones. That way we could reduce the cost, and increase the quality at the same time. Might even be able to print them on glass for longevity. Then you might have an audiophile quality LP that doesn’t need to be flipped. Also in terms of longevity - an analog laser recording could be reverse engineered and listened to after the apocalypse, while binary CD format is a bit more opaque.
I find people with huge music collections in fact have no taste in music.
I collect both but have begun focusing more on CDs for their portability, price, and their ease of digitization. I’m actually in the middle of extracting CDs I recently picked up at the thrift store as I type this. I have an MP3 player and I load them on there, keep them on my hard-drive AND a separate back up. I still have CDs from the 90s and have had no issues with them playing or being digitized.
Vinyl, without a doubt. Because it’s analog.
CD’s are lossless 16-bit/44.1 kHz PCM digital audio. You can already get that in file form. Why would you want digital audio that’s stored on media that degrades? It doesn’t sound any different than the digital file…it’s quite literally (not figuratively literally but literally literally) the exact same data.
CDs so I can rip it and store it on my raid array.
I will buy digital if I can find it ofc.
There’s actually quite a bit of music published on CDs that is not available on any digital platform. If it’s not somewhat popular no one buys a license to distribute it. There’s recordings you can only find browsing the CD racks at physical stores.
It’s easy to buy and sell CDs second hand.
With most digital media these days you don’t buy the actual media. You buy a lifetime license. For your life or the life of the host platform. Whichever is shorter.
That was always my argument back in the day.
Technically when you bought any music wether it be 8-track, LP, cassette, or CD, you were purchasing a single-user license for the music and the media was just how the record companies delivered it to you. That’s why Napster and all the piracy that followed it was/is illegal, because you don’t own a license when you copy the digital file.
HOWEVER… Over the many decades I’ve been alive I’ve scratched, twisted, demagnetized, or just plain old lost hundreds of LPs, cassettes, and CDs. Do you think if I requested a new copy of the music that the record companies would send me a replacement?
No, they would not. So I obtained digital replacements by…other means.
Vinyls don’t corrode over time. We have vinyl from 80 years ago. Still good. We have CDs from 90s that no longer play. And itunes that have completely disappeared unless than 20years.
If I was starting today probably CDs because the price difference is significant. Ive collected vinyl since the 80s though and acquired the bulk of my collection when former vinyl enthusiasts foolishly unloaded their collections for pennies on the dollar to get cds instead. I dont buy many new LPs nowadays and stick to thrift stores and discogs bargain deals.
