In this day and age, one can easily stream music for cheap or pirate it for free. I occasionally use Pandora while working and want to discover new music, or use YouTube to listen to specific songs from bands I know and just learned about. I even use iTunes to cherry pick bands’ best music. But when it comes to wanting to listen to an album in its entirety (or even a greatest hits selection), I buy CDs.
CDs came out in 1982, and they were the best of both worlds: the quality was often said to be the same as vinyl, they offered the portability of tapes and you could even burn your own music on them. CDs were the gateway to DVDs and Blu-ray and could be used for storage as well. They could do it all.
Using a CD is simple: You put it in the drive, and it works. No need to worry about a wireless connection (Bluetooth or Internet), rewinding the tape or record player problems. The only thing you really need to worry about are scratches. It really surprises me that vinyl is making such a comeback while CDs are dying. Vinyl take up much more space and proper care must be taken to not damage the record. CDs have quality rivaling vinyl, they’re much easier to use, and they are much cheaper. You can even back the music up on your computer and get the same quality (until you have to convert it for your digital music player) for free. So, why vinyl? Is it the nostalgia of vinyl that makes it more fun to listen to? Is it because of the larger album artwork? Is it because there is nothing digital whatsoever when it comes to vinyl?
I especially prefer to use CDs in the car. It forces me to battle my ADD. It’s also much less distracting because I don’t have to worry about what song I want to choose: the CD just plays. Sure, I could use an AUX cord and plug my phone in and play the album not on shuffle, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit to changing CDs at a red light just to skip to one song. But listening to CDs allows for no interruption — if my phone goes off, the music doesn’t stop, and it’s much less distracting while driving.
Plus, CDs have a superior audio quality to my phone. MP3s are so compressed that the music sounds flat and barely gives my ears any room to breathe.
Unfortunately, CDs were the downfall of the music industry. Being able to copy the files to a computer allowed users to easily share their music illegally. If only the music companies had thought that part through, perhaps by having copy-protection on the music — but then backing up music would be impossible.
Part of the reason digital music sales were much lower was because consumers didn’t have to purchase the same music again the way they did when transitioning from vinyl to cassette or CD. It would have helped if they figured out how to use services like Napster that would benefit the artists. But nope, they tried to keep things the way they used to be, and that ended up haunting and hurting artists the most. The drop in music sales is forcing Billboard to count streams (YouTube and Spotify) for weekly top charts.
Adele’s recent album “25” was a bestseller on CD because she refused to use streaming services. Many journalists used “25” as a platform to encourage buyers to return to physical formats. While it is doubtful that this will continue to happen, it gave me great satisfaction knowing the album’s first-day sales in the U.S. were 1.49 million while on iTunes it sold 900,000 copies.
Maybe people will learn that CDs offer a much higher quality than MP4s and years from now they will make a comeback just like vinyl did. Instead of dying off, maybe CDs can co-exist with digital.
So if you’re thinking of enjoying all the perks of vinyl (such as going to the record store) for cheap, try investing in a good stereo system instead. Go through your parent’s storage and bring back the CDs. You might even find a few gems — for example, among famous classic rock albums I found two live albums from The Backstreet Boys.