

Why is 65% of all music sold in the U.S. via compact disc? - cwan
http://www.businessinsider.com/people-why-are-you-still-buying-so-many-cds-2009-8

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spydez
Personally, CDs are infinitely better than iTunes, et al.

I get my music absolutely DRM-free. I can rip a CD to as high a quality mp3 as
I want. I can rip to lossless FLAC for backup/future lossy format reencoding.
And I get a physical backup.

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AlisdairO
The CDs I buy are a _lot_ cheaper than digital downloads. I imagine this is
due to the fact that CDs are subject to overproduction, and shops or
publishers will reduce prices to get rid of excess stock. Digital downloads
are not subject to this issue, and seem to remain expensive.

There's a few other reasons: CDs have no DRM, and offer very high quality.
Fuzzy reasons include a certain enjoyment of the physical artifact, and the
fact that it encourages me, every so often, to listen to an album straight
through, something I rarely do with digital media.

Mainly, though, I resent paying the same or more for digital downloads - CDs
are a physical artifact, so digital stuff ought to be cheaper. I buy singles
via download, as they work out cheap, but albums do not.

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jobu
Because 90% of digital downloads are not "legal", and thus do not count as
part of the 35% of music sales. That and I can trade CDs with friends and
still get the MP3s from both CDs.

Yo! Ho! a pirate's life for me... ;)

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krschultz
Because there is not much advantage to digital music.

I can play a CD natively in my car, or any car. I can play it on my iPod, I
can play it in Linux. I can back it up for later, but I still have the
artwork.

With digital downloads, I have to burn them onto a CD, label the CD, and
probably rip some DRM off it to work with non-iTunes players.

For CDs the only hard part is buying them. Sometimes I can't find the bands I
like at my local store, but it is a decent independent record shop so it has a
good selection and I like supporting them. If I go to a show, I make sure I
buy the CD there. If I can't find it at either place Amazon is cheap enough
and it gets delivered to my mailbox.

I guess the only advantage is being able to buy songs a la carte, but thats
not how I personally listen to music. Sometimes I buy a CD and had a bunch of
the tracks and first, and a month later those are the ones I love. How can you
tell that from a sample? So I just buy the whole thing anyway.

Not everything new is better.

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minsight
The grammar of this submission's title hurts my brain.

~~~
jrockway
Seriously. Because of your comment, it is playing over and over again in my
head... and I can't make it stop. I hit the "flag" button with the hopes that
an editor will fix it. Otherwise I may not be able to sleep tonight.

~~~
cwan
Oops, sorry - a poor attempt at abbreviating a title gone awry. That should
teach me to remember to proof read.

~~~
jrockway
Nice. Unflagged :)

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mquander
I find this article weird. Why isn't 95% of all music sold in the U.S. via
compact disc?

All my music purchases are CDs (and I do purchase quite a few), because if I
only wanted a digital copy, I would probably obtain it online outside of a
paid download service; P2P is free, usually more convenient, and usually
higher quality.

I don't think I need to enumerate lengthily the virtues of CDs; physical
artifact, nice art, cultural signifier, (more or less) perfect fidelity, can
play in car, etc.

Anyway, I just don't see why this writer is confused that more people aren't
buying something they can get better for free. I understand that there are
some people who consider it unethical to download pirated music, but I don't
think that they are a majority of music consumers.

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pavel_lishin
I download 99% of my music. While I'm not admitting to anything illegal or
unethical, let's just say that my downloads don't exactly add anything to the
statistics. The only time I actually buy CDs is at concerts, so I know the
money stands a better chance of going straight to the artist, and so I can on
occasion get a signature.

I wonder if perhaps that's skewing the statistics.

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mooism2
CDs are cheaper. I do tend to buy CDs second hand though.

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uhgibuig
I thought buying CDs secondhand funded terrorism? I'm sure I saw that on a
RIAA a somewhere

~~~
mooism2
You registered on HN just to post RIAA propaganda?

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jlannan
i think we are witnessing a growing dichotomy in the purchase and use of
digital media. one group has invested in high-quality sound system(s) and CDs
are the highest quality form of music you can purchase (other than SA-CD and
DVD-audio of course, and vinyl some would argue.) on the other hand, you have
the group that wants to purchase tracks one at a time and listens to them on
their ipod/laptop/docking station and the sound quality of downloads is 'good
enough'.

~~~
mquander
I don't think I agree that "audiophiles" are sticking to CDs for this reason.
Losslessly compressed audio isn't really constrained by space anymore, now
that we have 2 TB consumer hard drives, and it retains perfect fidelity. (And
there are multiple P2P communities specifically focused on providing high-
quality lossless downloads.)

~~~
jlannan
yes, but we're not talking about P2P - we're talking about sales, where itunes
has 70% market share and files at just 128-256kbps.

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vaksel
Because it is a portable format. MP3s you gotta waste time burning, cds are
good to go right away

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zandorg
I buy CDs because: They're cheap, they have proper inlay art, not all music is
on iTunes, and they have the best sound quality - and I note that even P2P
rippers won't be ripping a rare single from 1994 I bought off Discogs.com.

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dbrush
Perhaps to play in vehicles?

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littleboy
Having a physical, tangible CD in my possession feels more real than
downloading mp3s. And if I want to, I can always rip the mp3 off the CD
myself.

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codepope
I do it because I get a free CD backup of my music.

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joubert
And yet the Virgin Megastore in Times Square closed down.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
What's the rental like in Times Square? Must be millions?

25% of music sales in the US (according to another headline on HN) are on
iTunes. Perhaps most people that used to use the Virgin store there now use
iTunes?

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dkersten
Because people buy it.

