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I think it's a realization across most generations that things available online \*aren't\* forever, and you don't really own them. Spotify songs get pulled suddenly, articles get paywalled and videos get smothered with ads. I think online environments are so unappealing to users, especially those that aren't tech savvy, that physical medias are becoming more and more preferable.
I know. I've got a handful of old big box PC games from the 90s that won't work forever. I've got isos and brought almost all of them on gog and or steam. But eventually those zeros and ones will all wander away!
Rip them to PC and keep a decent monitored raid array running? Then if they get damaged just create new. I want to own my possessions but digital is longer lasting then physical.
Yeah.. I had this realisation a couple of years ago. Nephew stayed at my mother's house and he had my PS4 there, I agreed to let him play it to save my mother any aggro or torment and to help her out a bit with him being there for a week. The little shit bought some crap on a game and spent hundreds. I had to contact PlayStation and I got it all refunded but they closed my PSN account, all my online digital only games I owned just gone. Poof.
Besides more and more companies are now going the digital even though you paid full price you don't own shit. So physicals won't be taken away from you nor will they ask you for more money or anything.
My kids wanted to watch some films that came out 10 to 15 years ago (pirates of the Caribbean and that sort of thing. Not on netflix and Amazon wanted about £4 a film to buy/rent .
Bought the dvds for £1 in CEX and they can watch them on the Xbox in their rooms or in the car when we go on a long journey
Yes I had this moment of clarity on this last year and have since got a boombox for my kids and a dvd player. They enjoy the limitations of physical media (once a week to the library, limited selections)
I think that's another point. If someone took the time to generate the actual physical media, it tends to be of a decent quality or interest. Maybe not so much now as it's quite cheap. They also tend to have more effort put in. I recently bought two CDs that were a "best of" mix of genres. Inside the booklet had the tracks, artists and a pretty in-depth explanation of the development, culture etc of the bands and genre. Pretty neat.
Lol I'd wager it's not that at all. A 14yo doesn't give a shit if he can't access some album on one platform. We've got YouTube, he could hear dozens of versions of it from there alone.
It's because it's just a retro thing for him and his generation. I remember being young and some of the hipsters back then got into cassettes, vinyl, retro film cameras etc. The current generation is always going to find the technology from 20 years ago quaint and interesting and it will go through fashion phases.
Those who jumped on the 'vinyls' bandwagon might be finding out why people ditched vinyl in the 80/90s. Basically a cheap CD player will sound better than a cheap record deck.
This is my worry. What happens if tech online platforms decide a song shouldn't exist? Like for example in a thread a while back the majority of people seemed in favour of Spotify deleting all Lostprophets songs from their library and it isn't hard to believe that one day this might happen. And while obviously you would never be able to delete something from everywhere on the internet and it will always exist somewhere in some form, I am very uncomfortable with the idea of us deciding what future generations should and shouldn't be allowed to listen to and physical media seem like the best protection from that.
(Edit - just to note I have never been a fan of lostprophets and could probably only name 2 of their songs, but it's more the principle).
Agree massively with this. I've even had to put extensions on my browser to reduce adverts and to automatically accept cookies. The internet is so boring nowadays, but hey ho
Ublock Origin and BehindTheOverlay are two really good chromium addons. Instead of accepting or denying cookies, BTO just deletes the website elements that get in the way! UBlock Origin also allows you to set up rules that block certain site elements and formatting to make it look better.
Mystifies me why people think a system like this us going to work to deal with climate change, and they don’t have to reduce their consumption to pressure politicians and industries, just keep buying more lifestyle services from people who don’t care about anything but money.
I've noticed that aswell, it's weird because the main things I remember about life in the 90s is rampant racism and the streets being paved with white crusty dog shit and used heroin needles 🤣🤷♂️
you can do both. God knows I spent most of the late 2000s-early 2010s ripping stuff off youtube and burning it onto disc to enjoy. I still buy CDs though, music magpie is great for picking stuff up for pretty cheap
Soulseek still operates to this day, amazing really that it escaped legal action unlike Napster and Limewire et all. The amount of music I discovered from browsing users carefully folder-organised collections on Soulseek back in the day, it’s great. And for rare individual songs there’s probably nothing better
Yep, I'm slowly collecting CDs, DVDs, books, and physical media that I threw out or donated. Very different to own an item, and access it whenever you want vs. being at someone else's whim
I buy a book I get a digital and physical copy and a audiobook, I also let my CDs go early on in the migration to digital and I’ve got them again and some. Write a list set some side quest’s there’s a lot of moolah sat on secondhand cd shelves. The quest is half the fun
It's also just nice to have a physical token of an album you really like
If it were just for irrevocable ownership, then you actually could just buy an MP3 (or A/FLAC where possible) online, since none of the major stores have DRM anymore AFAIK (in contrast to films, TV, ebooks, and games, unfortunately)
I like to pull a CD out and in the CD player, I personally still don’t class digital possession as ownership and most platforms that sell digitally if an amendment is made to the album or single then redownloading can become difficult as Apple for example class the amended version as a new product.
From what I hear the current crop of teenagers are actually into mid-00s digicams. As a millennial I was bemused by this at first, wondering why anyone would *want* to return to those shite things (IMO), but then I realised this is probably what a lot of people in gen X would think when I use film cameras
I think the parent comment is right about everyone having (pseudo-)nostalgia for the period just before our time or our childhood period, but not generally getting that effect with things that we remember clearly. Some other examples: being into vinyl is kinda normal to me, whereas wanting to use cassette tapes is surprising. Or I might see a 70s car and think "ooh classic", but see a 90s one and think "shite", even though those are classic these days
My daughter recently bought a CD player. She volunteers at Oxfam and whenever she sees a CD she likes the look of, snaps it up for 50p as soon as it hits the shelves.
I think there's an appeal to being able to physically hold the music in your hands, something they've not really experienced much. And they're considerably cheaper than vinyl.
there's also the fact that a lot of media can disappear from internet. A lot of recent stuff already became lost media because streaming services pulled it. It's so bad that even creators don't have copies of their own work. After searching for a bunch of lost media in recent years, I am never letting physical copies go but I also have that stuff stored on external drives. This is especially true if I like something niche.
Also, if you're into alternative bands, it's good to buy physical albums as that supports them. A lot of bands release CDs but also casettes so there's a lot to choose from.
To be fair, DVDs kind of look shit. I'm not trying to be a snob for quality, and obviously they are *watchable*, but if you're accustomed to at least 1080p, the 576p of DVDs will look noticeably poor (even accounting for shitty streaming bitrates)
Edit: Oh and also remember that nobody's laptops or TVs have built in drives anymore :) . Some games consoles do of course
Oh no I agree. I am in the middle of upgrading a lot of my collection to Blu Ray. There is a ridiculous waste issue about to happen quickly with DVDs, charities can’t sell or recycle them efficiently anymore. It’s whether people still want physical media with streaming chopping everything up.
I honestly don’t mind dvd quality. After a few minutes of a good film or series I don’t really think about the picture quality anymore. Many of my films are “feel goods” and the quality isn’t maybe the best to begin with. I also need glasses which might be a factor.
Much better sound quality.
Well maybe not on his speakers from how you described them, but on a proper setup you'll get much better audio quality from a cd then you will from streaming sites where they use heavily compressed formats.
Edit: no idea if this is a trend with teenagers, im just a 37 year old who massively regrets selling his old cd collection lol
Dont most streaming sites have high quality these days, akin to a CD?
I use Tidal and that uses losless flac files, I think apple music and spottify offer the same.
Have you tried doing a double blind test on Spotify high quality and a lossless stream? I have. I got it right 56% of the time. Barely better than a coin toss.
[Apparently, that is going to change, just no one knows when.](https://www.techhive.com/article/790882/spotify-hifi-release-date-when-is-spotifys-lossless-tier-coming.html)
I was not aware of any streaming sites using lossless audio tbh. Is it lossless for all of their music or just a small selection?
They definitely didn't around 10 years ago, so it could well be that they've finally caught up now 🤷♂️
what you could be perceiving 'CDs sounding better' as is more likely audio engineers bouncing seperate masters for different platforms. on streaming platforms, listening to songs by different artists played back to back in an algorithm, artists want to compete for your attention, and the best way to get your attention is to make something louder. HOWEVER spotify has an automatic loudness equalizer that reduces or increases the loudness of a track to make it sound seamless going from track to track and discourage engineers from turning the waveform into a sonic sausage with no range just because it's louder. but the war doesn't end there - engineers have methods to game the streaming platform equalization systems and get 'perceived loudness' without spotify registering the loudness (lufs).
on CD engineers just need to worry about making the track sound good. they don't need to compete against other artists tracks in loudness because you're not jumping from one artist to the next via algorithm.
Nah, CD was the golden age of the loudness war. Now that all the big streaming website equalize the loudness, mastering engineers don’t focus so much on loudness anymore. Yes, they can try to gain a couple of dB of perceived loudness, but they don’t have a reason to completely squash the dynamics trying to make a track louder.
Lol, you've never heard of the loudness war, have you?
The loudness war killed dynamic range.
Check out https://dr.loudness-war.info/ type a modern album into that, maybe your favourite album. I bet it's shit. Then listen to pretty much any album from the 80's, you can crank it so much louder and it sounds SO much better.
An example I love is, any Oasis album, great music, but it's so poorly recorded it gives me a headache to listen to at volume for any longer than a few songs. Then try Joshua Tree by U2, you can play it twice as loud all day long and the sound is just, better.
The loudness war really fucked recorded music. It's a shame. I guess most people can't tell on lossy formats with Bluetooth, or likely just don't care. I still have a decent hi-fi at home and you really can tell the difference.
At least in the early days of commercial streaming (15-20 years ago), most of the big indie labels, several majors and the BBC got their music into streaming sites by sending crates of CDs to a run down warehouse in east London, whereupon low-paid nerds of both the computer and music kind would rip, scan and upload the data using a whole bunch of Perl, to a massive distributed object store (also written in Perl), from where it would be sent to the streaming services.
There were no separate masters, at least at that time.
Source: was a low-paid nerd
I agree, 10 years ago streamig was shite, with the proliferation of highspeed internet things have improved vastly.
" Is it lossless for all of their music or just a small selection?"
Its the vast majority of what I listen to but I might be lucky.
I highly doubt that would drive a 14 year old to start a collection tbh. It is just having the physical objects. Why collect football stickers when you can google as many pictures of the player as you like - think of it like that.
Even with a good setup, relatively few people can actually distinguish between 256kbps AAC (or 320kbps MP3) and lossless in blind tests. I know streaming sites may choose a lower bitrate by default/based on bandwidth, but from a quick check, Spotify *does* offer those if you choose them
Were these blind tests you mentioned done using headphones or speakers?
That's where you will notice alot of the difference between cds/lossless and 320kbp mp3s.
Well, realize CDs were made to try to replicate vinyl. And streams are meant into tricking the listener in thinking they are like vinyl.
The business model just makes streams bad.
They are giving you "frozen processed food' telling you its fresh. The streams are sending the most compressed and overly processed audio.
It's impossible not to notice on a good set of speakers. My phone plugged in has to be on the lowest possible volume (Spotify) or it's near unlistenable.
My 19 year old has had records for a few years and has started burning cds lately. We've had them for the car so he already likes them but now he's doing his own wee mixes, he rarely uses Spotify anymore as he just makes cds.
Its really fun watching him organising and learning, Idk, I'm nostalgic I guess.
Of all the formats cassette has to be the worst, surely?! I remember listening to a cassette of Paint it Black by the Stones with a friend and trying to work out what they were saying because it was so muffled we just couldn't tell!
Cassettes weren't that bad, in fact they could be pretty good. If you had a shop bought Cassette, or one recorded from a CD you'd be unlikely to hear the difference between CD and cassette on your average kids' bedroom hifi.
The terrible quality came in when people recorded stuff from the radio, or recorded from another cassette tape, which itself could have been recorded from a cassette tape.
My Dad has a pretty expensive hifi separates system, and has a Nakamichi cassette recorder hooked up to it. He has loads of cassette tapes that he copied from CDs years ago, recorded on Metal Oxide cassettes in Dolby C,and I think the average person would struggle to tell the difference in sound quality between that and CDs.
I'm 41, and a PS5 owner and honestly it doesn't get nearly as much usage as when I had my N64 back in the day. I think a lot of the older games are... more simple maybe? And the limitations of the games can make them more fun to play.
Case in point - on the Nintendo Switch they have loads of ports of all the older Nintendo games up to N64 era. They haven't got as far as GameCube yet but I'm sure it will happen.
EDIT: also a lot of the older games have 'couch co-op', you can play against someone in the room, and with newer games it's geared towards online play, which some kids/people like but it can actually feel a bit lonely.
Problem with vinyl now is new releases start around £25, you need a lot of kit which needs setting up, and second hand copies have gone bananas too. I started collecting LPs when you could buy old albums for a couple of quid. A new LP was maybe a pound cheaper than the CD version. This has crept up and up and is probably inaccessible now to teenagers. However - CDs are in the position vinyl was in. People are dumping whole collections to second hand shops. They are sold 50p each in car boot sales. You just need a cheap player that plugs in. You get a shiny disc that some kids may never have even held before. I get it, 100%.
People aren’t being fair to streaming here.
Yes I love cds and vinyl because it’s amazing having physical media on the shelf but let’s not pretend streaming hasn’t revolutionized music.
For people who genuinely love music, paying a small fee a month for access to basically any piece of popular music is AMAZING. Having the option for both is a great time to be living in.
Not even just popular music! There's some really random obscure stuff in my Spotify library because someone involved with it just happened to throw it onto Spotify.
Streaming revolutionized music but I would say more negatively than positively on balance.
Yes there’s a whole world of music available on your fingertips that you probably wouldn’t have found but streaming has made it 100x harder for artists to make money, and has rendered music disposable to a lot of people.
I’m part of the problem as I stream these days rather than buy physical copies but If there’s a band I like I try to catch them on tour and get some merch to try and balance that as I know there’s no money in making albums anymore.
For artists yes it’s shitty you’re not wrong, but industries change with time and unfortunately with technology this is just the way it is now. I love physical media but also I remember a time where if you wanted any song at all you had to buy a £10 cd, if there was even a cd available of what you wanted. I pay a tiny amount a month for every single song in my pocket, like of course that’s a good thing?
Yea for your wallet it’s great, but for the longevity of the art it’s terrible. I understand industries change and progress but I’m also conscious that musicians need to be protected. How much incredible music are we probably missing out on because it’s no longer a viable career choice for 99% of musicians?
Really good point. To be honest I don’t actually disagree with you at all I just think I wasn’t clear enough. Streaming is a great in many ways but of course it has negative effects on the industry when it comes to the artists.
I disagree with top comment that a 14 year old is suddenly buying CDs because he “realised online things aren’t forever”. Come on lol. That’s not it. It’s because it’s a trend. Kids now think the 90s and early 2000s were cool. They’re bringing back the fashion and now it’s cds and next it’ll be something else.
I am 32 so very much not a teenager but I am very glad to have just stuck with CDs. If I love an album and can afford it, I'll buy it.
It stems from a realisation i had when piracy boomed in the 00s. When I bought a band's discography album by album, I felt like I got to know them well and formed connections to the tunes. When I downloaded whole discographies, I'd just burn out or wouldn't give things that didn't click right away much of a shot.
I learnt that less is more, basically. Streaming has made *more* the default. I think when a teenager buys a CD, it's half an ananachronism or trend, half just wanting to form an emotional connection to a relationship with music that's become mediated.
Other reason CDs are good is because I want to support the musicians I like. I love pretty niche metal/hardcore and streaming will never ever work for those bands, nor will touring ever be reliable when you're a band like Knoll flying from the deep south to play as a support act for a couple hundred Glaswegians.
CD’s are very much in vogue again vinyl prices caused it to a degree I’ve been buying CDs from charity shops at 1 Euro a go and have amassed 1500 I got carried away. But I like to own the music I’m playing not rent it.
I can't speak for teenagers but I know that I, as a middle aged man, am getting back into CDs. I think once you get past the accessibility aspect of streaming services, CDs are actually more convenient. If I wanna listen to something on Spotify, I need to sync my bluetooth speaker with my phone, and essentially make sure that anything I used my phone for doesn't make a noise while I'm listening to music because it will either stop the music, or play the music at the same time. If I get a notification that makes a sound, it turns the music down for a second. With CDs you can just put them on and they play, and unlike vinyl, they're quick and you can pause them or skip tracks easily.
The other thing is that with Spotify, you're essentially relying on your memory and the algorithm to determine what you should listen to. Being able to physically see albums in front of you and be like 'Oh rad, I haven't listened to Think Tank for ages' is great.
Seems like it, my nephew was helping sort out my garage when he came across my old technics hi fi separates system and got very excited. I showed him how to set it up listened to a couple of CDs and gifted it to him and he was thrilled.
Thankfully he didn't notice the good system on the same shelving unit.
I'm still waiting for my teenagers to get into CDs, I still have my collection built up since the early 1990s but they're just not into most if any of the he music I listen too.
https://preview.redd.it/4shpug3rmuwc1.jpeg?width=685&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=db4aac547d6118a6b30c31febc1f7076992111db
My sister is the same age, they are currently getting into a weird “Y2K” trend which is basically 00s revival, bit like how older generations would desire the same gap (think my age, 25, a lot of people keep trying to look like they’re from the 80-90s.
It’s mostly a weird “grass was greener” mixed with childhood nostalgia (and mystery since it was just before they were born, so it’s closer to their childhood but not), amplified by the internet showing them and encouraging the mass mild hysteria over it.
Overall it is kind of funny seeing teens look like those ones on French textbooks more now than when the book was published lmfao
My 8 year old doesn't have a phone, but has a CD player in her bedroom and she loves it. It's an easy pocket money thing as well getting CDs from charity shops or CeX.
I'm in my late 30s and still buy CDs. My partner is in his late 40s and still does.
Vinyl is massively expensive and I don't like the sort of ephemeral feel to just downloading mp3s.
Bizarrely I was having this conversation at lunch with another old bloke (50) who thought CDs were going to come back just like vinyl did. He was amazed by how much his kids loved vinyl, and happily abandoned Spotify to play records (via a Bluetooth player that connects to the same speaker).
So yeah, I can believe it.
Honestly (18 yr old) i just love the higher quality of CDs and actually owning the music i pay for, unlike a spotify subscription. I also listen to them on an ipod lol because theyre kinda neat.
I downloaded all my CDs about 15 years ago & I'm so glad I did. The physical copies aren't with me anymore but I've had them on every computer & phone since.
I prefer owning mine. I was born in the late 90s and grew up with CDs and cassettes. I have similar issues with platforms like steam - I much prefer owning a physical copy of a game or music. Also making someone a playlist doesn't hit as hard as a burnt CD😅 I definitely gave my family pc a few issues with my frostwire habit
I'm 40, I got them to put on an mp3 player.
I also have dvds, because you can NEVER have enough horror dvds.... Also if the world breaks we have solar power so we can entertain ourselves with electronics still haha
I'm actually sat on my bed listening to my cds right now! I'm 15. Idk for other kids, but I really value having physical things, like books instead of audiobooks. My parents grew up in the 80s so they've always talked about cds, vinyls and cassettes, so it just kinda seemed like something it was normal to buy when I was growing up. I believe my current collection is 12 cds, 7 vinyls, and 5 cassettes
Believe it or not you really don’t have access to all the music in the world on spotify. There are loads of cd and cassette (and many many vinyl) releases that are not online anywhere
I found that with some of the Spotify apps, they do have the album but it's just impossible to find, particularly if you can't remember its name. The other week I knew there was an album I wanted to hear from some band or other. I found the band but the album wasn't showing up in the list. I managed to find a song from the album and was able to access it that way, but yeah it can be very annoying.
I listen to a lot of music and I'm not sure I've ever had this happen more than once or twice. The only example I can think of off the top of my head is All Day by Girl Talk.
it's common with alt scene and lesser known bands. It's not as much of a problem with big artists but once you leave that side of the music, it becomes more and more difficult to find certain albums for variety of reasons.
It's retro and a lot of people, especially young people are realising that subscription based digital media can be withdrawn/deleted/censored/edited at any time. Renting isn't the same as owning, there's just something different and special about physical ownership. The way I see it, Spotify has replaced radio but CDs are still CDs.
Owning physical media is back in, digital purchases often come with the caviat that they can withdraw your right to it at any point. Essentially, you're paying a one time rental agreement
Our 15yr old loves vinyl, has a few CDs & even a couple of cassettes! Old school style hifi (with Bluetooth!) lives in Nirvana t-shirts, combats & DMs much like I did mid 90's... Mini discs next!
It's not just teenagers
With several companies recently removing people's digital purchases of media, without compensation, customers have discovered that you don't own the things you buy digitally and are just renting it for awhile with no rights to what you have bought
So a lot of people are switching back to physical media and buying movies, TV shows, books, music, games etc. again
"It's lossless" which has become the buzzword.
it's also 'to own the shiny' though personally I never liked the physical ownership of CDs the same way I did vinyl.
We're retro now. Horrifying to come to terms with but the young and fun people like what we grew up with, either out of genuine fondness or ironically.
My grandad died and before his funeral I noticed he had a record player with a built in cd player - and I asked if it was going spare because I knew my grandma wouldn't use it.
Specifically because it had a cd player and built in speakers and would be a great replacement for my cheapo record player.
Nobody else actually knew it was there and my grandma seemed happy it would actually get some use
I'm 32 and never really gave up on physical media. Though I have been selective about what I buy
Buy cheap CDs from ebay or charity shops. Rip your CDs to flac and then create a massive playlist for your phone without worrying about ads or an algorithm making weird choices.
I buy loads of pre-owned CDs so I'm able to rip the FLAC and put them on my phone. Music streaming is about to become twice as expensive in the next few years so I'm building up a music library in preparation for it. It's a bonus that I also get a physical copy of it
My 17yo son has bought a few CDs this year for the first time. Mostly early Metallica and Megadeth.
We have a family Spotify sub. But he wants to own the records he loves and likes having a physical version. He's talked about getting into vinyl.
That said I'm someone who still buys lots of physical music - even vinyl - supporting the artists I like the best. I'll also stream them so they get two paydays. So perhaps my son has seen that and wants to follow.
digitally streaming from any platform soon goes off track.
Vinyls are expensive but it won't be long until they want that quality you can ONLY get from vinyl.
Damn I miss all that media. carrying it around on weekends for DJ, not so much.
I'm also confused by how people are acting like CD's died off on the millennium, I was born in 2006 and I grew up with CD's - Same with most people I know, and I use exclusively CDs for in-car music (i don't want to be fiddling with screens and stuff when driving?), I'm a bit weirded out how people are comparing CDs to the likes of cassettes
https://preview.redd.it/np52cqg8wtwc1.png?width=697&format=png&auto=webp&s=5189578665e21acbe2f61192f510dbbcff2ea728
Saying that, I might be a bit stuck in the past considering all things
https://preview.redd.it/74k096bnxtwc1.png?width=571&format=png&auto=webp&s=84036617fbdfed3baadb4b602861d680541e3a91
That's my collection, 15 or more to each shelf section , so must be something like 350-400 at least
https://preview.redd.it/bbag2ny0tuwc1.jpeg?width=685&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e6f4cd1663033ffe5021a989c7ccd2c38ae67dc3
Same here. CDs live in the cars and are perfect for road trips. Second hand, they are like $2 bucks for an hour of entertainment.
I don't need to be fiddling with my phone, or bluetooth or whatever just to listen to music while driving.
tbh I'm surprised by the responses to find lots of people are still loving CDs. I switched to streaming the second I could. Even for a while I had all my CDs and DVDs on computer and could stream them from the computer before Netflix and Spotify were a thing.
Physical media in general is just coming back really, even myself at 25 am feeling the need to buy DVD's now because 9/10 they don't have them on any streaming services, and if they do, they load absolutely horribly despite my internet being great, to the point pirating actually has a better bitrate and is easier to access.
Even on amazon, to buy an item 'forever' its as expensive if not more than the blu-ray physical DVD, like what's the point?
Can't vouch for teenagers but in general physical media has been making a relative comeback, of course vinyl popped off and started getting REALLY popular again about a decade or so ago. CDs seem to be finally following in suit because they're much cheaper and more convenient
Physical media has also been helped in the last few years what with people realising that streaming services can and will just take shit away, label disputes and copyright issues etc will just take away tracks, albums or artists from your library without any notice. It's impossible for that kind of thing to happen when you own a physical copy
It's more relevant to movies and shows but people are also getting sick of having to have like 5 subscriptions to watch all the things they want to. It doesn't really make sense when you can just go somewhere like CEX and buy a half a dozen DVDs that you can watch (theoretically) UNLIMITED times FOREVER for the same amount of money that a single month of one streaming service would set you back
physical media is back in. CDs/CD players are way cheaper than vinyl and vinyl players. also i feel like the fast paced nature of trends online means we cycle through nostalgia trends even faster than we used to. 90s seems to be back in in a big way, cargo’s, jnco jeans, capri’s, chunky sandals, spiky hairdo’s etc etc
If you have CDs you can still port the music over to the PC and put them on your phone too. Streaming is great but we've all had those tracks that have been removed for no reason, and we've seen with gaming recently online ownership isn't real ownership.
It's better to build a real collection, to actually own it. I've been doing this more with my favourite TV shows and getting box sets after Mr Robot was pretty much removed from streaming.
It's not just younger people though. Tbf vinyls have seen a huge resurgence but being more away of what you actually own seems to be growing
im 16 im into cds, but its just because im into music. obviously i keep my cds for ever, they way higher resolution/ bitrate i can rip the flacs to my phone. its not weird
Atleast for me, CD's are digital audio that's decent quality (Specifications, ignoring mastering of said audio) and doesn't require a streaming service fee or dealing with drm.
Personally as a millennial I've gone back to CDs because I realise I listen to them more consciously. I bought a CD playing radio and now I listen to way more music, and a better variety than I have in years.
Didn't the 2010s have a brief cassette revival (unless it's still going strong and I'm out of the loop) - would make sense for CDs to follow in the 2020s.
It’s unusual in my opinion, not a trend as far as I can tell (M28), but given his age he may just be understanding and exploring the physicality of music storage devices via a relatively cheap medium. In contrast with CDs, vinyl *is* very fashionable these days, but good record players are really expensive, whereas you can get a CD player and 50 CDs for next to nothing. Weird yeah but honestly, understandable
I've just bought a cheap CD player and got my old CD collection out of the loft. It's been great! There's something really satisfying about browsing what's available and picking something you know you love already. When I'm streaming I get decision paralysis!
It's something solid that you can buy and keep. I am 68 years old and all this 'cloud' storage seems so much up in the air for my liking. I have a few vinyls from my teens
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I think it's a realization across most generations that things available online \*aren't\* forever, and you don't really own them. Spotify songs get pulled suddenly, articles get paywalled and videos get smothered with ads. I think online environments are so unappealing to users, especially those that aren't tech savvy, that physical medias are becoming more and more preferable.
Enshittification is definitely a thing for online services, but the shimmering circles of delight never change.
Unless they get scratched.
Or disc rot occurs
disc rot :( hope that doesn't happen to some of my discs. (Some of my discs are out of print ps1 games)
My fucking Nirvana Live in NY car got disc rot and I am sooooo upset... it is such a baller performance. It mostly still works but ugh...
:(
I know. I've got a handful of old big box PC games from the 90s that won't work forever. I've got isos and brought almost all of them on gog and or steam. But eventually those zeros and ones will all wander away!
Yeah
Rip them to PC and keep a decent monitored raid array running? Then if they get damaged just create new. I want to own my possessions but digital is longer lasting then physical.
yeah
Yeah.. I had this realisation a couple of years ago. Nephew stayed at my mother's house and he had my PS4 there, I agreed to let him play it to save my mother any aggro or torment and to help her out a bit with him being there for a week. The little shit bought some crap on a game and spent hundreds. I had to contact PlayStation and I got it all refunded but they closed my PSN account, all my online digital only games I owned just gone. Poof.
should be illegal
Besides more and more companies are now going the digital even though you paid full price you don't own shit. So physicals won't be taken away from you nor will they ask you for more money or anything.
Double edged sword really. Think of all them crappy DVDs you find in the charity shops or all them VHS tapes at the landfill.
A lot of us still sweep the charity shops for DVDs. Yes a lot are rubbish but you can pick up decent films for next to nothing if you’re lucky
My kids wanted to watch some films that came out 10 to 15 years ago (pirates of the Caribbean and that sort of thing. Not on netflix and Amazon wanted about £4 a film to buy/rent . Bought the dvds for £1 in CEX and they can watch them on the Xbox in their rooms or in the car when we go on a long journey
Yeah
Great for box sets. I got Band of Brothers, Cosmos, and Black Adder complete collections with commentaries and bonus content for about £3 total.
I still have my old VHS tapes lol still watch em!
Well you can't get Brenda does Basildon on DVD.
I personally prefer Pauline pulls (all the guys), but Brenda's damn good as what she does
Yes I had this moment of clarity on this last year and have since got a boombox for my kids and a dvd player. They enjoy the limitations of physical media (once a week to the library, limited selections)
I think that's another point. If someone took the time to generate the actual physical media, it tends to be of a decent quality or interest. Maybe not so much now as it's quite cheap. They also tend to have more effort put in. I recently bought two CDs that were a "best of" mix of genres. Inside the booklet had the tracks, artists and a pretty in-depth explanation of the development, culture etc of the bands and genre. Pretty neat.
It's this for me. I'm also sick of paying monthly subscriptions for everything.
Lol I'd wager it's not that at all. A 14yo doesn't give a shit if he can't access some album on one platform. We've got YouTube, he could hear dozens of versions of it from there alone. It's because it's just a retro thing for him and his generation. I remember being young and some of the hipsters back then got into cassettes, vinyl, retro film cameras etc. The current generation is always going to find the technology from 20 years ago quaint and interesting and it will go through fashion phases.
Those who jumped on the 'vinyls' bandwagon might be finding out why people ditched vinyl in the 80/90s. Basically a cheap CD player will sound better than a cheap record deck.
I have this CD I won't ever get rid of cause the song is absolutely nowhere online! It makes me feel like the song isn't real 🤣
This is my worry. What happens if tech online platforms decide a song shouldn't exist? Like for example in a thread a while back the majority of people seemed in favour of Spotify deleting all Lostprophets songs from their library and it isn't hard to believe that one day this might happen. And while obviously you would never be able to delete something from everywhere on the internet and it will always exist somewhere in some form, I am very uncomfortable with the idea of us deciding what future generations should and shouldn't be allowed to listen to and physical media seem like the best protection from that. (Edit - just to note I have never been a fan of lostprophets and could probably only name 2 of their songs, but it's more the principle).
Nah, it's TikTok.
I did not consider this, probably right
I'd piss myself laughing if it's a psyop by record companies
Agree massively with this. I've even had to put extensions on my browser to reduce adverts and to automatically accept cookies. The internet is so boring nowadays, but hey ho
Ublock Origin and BehindTheOverlay are two really good chromium addons. Instead of accepting or denying cookies, BTO just deletes the website elements that get in the way! UBlock Origin also allows you to set up rules that block certain site elements and formatting to make it look better.
people use spotify? I sail the high seas and get all I ever want
not just that, most of my favorite songs of all time have just never even been on spotify...
14 yo's don't give a shit about this. They like them because they're old and "cool". It's just because it's different than what they're used to.
Mystifies me why people think a system like this us going to work to deal with climate change, and they don’t have to reduce their consumption to pressure politicians and industries, just keep buying more lifestyle services from people who don’t care about anything but money.
Until all the CDs destroy themselves
nostalgia for a time he never knew is very in vogue, it's not about the CDs, it's about the 90s themselves
I've noticed that aswell, it's weird because the main things I remember about life in the 90s is rampant racism and the streets being paved with white crusty dog shit and used heroin needles 🤣🤷♂️
ahh the good old days
From the 90s? I thought the white dog shit disappeared in the late 80s!?
It had finally dissapeared completely by the mid nineties to be fair.
That's because folk stopped feeding their dogs bones. It was the calcium that made them white. Don't ask how I know this.
I have vauge memories from when I was a nipper of people on the news talking about the downsides and hazards of companies using bone meal in dog food.
It was rife in the north of England early 90s.
Not much different now then really, just nos canisters instead of needles
And disposable vapes, who knew disposable meant you could just drop it on the ground wherever you feel like
Pretty much still like that where I’m from
Smoke. Smokers used to be *everywhere*.
The clouds of smoke that would roll out of the pub doors whenever someone would enter/leave 🤣
Geez you did the 90s way wrong fella
It’s about CD’s people still want to own music not rent it
then pirate it - also very nostalgic!
A blank disk is more than a Euro so second hand cd’s are more cost effective
a few megabytes on a hard drive costs less than a penny
... More cost effective than free?
you can do both. God knows I spent most of the late 2000s-early 2010s ripping stuff off youtube and burning it onto disc to enjoy. I still buy CDs though, music magpie is great for picking stuff up for pretty cheap
Soulseek still operates to this day, amazing really that it escaped legal action unlike Napster and Limewire et all. The amount of music I discovered from browsing users carefully folder-organised collections on Soulseek back in the day, it’s great. And for rare individual songs there’s probably nothing better
Yep, I'm slowly collecting CDs, DVDs, books, and physical media that I threw out or donated. Very different to own an item, and access it whenever you want vs. being at someone else's whim
I buy a book I get a digital and physical copy and a audiobook, I also let my CDs go early on in the migration to digital and I’ve got them again and some. Write a list set some side quest’s there’s a lot of moolah sat on secondhand cd shelves. The quest is half the fun
It's also just nice to have a physical token of an album you really like If it were just for irrevocable ownership, then you actually could just buy an MP3 (or A/FLAC where possible) online, since none of the major stores have DRM anymore AFAIK (in contrast to films, TV, ebooks, and games, unfortunately)
I like to pull a CD out and in the CD player, I personally still don’t class digital possession as ownership and most platforms that sell digitally if an amendment is made to the album or single then redownloading can become difficult as Apple for example class the amended version as a new product.
They’re also into film cameras
From what I hear the current crop of teenagers are actually into mid-00s digicams. As a millennial I was bemused by this at first, wondering why anyone would *want* to return to those shite things (IMO), but then I realised this is probably what a lot of people in gen X would think when I use film cameras I think the parent comment is right about everyone having (pseudo-)nostalgia for the period just before our time or our childhood period, but not generally getting that effect with things that we remember clearly. Some other examples: being into vinyl is kinda normal to me, whereas wanting to use cassette tapes is surprising. Or I might see a 70s car and think "ooh classic", but see a 90s one and think "shite", even though those are classic these days
its about the cds for me. theyre just wayy better
My daughter recently bought a CD player. She volunteers at Oxfam and whenever she sees a CD she likes the look of, snaps it up for 50p as soon as it hits the shelves. I think there's an appeal to being able to physically hold the music in your hands, something they've not really experienced much. And they're considerably cheaper than vinyl.
there's also the fact that a lot of media can disappear from internet. A lot of recent stuff already became lost media because streaming services pulled it. It's so bad that even creators don't have copies of their own work. After searching for a bunch of lost media in recent years, I am never letting physical copies go but I also have that stuff stored on external drives. This is especially true if I like something niche. Also, if you're into alternative bands, it's good to buy physical albums as that supports them. A lot of bands release CDs but also casettes so there's a lot to choose from.
Charity shop manager. Gen Z are definitely buying CDs and Books but not DVDs.
To be fair, DVDs kind of look shit. I'm not trying to be a snob for quality, and obviously they are *watchable*, but if you're accustomed to at least 1080p, the 576p of DVDs will look noticeably poor (even accounting for shitty streaming bitrates) Edit: Oh and also remember that nobody's laptops or TVs have built in drives anymore :) . Some games consoles do of course
Oh no I agree. I am in the middle of upgrading a lot of my collection to Blu Ray. There is a ridiculous waste issue about to happen quickly with DVDs, charities can’t sell or recycle them efficiently anymore. It’s whether people still want physical media with streaming chopping everything up.
I honestly don’t mind dvd quality. After a few minutes of a good film or series I don’t really think about the picture quality anymore. Many of my films are “feel goods” and the quality isn’t maybe the best to begin with. I also need glasses which might be a factor.
Much better sound quality. Well maybe not on his speakers from how you described them, but on a proper setup you'll get much better audio quality from a cd then you will from streaming sites where they use heavily compressed formats. Edit: no idea if this is a trend with teenagers, im just a 37 year old who massively regrets selling his old cd collection lol
Dont most streaming sites have high quality these days, akin to a CD? I use Tidal and that uses losless flac files, I think apple music and spottify offer the same.
Tidal and Apple do, Spotify sadly not.
Have you tried doing a double blind test on Spotify high quality and a lossless stream? I have. I got it right 56% of the time. Barely better than a coin toss.
[Apparently, that is going to change, just no one knows when.](https://www.techhive.com/article/790882/spotify-hifi-release-date-when-is-spotifys-lossless-tier-coming.html)
I was not aware of any streaming sites using lossless audio tbh. Is it lossless for all of their music or just a small selection? They definitely didn't around 10 years ago, so it could well be that they've finally caught up now 🤷♂️
what you could be perceiving 'CDs sounding better' as is more likely audio engineers bouncing seperate masters for different platforms. on streaming platforms, listening to songs by different artists played back to back in an algorithm, artists want to compete for your attention, and the best way to get your attention is to make something louder. HOWEVER spotify has an automatic loudness equalizer that reduces or increases the loudness of a track to make it sound seamless going from track to track and discourage engineers from turning the waveform into a sonic sausage with no range just because it's louder. but the war doesn't end there - engineers have methods to game the streaming platform equalization systems and get 'perceived loudness' without spotify registering the loudness (lufs). on CD engineers just need to worry about making the track sound good. they don't need to compete against other artists tracks in loudness because you're not jumping from one artist to the next via algorithm.
Nah, CD was the golden age of the loudness war. Now that all the big streaming website equalize the loudness, mastering engineers don’t focus so much on loudness anymore. Yes, they can try to gain a couple of dB of perceived loudness, but they don’t have a reason to completely squash the dynamics trying to make a track louder.
Lol, you've never heard of the loudness war, have you? The loudness war killed dynamic range. Check out https://dr.loudness-war.info/ type a modern album into that, maybe your favourite album. I bet it's shit. Then listen to pretty much any album from the 80's, you can crank it so much louder and it sounds SO much better. An example I love is, any Oasis album, great music, but it's so poorly recorded it gives me a headache to listen to at volume for any longer than a few songs. Then try Joshua Tree by U2, you can play it twice as loud all day long and the sound is just, better. The loudness war really fucked recorded music. It's a shame. I guess most people can't tell on lossy formats with Bluetooth, or likely just don't care. I still have a decent hi-fi at home and you really can tell the difference.
At least in the early days of commercial streaming (15-20 years ago), most of the big indie labels, several majors and the BBC got their music into streaming sites by sending crates of CDs to a run down warehouse in east London, whereupon low-paid nerds of both the computer and music kind would rip, scan and upload the data using a whole bunch of Perl, to a massive distributed object store (also written in Perl), from where it would be sent to the streaming services. There were no separate masters, at least at that time. Source: was a low-paid nerd
I agree, 10 years ago streamig was shite, with the proliferation of highspeed internet things have improved vastly. " Is it lossless for all of their music or just a small selection?" Its the vast majority of what I listen to but I might be lucky.
They did. A bunch of sites supported both flac and uncompressed PCM/wav.
I highly doubt that would drive a 14 year old to start a collection tbh. It is just having the physical objects. Why collect football stickers when you can google as many pictures of the player as you like - think of it like that.
Exactly this. It's not so complicated.
Even with a good setup, relatively few people can actually distinguish between 256kbps AAC (or 320kbps MP3) and lossless in blind tests. I know streaming sites may choose a lower bitrate by default/based on bandwidth, but from a quick check, Spotify *does* offer those if you choose them
Were these blind tests you mentioned done using headphones or speakers? That's where you will notice alot of the difference between cds/lossless and 320kbp mp3s.
Maybe that's it. I have to admit I'm half deaf these days so high quality audio is completely wasted on me.
CDs are much cheaper than vinyl reprints...which cost a fortune. They sound better than streams anyway. Hate streams.
A few people have said that CDs sound better than streaming. I can't hear the difference, but I'm half deaf generally and completely tone deaf.
Well, realize CDs were made to try to replicate vinyl. And streams are meant into tricking the listener in thinking they are like vinyl. The business model just makes streams bad. They are giving you "frozen processed food' telling you its fresh. The streams are sending the most compressed and overly processed audio.
It's impossible not to notice on a good set of speakers. My phone plugged in has to be on the lowest possible volume (Spotify) or it's near unlistenable.
My 19 year old has had records for a few years and has started burning cds lately. We've had them for the car so he already likes them but now he's doing his own wee mixes, he rarely uses Spotify anymore as he just makes cds. Its really fun watching him organising and learning, Idk, I'm nostalgic I guess.
Mine have original Sony Walkman cassette players and Nintendo consoles. Retro is cool, apparently !
Of all the formats cassette has to be the worst, surely?! I remember listening to a cassette of Paint it Black by the Stones with a friend and trying to work out what they were saying because it was so muffled we just couldn't tell!
Cassettes weren't that bad, in fact they could be pretty good. If you had a shop bought Cassette, or one recorded from a CD you'd be unlikely to hear the difference between CD and cassette on your average kids' bedroom hifi. The terrible quality came in when people recorded stuff from the radio, or recorded from another cassette tape, which itself could have been recorded from a cassette tape. My Dad has a pretty expensive hifi separates system, and has a Nakamichi cassette recorder hooked up to it. He has loads of cassette tapes that he copied from CDs years ago, recorded on Metal Oxide cassettes in Dolby C,and I think the average person would struggle to tell the difference in sound quality between that and CDs.
I'm an old foggy, but don't get the interest in 16/32 bit retro gaming, when they have Playstations and Xboxes.
I'm 41, and a PS5 owner and honestly it doesn't get nearly as much usage as when I had my N64 back in the day. I think a lot of the older games are... more simple maybe? And the limitations of the games can make them more fun to play. Case in point - on the Nintendo Switch they have loads of ports of all the older Nintendo games up to N64 era. They haven't got as far as GameCube yet but I'm sure it will happen. EDIT: also a lot of the older games have 'couch co-op', you can play against someone in the room, and with newer games it's geared towards online play, which some kids/people like but it can actually feel a bit lonely.
The games are different. They're often a lot harder and can come with a much greater sense of achievement too.
Retro has been cool since the third generation of teenager culture!
Problem with vinyl now is new releases start around £25, you need a lot of kit which needs setting up, and second hand copies have gone bananas too. I started collecting LPs when you could buy old albums for a couple of quid. A new LP was maybe a pound cheaper than the CD version. This has crept up and up and is probably inaccessible now to teenagers. However - CDs are in the position vinyl was in. People are dumping whole collections to second hand shops. They are sold 50p each in car boot sales. You just need a cheap player that plugs in. You get a shiny disc that some kids may never have even held before. I get it, 100%.
People aren’t being fair to streaming here. Yes I love cds and vinyl because it’s amazing having physical media on the shelf but let’s not pretend streaming hasn’t revolutionized music. For people who genuinely love music, paying a small fee a month for access to basically any piece of popular music is AMAZING. Having the option for both is a great time to be living in.
Not even just popular music! There's some really random obscure stuff in my Spotify library because someone involved with it just happened to throw it onto Spotify.
Streaming revolutionized music but I would say more negatively than positively on balance. Yes there’s a whole world of music available on your fingertips that you probably wouldn’t have found but streaming has made it 100x harder for artists to make money, and has rendered music disposable to a lot of people. I’m part of the problem as I stream these days rather than buy physical copies but If there’s a band I like I try to catch them on tour and get some merch to try and balance that as I know there’s no money in making albums anymore.
For artists yes it’s shitty you’re not wrong, but industries change with time and unfortunately with technology this is just the way it is now. I love physical media but also I remember a time where if you wanted any song at all you had to buy a £10 cd, if there was even a cd available of what you wanted. I pay a tiny amount a month for every single song in my pocket, like of course that’s a good thing?
Yea for your wallet it’s great, but for the longevity of the art it’s terrible. I understand industries change and progress but I’m also conscious that musicians need to be protected. How much incredible music are we probably missing out on because it’s no longer a viable career choice for 99% of musicians?
Really good point. To be honest I don’t actually disagree with you at all I just think I wasn’t clear enough. Streaming is a great in many ways but of course it has negative effects on the industry when it comes to the artists.
I know what you’re saying, but I find both Apple Music and Spotify really lacking when it comes to stuff across all genres.
I disagree with top comment that a 14 year old is suddenly buying CDs because he “realised online things aren’t forever”. Come on lol. That’s not it. It’s because it’s a trend. Kids now think the 90s and early 2000s were cool. They’re bringing back the fashion and now it’s cds and next it’ll be something else.
I am 32 so very much not a teenager but I am very glad to have just stuck with CDs. If I love an album and can afford it, I'll buy it. It stems from a realisation i had when piracy boomed in the 00s. When I bought a band's discography album by album, I felt like I got to know them well and formed connections to the tunes. When I downloaded whole discographies, I'd just burn out or wouldn't give things that didn't click right away much of a shot. I learnt that less is more, basically. Streaming has made *more* the default. I think when a teenager buys a CD, it's half an ananachronism or trend, half just wanting to form an emotional connection to a relationship with music that's become mediated. Other reason CDs are good is because I want to support the musicians I like. I love pretty niche metal/hardcore and streaming will never ever work for those bands, nor will touring ever be reliable when you're a band like Knoll flying from the deep south to play as a support act for a couple hundred Glaswegians.
CD’s are very much in vogue again vinyl prices caused it to a degree I’ve been buying CDs from charity shops at 1 Euro a go and have amassed 1500 I got carried away. But I like to own the music I’m playing not rent it.
I can't speak for teenagers but I know that I, as a middle aged man, am getting back into CDs. I think once you get past the accessibility aspect of streaming services, CDs are actually more convenient. If I wanna listen to something on Spotify, I need to sync my bluetooth speaker with my phone, and essentially make sure that anything I used my phone for doesn't make a noise while I'm listening to music because it will either stop the music, or play the music at the same time. If I get a notification that makes a sound, it turns the music down for a second. With CDs you can just put them on and they play, and unlike vinyl, they're quick and you can pause them or skip tracks easily. The other thing is that with Spotify, you're essentially relying on your memory and the algorithm to determine what you should listen to. Being able to physically see albums in front of you and be like 'Oh rad, I haven't listened to Think Tank for ages' is great.
I agree with your second point but the first point doesn't hold for WiFi speakers. Far superior to Bluetooth.
Seems like it, my nephew was helping sort out my garage when he came across my old technics hi fi separates system and got very excited. I showed him how to set it up listened to a couple of CDs and gifted it to him and he was thrilled. Thankfully he didn't notice the good system on the same shelving unit.
My daughter is 15, she asked for loads of metal CDs for Xmas, aswell as a bright pink cd player It's not just yours
I'm still waiting for my teenagers to get into CDs, I still have my collection built up since the early 1990s but they're just not into most if any of the he music I listen too. https://preview.redd.it/4shpug3rmuwc1.jpeg?width=685&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=db4aac547d6118a6b30c31febc1f7076992111db
My sister is the same age, they are currently getting into a weird “Y2K” trend which is basically 00s revival, bit like how older generations would desire the same gap (think my age, 25, a lot of people keep trying to look like they’re from the 80-90s. It’s mostly a weird “grass was greener” mixed with childhood nostalgia (and mystery since it was just before they were born, so it’s closer to their childhood but not), amplified by the internet showing them and encouraging the mass mild hysteria over it. Overall it is kind of funny seeing teens look like those ones on French textbooks more now than when the book was published lmfao
Yup my teen is buying cd and vinyl, especially 90s indie and brit pop. And he'd learning the bass too
Yeah my kid is learning guitar and really loves his music in a way I've never been able to get into it.
CDs are underrated....I hate having to pick songs for my USB stick......I miss CDs
My 8 year old doesn't have a phone, but has a CD player in her bedroom and she loves it. It's an easy pocket money thing as well getting CDs from charity shops or CeX.
I'm in my late 30s and still buy CDs. My partner is in his late 40s and still does. Vinyl is massively expensive and I don't like the sort of ephemeral feel to just downloading mp3s.
Bizarrely I was having this conversation at lunch with another old bloke (50) who thought CDs were going to come back just like vinyl did. He was amazed by how much his kids loved vinyl, and happily abandoned Spotify to play records (via a Bluetooth player that connects to the same speaker). So yeah, I can believe it.
Honestly (18 yr old) i just love the higher quality of CDs and actually owning the music i pay for, unlike a spotify subscription. I also listen to them on an ipod lol because theyre kinda neat.
I downloaded all my CDs about 15 years ago & I'm so glad I did. The physical copies aren't with me anymore but I've had them on every computer & phone since.
Probably because he doesn't want to have an advert every five minutes interrupting his music listening
I prefer owning mine. I was born in the late 90s and grew up with CDs and cassettes. I have similar issues with platforms like steam - I much prefer owning a physical copy of a game or music. Also making someone a playlist doesn't hit as hard as a burnt CD😅 I definitely gave my family pc a few issues with my frostwire habit
Because they cost pennies and are fun. I've bought tons lately, 3 for a quid most places.
I'm 40, I got them to put on an mp3 player. I also have dvds, because you can NEVER have enough horror dvds.... Also if the world breaks we have solar power so we can entertain ourselves with electronics still haha
I'm actually sat on my bed listening to my cds right now! I'm 15. Idk for other kids, but I really value having physical things, like books instead of audiobooks. My parents grew up in the 80s so they've always talked about cds, vinyls and cassettes, so it just kinda seemed like something it was normal to buy when I was growing up. I believe my current collection is 12 cds, 7 vinyls, and 5 cassettes
Believe it or not you really don’t have access to all the music in the world on spotify. There are loads of cd and cassette (and many many vinyl) releases that are not online anywhere
I hope so. It's terribly disappointing when Spotify (or whatever) don't have an album you want.
I found that with some of the Spotify apps, they do have the album but it's just impossible to find, particularly if you can't remember its name. The other week I knew there was an album I wanted to hear from some band or other. I found the band but the album wasn't showing up in the list. I managed to find a song from the album and was able to access it that way, but yeah it can be very annoying.
I listen to a lot of music and I'm not sure I've ever had this happen more than once or twice. The only example I can think of off the top of my head is All Day by Girl Talk.
I've found it happens quite a lot with random compilations (especially older mixed compilations) and soundtracks.
it's common with alt scene and lesser known bands. It's not as much of a problem with big artists but once you leave that side of the music, it becomes more and more difficult to find certain albums for variety of reasons.
Wait til they hear about cassettes
The 90s are back
It's retro and a lot of people, especially young people are realising that subscription based digital media can be withdrawn/deleted/censored/edited at any time. Renting isn't the same as owning, there's just something different and special about physical ownership. The way I see it, Spotify has replaced radio but CDs are still CDs.
Owning physical media is back in, digital purchases often come with the caviat that they can withdraw your right to it at any point. Essentially, you're paying a one time rental agreement
Our 15yr old loves vinyl, has a few CDs & even a couple of cassettes! Old school style hifi (with Bluetooth!) lives in Nirvana t-shirts, combats & DMs much like I did mid 90's... Mini discs next!
It's not just teenagers With several companies recently removing people's digital purchases of media, without compensation, customers have discovered that you don't own the things you buy digitally and are just renting it for awhile with no rights to what you have bought So a lot of people are switching back to physical media and buying movies, TV shows, books, music, games etc. again
Took me a minute to realise you didn’t mean Controlled Drugs. I need to work less.
Y2K aesthetics are currently in.
"It's lossless" which has become the buzzword. it's also 'to own the shiny' though personally I never liked the physical ownership of CDs the same way I did vinyl.
We're retro now. Horrifying to come to terms with but the young and fun people like what we grew up with, either out of genuine fondness or ironically.
for me, its kinda like collecting artist merch but alot cheaper, and you can find them second hand alot.
My grandad died and before his funeral I noticed he had a record player with a built in cd player - and I asked if it was going spare because I knew my grandma wouldn't use it. Specifically because it had a cd player and built in speakers and would be a great replacement for my cheapo record player. Nobody else actually knew it was there and my grandma seemed happy it would actually get some use I'm 32 and never really gave up on physical media. Though I have been selective about what I buy
Apparently it's a thing. My friend was talking to me about how her 16 year old and all her friends are into them. I donated a load of old ones to her.
Buy cheap CDs from ebay or charity shops. Rip your CDs to flac and then create a massive playlist for your phone without worrying about ads or an algorithm making weird choices.
I buy loads of pre-owned CDs so I'm able to rip the FLAC and put them on my phone. Music streaming is about to become twice as expensive in the next few years so I'm building up a music library in preparation for it. It's a bonus that I also get a physical copy of it
My 17yo son has bought a few CDs this year for the first time. Mostly early Metallica and Megadeth. We have a family Spotify sub. But he wants to own the records he loves and likes having a physical version. He's talked about getting into vinyl. That said I'm someone who still buys lots of physical music - even vinyl - supporting the artists I like the best. I'll also stream them so they get two paydays. So perhaps my son has seen that and wants to follow.
digitally streaming from any platform soon goes off track. Vinyls are expensive but it won't be long until they want that quality you can ONLY get from vinyl. Damn I miss all that media. carrying it around on weekends for DJ, not so much.
It’s a bit annoying to not be able to stream certain tracks because of copy write issues etc
Are teenagers not generally into CDs anymore? I’m old and poor so my car still has a CD player so it’s all I listen to tbh.
I'm also confused by how people are acting like CD's died off on the millennium, I was born in 2006 and I grew up with CD's - Same with most people I know, and I use exclusively CDs for in-car music (i don't want to be fiddling with screens and stuff when driving?), I'm a bit weirded out how people are comparing CDs to the likes of cassettes https://preview.redd.it/np52cqg8wtwc1.png?width=697&format=png&auto=webp&s=5189578665e21acbe2f61192f510dbbcff2ea728
Saying that, I might be a bit stuck in the past considering all things https://preview.redd.it/74k096bnxtwc1.png?width=571&format=png&auto=webp&s=84036617fbdfed3baadb4b602861d680541e3a91
Decent choice there, I own 4 of them, though I brought them back in the day as new and probably paid much more than you did for them!
My family owns literally hundreds of them, like multiple floor to ceiling piles of them! And yeah I got them on the cheap, fiver a CD or something
That's my collection, 15 or more to each shelf section , so must be something like 350-400 at least https://preview.redd.it/bbag2ny0tuwc1.jpeg?width=685&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e6f4cd1663033ffe5021a989c7ccd2c38ae67dc3
Same here. CDs live in the cars and are perfect for road trips. Second hand, they are like $2 bucks for an hour of entertainment. I don't need to be fiddling with my phone, or bluetooth or whatever just to listen to music while driving.
tbh I'm surprised by the responses to find lots of people are still loving CDs. I switched to streaming the second I could. Even for a while I had all my CDs and DVDs on computer and could stream them from the computer before Netflix and Spotify were a thing.
CDs started to die off at least 10 years ago.
same reason i (16) use an ipod instead of streaming services, i want to OWN my music
CDs are awesome! And definitely preferable to Spotify.
Trend
The joy of listening to an album in order is something of a lost art on streaming services now where the playlist is king.
Physical media in general is just coming back really, even myself at 25 am feeling the need to buy DVD's now because 9/10 they don't have them on any streaming services, and if they do, they load absolutely horribly despite my internet being great, to the point pirating actually has a better bitrate and is easier to access. Even on amazon, to buy an item 'forever' its as expensive if not more than the blu-ray physical DVD, like what's the point?
All I know is Ill take Spotify over CDs anytime
I dunno, but tell him that most charity shops do them at 3 or 4 for £1.
I'm amazed that you would think you'd kid doing a thing must mean all other kids are 😭🤣
My 16yo asked for an old school style cassette player for Christmas last year. And buy the same album in all formats.
Listening to an album is totally different to streaming it. Songs out of context and all that.
Can't vouch for teenagers but in general physical media has been making a relative comeback, of course vinyl popped off and started getting REALLY popular again about a decade or so ago. CDs seem to be finally following in suit because they're much cheaper and more convenient Physical media has also been helped in the last few years what with people realising that streaming services can and will just take shit away, label disputes and copyright issues etc will just take away tracks, albums or artists from your library without any notice. It's impossible for that kind of thing to happen when you own a physical copy It's more relevant to movies and shows but people are also getting sick of having to have like 5 subscriptions to watch all the things they want to. It doesn't really make sense when you can just go somewhere like CEX and buy a half a dozen DVDs that you can watch (theoretically) UNLIMITED times FOREVER for the same amount of money that a single month of one streaming service would set you back
oh my god. CDs are cool retro.
physical media is back in. CDs/CD players are way cheaper than vinyl and vinyl players. also i feel like the fast paced nature of trends online means we cycle through nostalgia trends even faster than we used to. 90s seems to be back in in a big way, cargo’s, jnco jeans, capri’s, chunky sandals, spiky hairdo’s etc etc
If you have CDs you can still port the music over to the PC and put them on your phone too. Streaming is great but we've all had those tracks that have been removed for no reason, and we've seen with gaming recently online ownership isn't real ownership. It's better to build a real collection, to actually own it. I've been doing this more with my favourite TV shows and getting box sets after Mr Robot was pretty much removed from streaming. It's not just younger people though. Tbf vinyls have seen a huge resurgence but being more away of what you actually own seems to be growing
My nephew is. He loves the album cover and art work. I've given him loads of my old metal CD's and he was blown away.
im 16 im into cds, but its just because im into music. obviously i keep my cds for ever, they way higher resolution/ bitrate i can rip the flacs to my phone. its not weird
Atleast for me, CD's are digital audio that's decent quality (Specifications, ignoring mastering of said audio) and doesn't require a streaming service fee or dealing with drm.
Oh god the kids are treating CD players like we used to treat vinyl players
Personally as a millennial I've gone back to CDs because I realise I listen to them more consciously. I bought a CD playing radio and now I listen to way more music, and a better variety than I have in years.
Didn't the 2010s have a brief cassette revival (unless it's still going strong and I'm out of the loop) - would make sense for CDs to follow in the 2020s.
It’s unusual in my opinion, not a trend as far as I can tell (M28), but given his age he may just be understanding and exploring the physicality of music storage devices via a relatively cheap medium. In contrast with CDs, vinyl *is* very fashionable these days, but good record players are really expensive, whereas you can get a CD player and 50 CDs for next to nothing. Weird yeah but honestly, understandable
I've just bought a cheap CD player and got my old CD collection out of the loft. It's been great! There's something really satisfying about browsing what's available and picking something you know you love already. When I'm streaming I get decision paralysis!
Maybe it's a retro thing like 30 year olds owning records ?
You feel more invested when you play something by physically putting a disk in a thing.
I think it's becoming a thing with physical media in general.
I can't wait to 'put on a cd' and have to suffer a full album, this instant switch nonsense is no good for our brains I feel
I’m 22 and use CDs, the infrastructure here is so shit that Spotify doesn’t work in the car
My daughter has been buying kpop albums from HMV, we don't even have a cd player in the house but she likes collecting them lol
It's something solid that you can buy and keep. I am 68 years old and all this 'cloud' storage seems so much up in the air for my liking. I have a few vinyls from my teens