back to article Magic streaming beans? Sure, have my cow - music biz

"Why do people keep buying CDs?" we asked in 2009, after a decade of declining plastic sales. And the year after. Yet no matter how many times it was pronounced dead, the CD just wouldn't die. Figures from industry group BPI show the plastic relic remains a market favourite – and surprisingly is proving more resilient than …

  1. Buzzword

    Why do people keep buying CDs?

    Because my car only has a CD player; and because I can afford to.

    I have enough disposable income that it's just less faff to buy a CD. With any other method, I have to find blank CDs, fire up my dusty old computer that still has a CD burner, work out which illegal source of music hasn't been shut down this month, work out which illegal filesharing client software isn't pumped full of adware. Then I discover the ink in my CD-labelling pen has dried up, or the blank CDs themselves go wrong.

    Yes, I could probably buy some MP3-playing gadget that I could wire into the car's CD player, although DIY isn't my forte. I suppose I could pay somebody at a garage to fit one. Or, much simpler, I could just keep buying CDs.

    Then again, I'm talking about the kind of CDs you find near the tills in petrol stations. I don't think my purchases of Eddie Stobart's Keep On Truckin' are keeping the charts alive.

  2. John Lilburne

    I buy an awful lot of CDs

    Probably at least 6 a month. I get some downloads too, and whilst I rarely play the CD itself, the physical object is of more value than the download that is sans information. |So currently I'm listening to Ketil Bjornstad's Remembrance, and I know the drummer is Jon Christensen, but buggered if I can recall the sax player.It is far simpler to reach for the cd case and see Tore Brunborg then go searching the web which is in all likelihood going to give me a wikipedia link and who can tell the accuracy of that? Who is that playing guitar on "Quadrant 4"? Etc, etc. I have a number of downloads but there is always the feeling afterwards that something is missing.

  3. phil dude
    FAIL

    finite time...

    I buy CD's quite rarely, because a great deal of the music worth listening too is either already bought (via the "coming of age" route) or is very cheap 2nd hand (here in the US I would not buy a NEW CD for >$5. 2ND hand is ofter <<$5. If you know how to wax a CD <$1).

    A DJ friend of mine gave me the advice to buy the "That's what I call music" series if you just want recent tracks, and so far that brings the cost per annum to $10.

    The rest is grooveshark/youtube wherever....

    Ultimately I can only listen to X mins of music/year. The industry provides 106 more than I need, or can physically use.

    Hence, the oversupply of content from an under supply of talent.

    P.

    1. Cpt Blue Bear

      Re: finite time...

      "Ultimately I can only listen to X mins of music/year. The industry provides 106 more than I need, or can physically use."

      Nail. Head.

      We have a glut of entertainment. Prices should have crashed and the weak players should have been bankrupted out of the business.

      There are plenty of talented performers out there, probably more than ever before. But there are also more wannabes and hacks. If you've ever had to manage talent you'd know that the latter are much easier to deal with.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: finite time...

      "...the oversupply of content from an under supply of talent."

      Yes, I think that is a very accurate and succinct summation of the music industry.

  4. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

    CD won't die ?

    I'm one of the ones keeping it alive - the ultimate two-fingers to proprietary lock-ins ! Open format*, resilient, can't be "revoked" by the vendor*, and at the end of the day I can sell it on* if I decide I don't want it any more.

    Picked up 3 more (nice bit of Beethoven) off the "put you cash in the tin" shelf at church the other week.

    * Bet the industry are kicking themselves for letting those slip into the CD specs - or rather, not nobbling them somehow.

  5. GremlinUK

    Surely the music biz should love streaming. From getting us to pay every time we shift format: from vinyl, to tape, to CD, to MP3, back to vinyl, and on to whatever DRM-burdened lossless codec is flavour-of-next-month, they get us to subscribe monthly to a service that effectively mean we're ALWAYS listening to the radio and own nothing at all - effectively paying EVERY time we listen to a track.

    No wonder I want to keep my CDs - at least I have a chance of doing my own format shifts, sticking with the format I want to use, and not having to have a fast mobile or internet connection just to listen to music I BOUGHT three times already!

  6. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Buy CDs

    I can buy used albums for $5, I can get most of the 60s/70s/80s classic albums for $5 or 3/$20 on sale somewhere.

    For this I get an album of songs. I get full quality that I can re-rip on the next device.

    I get files that I can keep even if I don't keep up my account at xyz services or if xyz get bought by xyz2 and change the terms.

    Of course I am an old fart who doesn't know who won X factor so what do I know

  7. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    Why do we buy CDs still?

    For the same reasons we buy paper books: they're something in our hand with which we can do anything we please, rather than just listen to a licensed copy at the behest of the IP owner (no matter how unonerous those licenses may be.)

    Maybe it's different for da youf of today, but we old fogies *like* things we can hold in our hands.

    1. VinceH

      Re: Why do we buy CDs still?

      "For the same reasons we buy paper books: they're something in our hand with which we can do anything we please, rather than just listen to a licensed copy at the behest of the IP owner (no matter how unonerous those licenses may be.)"

      Exactly that.

      I did, for a while, opt to purchase music digitally - but it's lacking (as someone further up noted - no sleeve notes or cover art). But I've seen sense and reverted; I rarely listen to my actual CDs, but it doesn't take long to rip new ones so that they are added to my digital library. And these days, if you buy a CD from Amazon, you also get the digital download anyway. (I know people object to Amazon's chosen bit rate etc, but TBH my hearing isn't good enough to notice the difference when listening via the cheapo speakers I have plugged into my computer).

      With books, I don't mind digital provided there is a big enough price differential between paper and digital - and I do find reading using the Kindle much more convenient - but there are some authors I like too much, and absolutely must buy the actual book. I wish the same approach was adopted by Amazon for books as CDs: Buy the book, get the Kindle version free.

  8. Mike Flugennock

    "...the CD just wouldn't die."

    You say that like it's a bad thing.

  9. Zog_but_not_the_first

    Just think about it

    My conclusion, having looked into the options is clear. Taking a base case of listening to an hour of music a day on average (excluding "car time")

    Subscribe to a high resolution streaming service. Cost, about £20 a month.

    Needs a constant Internet connection (not that much of an issue to be honest) .

    A wide range of high quality stuff on tap, but cancel the subscription and you're left with nothing

    Or...

    Extend existing CD library by buying fresh stuff. Cost variable but £20 a month gets several decent new/used discs.

    Rip to network drive for intranet streaming

    Explore new stuff on radio/Spotify (free or high resolution on occasions using pre-paid cards).

    Music wherever you want it (home, car, on the move).

    What you've bought, you keep.

    Works for me.

  10. WylieCoyoteUK
    Holmes

    Because the CD is basically free....

    Buy the CD off Amazon, and most of the time you get instant download.

    A few days later the shrink-wrapped CD arrives, goes straight into the CD rack, in case you ever want to sell it on/rerip it/move to another format..

    1. Cuddles

      Re: Because the CD is basically free....

      More to the point, it often has negative value - buying a CD from Amazon and getting the download free is frequently cheaper than just buying the download on its own. I haven't actually used a CD in years, but Amazon's insane pricing policy means I've ended up buying quite a few. I don't have a CD rack, I have a bin (or a local charity shop at least).

  11. montyburns56

    What DRM?

    Why is it whenever there is a debate about music sales on this site we get numerous comments about DRM riddled downloads as if it's still 2007? Perhaps those who make these comments can point out to us who still sells music downloads with DRM?

    1. P. Lee

      Re: What DRM?

      >Perhaps those who make these comments can point out to us who still sells music downloads with DRM?

      Not downloads, streaming.

      Oh yes. Temperatures hit almost 40C today where I live. My internet router sits in air conditioning by the service was still up and down all day. Streaming? I don't think so.

      Also, you still need a hi-fi if you want to hear music nicely. The stereo is probably attractive and has a CD player. Streaming probably means a computer which is ugly or a phone which may disappear when someone leaves the house.

  12. Michael Jarve

    One other elephant in the room (at least for the U.S.) is the specter of metered billing. Even low-res steaming can eat up a good amount of bandwidth in a month, especially for cases when streaming is used as a substitute for radio. In a world where every gigabyte counts downloading whole albums at CD quality or streaming the same isn't quite a convient option.

    1. Charles 9

      Metered billing simply means data gets budgeted, plus the limits are getting stretched due to consumer demand. In any event, downloading an album only occurs ONCE usually.

    2. Robert Helpmann??
      Childcatcher

      Elephant in the Room

      Even low-res steaming can eat up a good amount of bandwidth in a month...

      Add to that the underwhelming quality of many streaming services on the road and there is plenty of motivation to take it with you.

  13. jonathan keith

    Don't forget quality

    There's also the not insignificant matter of CD's (if decently engineered) sounding a damned sight better than most downloads.

  14. ssssssssssssssssssssss

    Google are entering the streaming market in 2015? I've been paying £7 a month for at least a year for their streaming Play Music. And don't Apple already have something similar? Not sure their one is available in the UK though.

  15. John Lilburne

    The digital sales have probably killed off CD sales to the occasional music buyer. There are no longer the high street stores to browse in whilst the girlfriend/wife is looking at shoes or handbags.

    For some of us though the concept of 'song' equates with chart pop. Which in of itself isn't bad but we 'know' that,'Greatest Hits' aside, the single was only part of experience of an LP. That PF's Wall was more than "Hey teacher!", Ziggy Stardust was more than 'Starman', and a Dylan LP was more than 'Blowin in the wind'. That an Album lasts for 40-60 minutes with a short pause whilst you turned it over.

    Streaming caters for those that mostly got their music from the radio as a sort of background ambiance. Those that probably only ever bought a CD on shoe shopping trip, or perhaps as with the woman next door that played that Whitney Houston "Bodyguard' theme song for 8hrs a day, non-stop, for a month.

  16. Mike Flugennock

    Then again, I'm not your standard-issue music consumer...

    My "store-bought" CD collection includes a lot of old and obscure stuff -- '50s/early '60s modern jazz, classic '60s psych, '70s Eurosynth/Krautrock, oddball prog rock, stuff like that. When I buy a new CD, the first thing I do is rip it and dump it onto the stonking big FireWire drive I have hooked up to my old G4 iBook that I have hooked into my stereo and use as my "media server".

    On top of that, I have a lot of high-quality bootleg live recordings -- lots of soundboard and pre-broadcast FM mixes... I started out with Grateful Dead, but branched out into early Floyd, Stones, Who and such, along with a lot of obscure and lesser-known alt bands via sites like nyctaper.com, archive.org, and several bootleg collectors blogs, all in FLAC and high-rate mp3 formats. Then, there's the ever-growing pile of mid 60s "garage" and similar, from high-rate rips from old 45s I find posted at one of at least a dozen record collectors' blogs, all of which ends up on "CD mixtapes" that I edit myself and burn to CDs (for the car and the boombox) and export to high-rate mp3 (for iTunes, at home). All that stuff I have backed up to DVD ROMs.

    All this combines to make me pretty much not the kind of listener that outfits like Spotify, etc. are aiming at. I'm old enough to remember when people bought individual songs on 45rpms, and when I started buying records seriously in high school in the early '70s, it was at the beginning of the era when you bought an entire album, not just individual songs, and many albums were designed to be played as a set piece, listened to in one sitting, the same way you'd listen to an opera or symphony -- Dark Side, Ziggy Stardust, Close To The Edge, Passion Play, Sergeant Pepper, Quadrophenia, Terrapin Station, etc.

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