morriscroy

(In addition).

At times I wonder how many of the big customers of cds back in the 80s and early-90s, were then-middle-aged baby boomers who were replacing their old vinyl collections with cd versions of the same titles from their 50s-60s era youth.

DVD Josh

I was an early adopter of CD burners. I think my first one burned at 1x speed. I remember getting a 4x burner and thinking how far the technology had advanced. Now if its not burned in 2 mins. I get impatient, lol.

Falc04

I have over 1,000 CDs, and will never get rid of them. Been collecting since the mid 80s, and still make occasional purchases from SecondSpin (just picked up The Police's "Message In A Box", which I'm loving). I'll never forget first listening to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" song on CD in the late 80s, and hearing one of the band members have a slight cough, before David Gilmore's guitar started. Had listened to that song countless times on vinyl before, never never picked up on it. That convinced me that CDs were the only option. Took my 500 or so records, and disposed of them in a dumpster (which, in hindsight, probably was a stupid thing to do)

Alan Smithee

Ugh- I would've gone in and saved them!

B5Erik

I just ordered 9 Rock Candy Records reissues of some classic 80's albums on remastered CD's.

I can't wait to get my hands on them!

Michael Corvin

I should have an autographed copy of Kenny Wayne Shepherd's newest CD in my mailbox any day now.

davidh777

Has anyone noticed a delay in Amazon's Auto Rip system? I checked three recent soundtrack releases that should be pretty popular (Greatest Showman, Coco, Pitch Perfect 3), and none were Auto Rip. The only one I wanted right away was Greatest Showman, so I bought that digitally. Does it have to do with which label is releasing the album, or should I go all conspiracy theory and speculate that Amazon doesn't want to bother with CDs anymore?

Rival11

I forgot to add that I actually do love digital music for those rare great tunes that come up - I find that digital music I buy is so much different from what I would normally listen too but they just resonate with me so well. I also always think I have a shot at loving a new band when I hear a song only to go to the album and only love that one song lol.

kefrank

I know this isn't what Rival11 meant with the use of the term "rare" but his post did make me think of one thing that I'm really conflicted about with regard to the prevalence of digital downloads/streaming. Now tracks that only appeared on very limited run physical media are being re-released digitally and are easily obtained. On the one hand, it's great to have such easy access to previously-rare tracks from some bands I really love. On other hand, it has pretty much negated the thrill of only being able to hear something by tracking down and buying that 7" that was limited to 500 copies and is long out-of-print. I kind of miss that.

Rex Fenestrarum

Lots, I'm guessing. I worked at a Lechmere (early Best Buy-type store) and one of my ex-GF's fathers would come in every couple of weeks and buy a literal handful of CDs. Like, $300 worth. In 1986 dollars. He had bookshelves full of old reel-to-reel tapes in his house before that. He wasn't the only one who bought CDs by the armful at that store, just the only one I specifically remember.

My poor dad could never hear the difference between CDs and cassettes. To him, the only advantage of CDs was that they could skip songs instantly. That wasn't enough to get him to switch over, though. But when the tape deck in his car finally died, in the mid 90s, he couldn't find a replacement deck he liked. So he got a CD player installed instead. He's a huge Jimmy Buffett fan, so a few days later a giant box from the Margaritaville store arrived - he'd called and ordered "one of everything" from their CD catalog.

I think a lot of people don't realize how much the switch to CDs screwed the music industry. Lots of people - not just middle-age types - spent the 80s and 90s replacing their old cassettes and records with CDs. In many, many cases, these were older "catalog" releases - CDs like Dark Side of the Moon and Back in Black, the production costs of which had long been paid for. Discs like that were almost pure profit for labels, so record labels started buying each other, and the next thing you know, there are only, like, six labels left. Of course, the CD Money Train wouldn't last forever - by the early 2000s, most people had replaced what they were going to replace... just in time for Napster to take off.