Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

I'm not sure how many of you still buy physical albums on CD. If I love an album / artist I buy the hard copy to show support.

My local Target has almost completely eliminated their CD selection. Their selection has been getting smaller and smaller to no surprise, but they have more or less eliminated everything, save for new releases and greatest hits compilations by high-profile artists like MJ, Bowie and Cher in a small 4-foot section. Even their exclusive releases have become harder and harder to find. While I knew this was inevitable, I'm shocked that they didn't at least wait until after the holidays. Strangely enough, this new layout makes their movie section look bigger, although upon closer inspection it looks like they just spread their depleting stock over more shelves.

It's sad to see, but I think I'm done giving them my business. There's no sense of organization with this new music section, and you'd be hard pressed to find a recent release on their shelves if it didn't JUST come out (Target exclusive albums that were just released a month or two ago are nowhere to be found despite saying they're in stock on their site). I'd much rather buy from a different business or even a third-party seller for their exclusives at this point.

Re: Target Downsizes Again
 

I can't even tell you the last time I've bought a cd from Target, Best Buy, etc. If I want something on CD, it's through Ebay, Amazon, etc. It's flat out ridiculous, I don't even look anymore, unless I'm waiting on a rep to get me a steelbook from the backroom (where they always seem to be). The closest I come anymore to the "looking through music" type experience is Half Price Books.

Re: Target Downsizes Again
 

The last time I bought a CD at Target was about 2 years ago when the new Rob Zombie and Megadeth albums came out. There was a promotion where if you bought the CD you would get the vinyl version for free in the mail. That was my motivation -- haven't bought music at a brick and mortar store since.

I buy vinyl for the most part, so I stick with Discogs, eBay, and Amazon for my needs.

Re: Target Downsizes Again
 

I sometimes wander through the CD section at Target and look at the exclusives, but the CDs I buy are generally from Amazon.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

I think the last CD I bought was in 2011. It was Opeth's album "Heritage."

I buy very little music these days, and when I do, I get it on vinyl.

I think CD is really a dead medium. Everyone who wants music gets it from mp3s, streaming services, or youtube. The portability and track selection ability that CDs have has been superceded by digital, and the people who actually want to own an album seem to be going back to vinyl LPs.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

While I'm all in favor of keeping old technology alive, I personally don't see the attraction of LPs. I used to buy a lot of CDs at Target in the early 90s when they had the big titles on sale for $10.99, when the other stores were $11-12.99. They even had a few sales where every CD in the store was $10.99, where I went nuts- of course it was limited to mainstream stuff but was a good deal. Then the greedy record companies raised their list prices and the stores had to do so accordingly, and that pretty much turned me off from buying CDs after that. If I can get a CD at a REAL record store for the same price as Target, I'll go there instead.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

Target does a good job getting exclusive bonus tracks on most of the major albums released.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

Did your DVDTalk account get hacked?

I prefer records over CDs because they sound better, the cover art is bigger, and, if you're a collector, they just feel more substantial than a CD in a jewel case.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

Target has never been a relevant purveyor of music as far as I'm concerned.

I'm in favor of buying music on the best medium available, which for most releases these days is vinyl.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

Maybe Target wasn't all that relevant back at the CD's peak, when most people would go to stores that were more known for selling music, like Circuit City or FYE and all of its sister stores. I think over the past decade with the closure of many or all of those stores and people having less and less options, they've become a little more relevant. Their prices were comparable (sometimes better) and their exclusive versions of albums (when they stocked enough) added incentive to buy from them as well. When they had sales they were decent too.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

I do not like it as I still buy cds, but it makes sense. People are buying less compact discs, so stores are stocking less. The Best Buy downsizing over the last decade has been huge. I remember the days when 16 rows of music took up a large chunk of the front of the store. Now they have 1 aisle and it is a disorganized mess. They are gonna stock what moves.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

I still buy CD's but not from Target. They don't carry what I listen to so no biggie here. They could probably just shrink it to exclusives and new releases and be just fine. A couple aisles of catalog discs is kinda pointless nowadays.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

Save that penny!

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

The section is small already. It’s basically one side of a rack and an endcap. I haven’t bought a CD for a while.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

Last CD I bought there was Prince's LotusFlow3r.
I take that back. I think I bought one of those 20th Century Masters Collection for $5.

Usually though I don't even bother looking at their music selection. It's all extremely mainstream, commercial stuff.

If I do buy a CD, it's at an actual music store that has all kinds of music.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

The last CD I bought for myself at Target was the version of Chrvches' second album with live bonus tracks.

The local record store I liked downsized heavily and moved to a kinda inconvenient location before going under. I'm the weird guy who still buys CDs, but I mostly get them from Amazon and occasionally directly from bands/labels.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

:lol:

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

I have a TunesCD store in my area as they are an old school Tower Records selling used CD’s, Albums, DVD’s, Blu-ray’s. I enjoy going in there because anyone who shops there is a true music fan. I am surprised when I do shop there as I’m usually one of the few GenX’ers as there are a lot of Millennials still buying physical media for music.

As for Target, I honestly don’t think I’ve ever bought a CD there even in the heyday before iTunes. I always bought CD’s from Best Buy or Tower. And does anyone remember CD World as that was the place to go in the late 80’s/early 90’s before the Best Buy’s ate them up.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

Funny thing - you can rip highest quality MP3's from CD. And still own the CD to rip more MP3's if your files get corrupted or your hard drive takes a dump (which has happened to me more than once).

Vinyl sucks - pops, crackling, etc - I had plenty of that by the late 80's. I have no desire to go back to that . And CD's have greater frequency range than vinyl does.

CD is the best format currently available for those reasons.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

Agree to disagree on the opinion parts of your statement. Pops and crackling are pretty easy to mostly eliminate in a good vinyl listening rig and overall I find vinyl more pleasing to listen to than CD. Plus big cover art, more tactile interaction with the media, etc are preferable to me.

As for the factual part of your statement, your last sentence is demonstrably incorrect.
Read the frequency response section in this Wikipedia article. Here's a relevant excerpt:

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

All I can go by is personal experience, and when I did A/B comparisons of the same song on vinyl and CD the CD had noticeably more high and low end than the vinyl did. Granted, that was in 1988 and it was a low mid end turntable and stereo system - but the high end stuff you're talking about was always priced out of the range that most people are willing to spend on audio equipment.

Given affordable equipment CD's sound better. And they don't wear out. Every time you play a record you're doing minute damage to it. I've heard a lot of albums that have been overplayed and sound fuzzy. That doesn't happen with CD's.

If you like vinyl - great! But I've been there, had several hundred LPs, and I was ready to move on as I could NEVER get rid of all the pops and crackling on my records, no matter how thoroughly I cleaned them with my discwasher.

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I actually didn't mention "high end" in my post I don't think. It doesn't take more than a few hundred dollars these days to have a very solid vinyl rig. Stepping up from the just the cheapest possible options and doing very basic care of your records will give thousands of plays per record with little-to-no pops, crackling, or damage-related distortion.

Sure, albums played on the cheapest possible turntable with stock cartridge and stylus will get discernibly damaged with many plays. But it doesn't take a fortune to have a vinyl rig that will maintain the quality of your records for as many times as you would ever want to listen to them. CDs don't "wear out" with multiple plays but disc rot is a real risk and there's nothing any of us can do about it. I have several hundred CDs and some of them are now worthless unfortunately. Thankfully I have all of them ripped.

I certainly don't begrudge your preference either. I only take issue with criticisms of vinyl that are somewhat unfounded or untrue. There's no question that vinyl requires a bit more investment and more care than CD. I find it well worth it and so do many others, but I get that it's not for everyone. All that said, if vinyl was really as clearly inferior as you've portrayed, I don't think it would be seeing the resurgence it has in the last decade.

Suffice it to say, I think CD and vinyl both have their place. Each format has its own advantages and disadvantages. Blanket statements that one is clearly superior to the other are out of place, but there is certainly room for preferences.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

Well, again, I'm old enough to have done vinyl the first time, and back then good turntables and stereo systems that were good enough to present vinyl records to where they sounded as good as CD's were damned expensive.

At this point I don't care what the cost is because I don't have any interest.

I've got CD's that are over 30 years old, and out of the 200 or so that are over 25 years old I've only had one that stopped playing on my computer. It still plays on other players, though, so it could just be the CD drive in my computer...

The vinyl resurgence is based on nostalgia more than quality. It's the hip, trendy, "In," thing. Or it was, it seems to be diminishing a little.

Absolutely. While I strongly dislike vinyl for the reasons that I gave up on the format 30 years ago, I can also understand and respect those who enjoy it.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

I think a lot of urban people overestimate how many record stores there were outside metro areas. I remember at some point, in the early 2000s, Walmart wanted to sell all their CDs for less than $10. They had the music industry over a barrel: Walmart sold something like 35% of all physical media in the US, but all that music amounted to 1% of Walmart's sales. The music industry was terrified that, if Walmart didn't get what they wanted, they'd just say "fine... we're not selling CDs any more", which woulda really hurt the music industry, but woulda amounted to a rounding error for Walmart. There was also the Columbia Record and Tape Club which, at its height, sold something like 30% of all the records, tapes and CDs in the US. I guess there weren't a lot of CD stores in Nebraska and Iowa.

Anyway, the last - and possibly only - CD I bought at Target was Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor in 2005, because a) I was gonna be in the neighborhood anyway; and b) Target had it for a ridiculously low price for the first couple of days... like $7.97 or something.

I also remember when Best Buy had a gigantic, almost Tower Records-size, CD selection. The Best Buy near me even had a separate "classical room" full of box sets and CDs from relatively obscure composers (at least for a mainstream music store), like William Boyce, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Leopold Mozart.

Re: Target Downsizes Music Section Again
 

The target by my house just put in a Vinyl Record section