Is the Compact Disc dead?

[Delhommey]

If you have a coffee table book to roll weed on, then yes, there is no longer any need for cd's.

[Delhommey]

Wanna hear one of those, "You young whipper-snappers won't ever know what it's like..." stories?

 

As a teenager in the late 60's and early 70's Tower Records was a huge chain of stores and included locations on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood as well as prime locations very close to where the music scene was in those days. If there was an arena that held concerts in the city, odds were a Tower Records was close by. Those places would be packed before and after shows, bands would do their pre-concert pressers in the parking lots of a Tower Records store, bands would show up at a Tower Records store on an album release date.

 

We'd spend hours in Tower Records stores looking for the hidden, obscure gems and just reading liner notes and album covers. We could go to the Whiskey or the Troubador in LA and listen to Neil Young or Van Halen do a set and afterwards hang out at the Tower store learning more about our favorite artists.

 

Albums back then had a meaning behind them. There were the "concept albums" like any Emerson, Lake and Palmer album or "Dark Side of the Moon." There's absolutely no sense in it now because nobody buys the entire CD or package anymore. They simply download the songs they like and forget the rest of the release.

 

I download now, but I still record everything to CD, it feels like I have something in my hand...

 

That being said, I was at an artist friend's house yesterday and one wall in his painting studio was full of CDs and he still has the amplifiers with the old school huge wooden speakers, a cassette player (yes, I even saw some cassette tapes) and a turntable! A turntable! For those of you who have no idea what those are- they play records... Anyway, the sound was great, it was clean and it sounded real, not like the digitally mastered, almost sterile music quality we have today.

 

Kids today know what vinyl is a lot more than 20 years ago:

 

[Jase]

it's those darn hipsters

 

 

[Hawk]

don't remember what or when I bought a cd last

[88 Bronco]

The last CD I got was a gift, otherwise, I don't see the point. I stream music to my smartphone, or listen to Sirius. 

[Dpantherman]

When I was a kid I went to Cicruit City all the time for CDs. Now it's Walmart or bust. I stick to digital, it's a lot more convenient. I did used to like to keep the CD artwork and have the dedications and lyrics and such, but now the only CDs I buy are blanks

[R0CKnR0LLA]

welcome to 12 years ago

[CCS]

I do not care that the CD is dead but for some reason I really do not want the DVD to die.

[Chimera]

I think I last bought a CD in 2001.

[Zaximus]

I do not care that the CD is dead but for some reason I really do not want the DVD to die.

 

Too late on this too.  They'll last a few more years in the Walmart 4.99 bin but stores like BestBuy have been making plans to phase them out and free up floor space for years :(.

[Jangler]

Manifest is now all used CDs I think. You really dated yourself, calling them "albums" :-) I used to think the same about LPs... Much better buying experience than a CD.

 

Albums...and you can use the doubles to clean out the seeds...if weed still had seeds .

 

damn I'm old

 

 

edit: really should read whole thread first...

[88 Bronco]

DVD's are dead with arrival of Blu-ray, which will probably be the last physical format for videos.

[KSpan]

I find the typical didigtal formats (e.g. mp3) and devices to be less convenient to use and a lower quality sound than popping in a CD, so I don't own an mp3 player and still listen exclusively to CDs or CDs riped in a lossless format (huge files).  To answer the question though yes, digital media is taking over for a multitude of reasons and CDs will likely be marginalized entirely in the near future. 

[Anybodyhome]

lol... forgot about using the album covers to clean and separate.

 

If some of you recall, those were also the days of festival seating at concerts. When the sooner you showed up, the better seats you got when the doors opened and it was a mad rush to get to the front of the stage.