Best Buy stores will stop selling music CDs, and Target could be next

[vdeane]

Target IS going to stop selling music CDs, according to the news report I heard last night.

The trouble with owning digital copies of entertainment (as opposed to owning copies on physical media) is that there isn't much stopping the company from providing the copy to me anymore (Apple yanking a copy of a movie or TV show or song from my iPhone, or Amazon suddenly deciding it's not going to let me stream the movie I purchased any more).  I don't have to worry about anyone from a movie studio or record label coming into my house and taking a handful of CDs or DVDs.

Fortunately, most places you can buy digital music these days sell unprotected mp3s.  Nothing the publisher can do to make those stop working.  Pretty sure Amazon allows them to be re-downloaded too, as well as playback from their website.

Eesh.  Audio cassettes were a wrong-way turn on media progress.  Stupid things degrade after the first play.

True, but they because cheaper and obviously more portable. Playing an LP or EP in your car was a cruel joke. If you sprung for good quality tapes (not Type I), used an archival source (not radio), and decent equipment (not Radio Shack-spec), it was pretty good.

Early MP3 players and quality were equally poor, until storage capacity and re-sampling quality increased. So there's a curve for everything.

The CD selection at most of these chain stores isn't that great anyway. I recently learned that Lush reunited, and put our an album in 2016, but I don't know of too many Best Buy, Target, or Wal-Mart stores that had any copies. And that's just one example.

It's been about 5 years since I bought an album in a store; I have to go to an online retailer to find actual albums. You can find the latest (and "greatest") in stores, but that's about it. Between most record stores going belly-up, major retailers are going with safe bets, so I suppose it's taking up space. I don't really blame retailers for removing the albums, as keeping up with demands must be a tricky process that yields diminishing returns.

Probably won't be too long until the DVDs go away, but there still seems to be a steady market for new releases, new TV seasons, and box sets. For now, you can't (legally) get every movie online.

Have digital non-streaming movies/TV shows taken off?  My understanding is that most of the digital video action is with streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, and nothing that isn't original content is guaranteed to stay on for long.  TV shows usually last a couple years, but movies sometimes don't even last a couple months before leaving Netflix.  Pretty hard to justify switching from DVD/BluRay to streaming when everything could vanish if a rights-holder has a dispute with your streaming service, another service pays for exclusivity, or they want to launch their own service.  I lost access to Doctor Who for that reason, and will probably lose access to Star Trek eventually, too.  After that, the only thing holding me to Netflix will be Black Mirror.

[Rothman]

I find that practically anything is available for streaming somewhere on the Internet.

[abefroman329]

Have digital non-streaming movies/TV shows taken off?  My understanding is that most of the digital video action is with streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, and nothing that isn't original content is guaranteed to stay on for long.  TV shows usually last a couple years, but movies sometimes don't even last a couple months before leaving Netflix.  Pretty hard to justify switching from DVD/BluRay to streaming when everything could vanish if a rights-holder has a dispute with your streaming service, another service pays for exclusivity, or they want to launch their own service.  I lost access to Doctor Who for that reason, and will probably lose access to Star Trek eventually, too.  After that, the only thing holding me to Netflix will be Black Mirror.

Effectively you can purchase the perpetual right to stream a particular movie or TV show from Amazon, or you can purchase the perpetual right to stream a particular movie or TV show from iTunes or download it to a device.  Those are two that I'm aware of, and I'm sure there are others.

We don't have cable television (we pay for a package from the cable company that only includes the local OTA channels), so the former is how my wife and I watch Better Call Saul and Humans, and the latter is how I watched Brockmire.

[hbelkins]

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I'm sure there's a way the copyright owner could prevent you from playing back those as well.

I don't think so. How would it be any different than, say, playing an out-of-print CD or album?

[kkt]

But if the rights owner decides to stop allowing streaming sometime in the future, I'm sure somewhere in the fine print you will find that they have the right to discontinue any specific content without compensation.

[ZLoth]

What happens if my computer, mp3 player, or other device crashes?

Since I back up regularly, I can restore it from backup. What am I missing here?

Over the holidays, I re-ripped all of my CDs at a high bitrate and placed them on a Plex media server. That media server, in turn, is running as a plug-in on a FreeNAS server with eight 5TB drives running in a RAIDZ2 configuration so that two of the drives can fail without losing data, although the server would be running in a degraded condition. That Plex file share, in turn, is backed up onto a external 4TB drive using FreeFileSync.

Oh, yeah, I still retain the original copies.

[kkt]

What happens if my computer, mp3 player, or other device crashes?

Since I back up regularly, I can restore it from backup. What am I missing here?

Over the holidays, I re-ripped all of my CDs at a high bitrate and placed them on a Plex media server. That media server, in turn, is running as a plug-in on a FreeNAS server with eight 5TB drives running in a RAIDZ2 configuration so that two of the drives can fail without losing data, although the server would be running in a degraded condition. That Plex file share, in turn, is backed up onto a external 4TB drive using FreeFileSync.

Oh, yeah, I still retain the original copies.

I assume the external 4TB drives get rotated so at least one is always offsite as well?

[ZLoth]

What happens if my computer, mp3 player, or other device crashes?

Since I back up regularly, I can restore it from backup. What am I missing here?

Over the holidays, I re-ripped all of my CDs at a high bitrate and placed them on a Plex media server. That media server, in turn, is running as a plug-in on a FreeNAS server with eight 5TB drives running in a RAIDZ2 configuration so that two of the drives can fail without losing data, although the server would be running in a degraded condition. That Plex file share, in turn, is backed up onto a external 4TB drive using FreeFileSync.

Oh, yeah, I still retain the original copies.

I assume the external 4TB drives get rotated so at least one is always offsite as well?

Only have a single 4TB drive for the Plex media backup.

[D-Dey65]

And now LPs/vinyl is making a comeback. What is old is new again.

I can understand the comeback of LPs. I don't understand why people would want cassette tapes or VHS tapes to come back.

Well, until CD-Rs and CD-RW's came out, they were the only places you could make your own music mixes. I was actually tempted by the idea of replacing my tapes with those, but I found out I could actually fit fewer songs on them than on one of my mix tapes. I've also tried making my own digital replacements but the songs didn't go in the order I wanted, even though I reorganized the number prefixes hoping they would.

[froggie]

It's Time To Say Goodbye To The CD Player In New American Cars

Concur that they're a bit late.  Neither my wife's 2016 Trailhawk nor my 2017 CrossTrek have a C/D player.  In fact, my CrossTrek has Apple Car Play, which easily allows me to plug in a <*insert random Apple portable device*> and play my music library.  Of course, every car model we've had since 2012 has had similar capability (plugging in a portable device and playing the music on it, *without* needing to use the AUX connection).

I can't remember the last time I bought a new-release musical performance in any form, however. Pretty much everything that's being put out these days is awful. I'm not into pop, rap, or anything else that is "hip" these days. What's a metalhead going to do these days?

Clearly you haven't kept up with modern hard/metal rock...plenty of decent stuff in that genre.

[formulanone]

I can't remember the last time I bought a new-release musical performance in any form, however. Pretty much everything that's being put out these days is awful. I'm not into pop, rap, or anything else that is "hip" these days. What's a metalhead going to do these days?

Clearly you haven't kept up with modern hard/metal rock...plenty of decent stuff in that genre.

I feel the same way, but there's usually something new (and good) out there in any genre, usually further from the mainstream, if you're willing to dig around and be patient. While before, you loaned and traded music to get a feel for what's out there, now you can go to YouTube or stream stuff on various platforms. There was great music then, but also a lot of crud...in essence, not much has changed. If anything, there's even more choices than ever before, so the potential exists for some great music yet to be found. We also tend to clutch at music from our past, if for no reason other than its comforting familiarity.

I have to remind myself of all this occasionally!

[Henry]

Since the younger generations love older music nowadays, they should appreciate the fact that LP records are back, which is the same medium that we at their age considered dinosaurs back in the 80s, when CDs were the fresh new trend. Now that the reverse has occurred, I'm suspecting that it won't be long before the next generation of kids to be born asks what CDs are, although we still have DVDs and Blu-Rays to go around. Here's hoping that there'll still be music stores that will sell used CDs at bargain prices so that we can add to our collections, and that some of the great albums from the 90s and 2000s will be recreated in LP form.

[triplemultiplex]

Vinyl is a niche market and will always remain a niche market for audio snobs who are good at convincing themselves shit sounds better on vinyl and have plenty of space to store piles of wax.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, reliance on streaming your music means you have no control over it.  Any disagreements between among the corporate slime that wedge themselves between artists and fans could result in your loss of access.  Even purchased digital music that you allegedly 'own' can be taken away from you since a lot of these files need an internet connection to 'phone in' and check and see that the device trying to play it is 'authorized' to do so.

Streaming movies and TV is a little more tenuous than music.  Probably no one is going to cut off your access to The Rolling Stones.  But Disney is about to launch it's own streaming service.  If you've been using another streaming service to view any of the many, many, many networks, shows and franchises they own, you are going to lose that access.  Unless you shell out more moola for an additional streaming service.

If there's a movie or TV show I really like and always want access to, I acquire my own personal copy.  Whether that's a DVD or something digital, I want it so that I control it and I'll never have to 'pay' for it again.  I don't have to worry about it going away because some asshole companies are in a pissing war.  Or it turns out someone involved was human garbage so we don't get to see their art anymore.

[hbelkins]

In the area where I live, streaming services are practically worthless. More than half my drive to work each day is devoid of cell service.

[tchafe1978]

Best Buy used to be one of my go to stores for new music back in the day, along with a local music store. However I now live in an area where the nearest Best Buy and/or good music store is over a 30 minute drive away. So my CD collecting has slowed down from my teen/college years. I suppose I could order online, but it just isn't the same as looking through racks of CDs and agonizing over which ones I want most. But what I really miss is the days of Columbia House and BMG music services where you could get 12 CDs for a penny when you signed up. I used to sign up with one service, get my 12 CDs, get the minimum necessary to satisfy the membership requirements, cancel my membership, then sign up with the other service and do the same, then repeat. I got so many of my CDs that way, and I was willing to risk a few duds just to try them out for a penny/dozen. I still prefer physical copies over digital. They may take up a whole piece of furniture in my bedroom but I like being able to see the artwork, lyrics, etc.

[Jardine]

Yet another topic to make me feel old.  I'm 60, I remember buying CDs when they first came out and not having a player for them.  I think my first CD player was a Technics, it played one disc, and IIRC, it was around $150-$200.  I recall someone I worked with spent over $500 for a CD player.

It was incentive to buy a decent (bias knob!) cassette recorder and make mix tapes to play in the Mustang.  Wasn't too many years (87? 88?) I bought a Toshiba DX-900 VHS VCR and made digital mix tapes 6 hours long.  I still have some of the tapes, but nothing to play them on (in digital, the Hi-Fi tracks are still playable).  If you're thinking a 6 hour mix tape put together one song at a time from various CDs took much longer than 6 hours, you are correct.

[sparker]

Eesh.  Audio cassettes were a wrong-way turn on media progress.  Stupid things degrade after the first play.

I don't understand why people would want cassette tapes or VHS tapes to come back.

Me either. They degrade and sound/look like ass.

Prerecorded cassettes -- likely most people's reference point -- were indeed pieces of shit.  I spent a good deal of the early '80's ripping my own cassettes from primarily LP's and, later, CD's (at least until I acquired a vehicle with a CD player, which didn't happen until the '90's!).  With a good deck with adjustable bias (I invariably owned Nakamichis) and a good high-bias tape like the Maxell XL II or TDK SAX, you could get something that transferred about 90-95% of the LP quality to tape.  If car listening was the main goal (which it was for me), one generally found back then that factory-installed car systems sucked shit!  I owned a series of mini-trucks (Mazda, Mitsubishi) in the '80's and early '90's and always chose one without any kind of media installed so I could select my own playback device, amplification, and speakers (I am an admitted audiophile, so I may have a biased view of such things).  In short, with a bit of care & feeding of both record and playback systems, short of absolute fidelity (which I accepted albeit reluctantly!) there was nothing wrong with the cassette tape format.  And it kept things in the analog realm -- these days, that can and does make something of a difference.   Digital = convenience, but at a sonic price.  But I do like physical media (have about 3K LP's and maybe 700 CD's) -- but in an urban environment like the one in which I'm presently residing, there seem to be plenty of small stores to "feed my need", so to speak; I haven't bought a CD, DVD, or anything else from Best Buy or Target for years.  And we still have Fry's up here; they haven't given any indication that they're going to 86 their CD's as of yet.  But I'll still get most of my music recordings from independents.  Nevertheless, I can see how the loss of this physical media would adversely affect regions with less variety in terms of vendors (I wonder if Amazon's reach will help to fill in the gaps, so to speak). 

Interestingly, I still have nearly a hundred unrecorded cassettes (mostly TDK); I should snag a few random ones and see if the oxide coating has held up for the 20+ years they've been in a drawer (still have one of my Nakamichis in good shape).   Seeing as how my old Camry has both a cassette player and a CD deck (the latter is screwing up intermittently!), this might just be a neat little project.  So -- thanks to the posters who derided the cassette format for reminding me that I still can actively make analog recordings.  Maybe I'll look into reel-to-reel next...................   

P.S. -- Agree about VHS; the old Betamax format was, in terms of visual quality, much, much better -- but the mechanism was more difficult to manufacture, so eventually VHS became the default mode and Beta died off -- too bad!

[english si]

Probably won't be too long until the DVDs go away, but there still seems to be a steady market for new releases, new TV seasons, and box sets. For now, you can't (legally) get every movie online.

'Older' people watch new TV shows/movies via disks, they don't listen to new music that way anywhere near as much.

[vdeane]

P.S. -- Agree about VHS; the old Betamax format was, in terms of visual quality, much, much better -- but the mechanism was more difficult to manufacture, so eventually VHS became the default mode and Beta died off -- too bad!

Doesn't help that because of that video quality, Sony assumed that publishers and consumers would be willing to pay substantially more for Betamax than VHS.  They assumed wrong.  However, it was used in TV production, so Betamax did outlast VHS after all.

[formulanone]

Probably won't be too long until the DVDs go away, but there still seems to be a steady market for new releases, new TV seasons, and box sets. For now, you can't (legally) get every movie online.

'Older' people watch new TV shows/movies via disks, they don't listen to new music that way anywhere near as much.

Over here, the selection of movies on Netflix (I haven't bothered with any other streaming services yet) is far from complete. They drop movies/series on a monthly basis. If I'm just setting up a single movie, I can break out a DVD and cue it up in about the same about of time that it takes for Netflix to buffer. So there's still a reason to keep the Star Wars disks around, and The Simpsons box-sets.

But it was probably 2005 since I listened to more than one CD in the same sitting, excluding ripping them to MP3s. They've been in boxes for at least a decade now.

[Hurricane Rex]

End of an era, or at least the beginning of the end IMO.

[sparker]

P.S. -- Agree about VHS; the old Betamax format was, in terms of visual quality, much, much better -- but the mechanism was more difficult to manufacture, so eventually VHS became the default mode and Beta died off -- too bad!

Doesn't help that because of that video quality, Sony assumed that publishers and consumers would be willing to pay substantially more for Betamax than VHS.  They assumed wrong.  However, it was used in TV production, so Betamax did outlast VHS after all.

Also -- the Beta tape system was simply a scaled-down version of Sony's "U-Matic" commercial product, with the tape wrapping around about 60% of the round recording head assembly (VHS merely pressed the tape against the head assembly in one spot, with correspondingly less resolution).  But Sony was also a bit arrogant about the superiority of their system, demanding outsized royalty fees from any other manufacturer electing to utilize their system.  JVC, the actual patent holder for VHS, decided that volume would produce more user fees than cost, so they adopted a very low royalty schedule that actually diminished over the years.  Once RCA, Matsushita, Samsung, and other major VCR suppliers started cranking out VHS machines in massive quantities after about 1982 it became clear that the economics of the business was leaning toward providing simple TV time-shifting capabilities rather than ultra-high-resolution video recording.  VHS remained king until consumer DVD "burners" came on line right around the turn of the century.   

[MikeTheActuary]

FWIW, I haven't bought a mainstream music CD in at least a decade.  (I have, and probably will continue to, acquired some specialty CD's that you might encounter at a small, no-name performance.)  For the past 20-25 years, any music CD I acquired was immediately ripped at the highest bitrate I could achieve.

I did recently finally make the jump to streaming music (and killed my SiriusXM subscription for the car), driven in part by unlimited cellular data plans, and by getting a couple of Amazon Echo devices for the house.  I figured I was an old fogey for waiting so long to make that change...and I still don't have all my playlists set up in that format yet.

I think DVDs and Blue-Rays have some life in them yet.  There are still plenty of people out there who don't have decent broadband access yet, and data caps on both wireless and wired broadband discourage a nontrivial number of folks from streaming video.

[seicer]

CD's are horrible archiving discs. I had to convince a co-worker a few days ago that the music they had all saved to discs were going to degrade eventually. To illustrate the point, I brought in some CD's that I had archived photos on that had deteriorated to the point that the CD reader in the iMac had seized - and I had to do a hard reboot. The discs were always a crapshoot on build quality.

I have used streaming services - Spotify, and now Apple Music, for years. What I can't find I purchase and then add it to the respective service.

As for DVD's and other movie discs - the highest usage of RedBox and other rental services are in rural areas. I'm not able to find the paper, but the highest usage rates of RedBox were in Appalachia, which is not surprising.

[1995hoo]

....

It was incentive to buy a decent (bias knob!) cassette recorder and make mix tapes to play in the Mustang.  Wasn't too many years (87? 88?) I bought a Toshiba DX-900 VHS VCR and made digital mix tapes 6 hours long.  I still have some of the tapes, but nothing to play them on (in digital, the Hi-Fi tracks are still playable).  If you're thinking a 6 hour mix tape put together one song at a time from various CDs took much longer than 6 hours, you are correct.

Heh. My '04 Acura can play DVD-Audio discs. The format flopped in the market, but one useful thing about it is that with the right software, you can burn your own discs. While I sometimes burn high-rez .FLAC material (Springsteen concerts, mostly) in the  native format, another use for DVD-Audio is the ability to store large amounts of CD-quality music on a single disc. I have a mixed DVD that runs for over seven hours; as you say, that took forever to sequence. I suppose this would be the solution for transferring my various mixed tapes, except it would take forever–I'd have to copy the tapes to CD using my stereo (two CD-RWs per tape), then rip the CDs, then convert to DVD-Audio, then burn. Not sure it's worth the trouble.

Naturally, our newer car doesn't play that format because it flopped. So when someday my '04 Acura gives up the ghost, those DVD-Audio discs will be useless except downstairs where my home stereo has a Marantz "universal player" that handles them (not truly universal, of course, since it predates Blu-ray and doesn't handle certain older formats like Laserdisc, although I don't have any of the latter anyway).

My 1992-era Denon cassette deck is still hooked up downstairs, although I haven't used it in a couple of years. I loved it in college because it confused the hell out of people. The cassette goes in a drawer, similar to a CD player; Denon said one reason for the design was because so many cassettes are played at a near-horizontal angle in cars that it made sense to orient the recorder in a similar way. I have no idea whether that's true from an engineering standpoint, but it absolutely confounded people when they saw that drawer open and then saw it was clearly designed to hold a cassette tape.