Each year, I buy roughly 100 albums. About half of these are CDs.
Wait a minute, who still buys CDs in 2020? Most people haven’t bought a single CD in the last decade, let alone fifty of them.
In case you think I’m some sort of tech-inept oldster, an anti-digital luddite, or a time-traveler, I’m actually an older millennial with a Spotify account. I mostly use my phone to listen to music.
I just really like buying CDs still. Let me explain why:
PRICE
First is the price point. As a disclaimer, the vast majority of CDs I buy are used. I typically only buy a few new CDs each year. Back in the mid-2000s, while browsing the CD selection at my local music store (shout out to Looney Tunes on Long Island), I discovered how cheap used CDs are. The average new CD at the time cost over $15, so finding a used CD for half that price seemed like a steal. Even the next big thing at the time, the booming iTunes Store, charged $10 to buy an album. These were also laden down with Apple’s then-restrictive DRM (not repealed until 2009), which made you question if you really “owned” the album (more on that later). When my fiancée later introduced me to the holy grail of used CDs, Amoeba Music in LA, I found used CDs that cost anywhere from $3 – $10, meaning you could potentially buy three used CDs for the price of a digital album, or up to five for the price of a new CD. I’ve been a devoted used CD shopper ever since; last year, I walked out of Amoeba with 30 CDs after spending $200.
While used CDs are almost always cheaper than new ones, there are some disadvantages. First off, like any used product, their condition ranges from “like new” to “poor.” I’ve bought some used CDs where the Digipak was torn or the jewel case cracked, and others where the CD itself had enough scratches to result in a skip. Fortunately, most are indistinguishable from their new counterparts. Second, used CDs don’t really benefit the artist in any meaningful way. Whether a CD is sold a second, third, fourth time or more, only the initial new purchase really has a chance of delivering any money to the band or musician you’re listening to. Third and most obviously, if you only buy used CDs you’re going to have to wait if you want to hear anything new. While I’ve occasionally found used CDs for sale less than a year after their release date, most used CDs are at least a year old. All this considered, if you don’t mind a little wear and tear, you aren’t looking for the newest releases, and you manage to support artists in other ways, used CDs come out pretty strong.
OWNERSHIP
If you stream music, and you probably do given streaming’s dominance of the music listening market right now, you may wonder why anyone would bother with physical albums at all. Spotify Premium is only $9.99 a month, allowing you to listen to almost any song you can imagine with no ads and no limitations. You can even download songs for offline use, in those increasingly rare circumstances you can’t get a Wi-Fi or cell data signal. For everyone from the casual listener who streams a few tracks a month to the diehards who listen to a dozen albums a day, it’s hard to say “no” to having unlimited access to an essentially bottomless music library for the cost of one album per month. I occasionally use Spotify to check out new music, especially on the “Release Radar” and “Discover Weekly” playlists; those alone make having an account worthwhile.
Yet the main reason I haven’t fully signed onto the streaming revolution is the ownership aspect of music. Recently, people have more or less abandoned the idea of owning their media, preferring to rent it instead. With movies and TV, streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video, and many others have slowly replaced DVD sales and cable connections. However, each platform has tried to churn out as many original programs and exclusives as possible, making it increasingly necessary to maintain multiple subscriptions if you want more choices. If you really want to stream one particular show or movie (with no added cost), then you’d better hope that one of your streaming services currently has it available.
Music seems a little easier to handle, at least at the moment. Spotify is currently the king of music streaming, although competitors like Apple Music, Tidal, and Amazon Music have tried to encroach on their market dominance. Like their video counterparts, these music services have occasionally tried to entice users with exclusive content. Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, Beyoncé’s Lemonade, and Jay-Z’s 4:44 were all exclusive to Tidal when released, but all eventually found their way onto other platforms. While most artists are happy to release their music across streaming platforms, and the imminent collapse of Spotify’s catalogue seems unlikely, the market could change if enough artists develop loyalties to competing platforms.
The concern about exclusives mostly applies to new releases, but there are other drawbacks to being fully reliant on streaming as well. Several artists have complained about the paltry royalties they receive from streaming revenue as opposed to album purchases, and some have even taken the drastic step of pulling their music in protest. Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke pulled his solo albums from Spotify in 2013, and only reluctantly added them back in December 2017. Taylor Swift similarly withdrew her music from Spotify in 2014 before returning it in 2017. It may seem like these are just big artists making a temporary statement before ultimately giving in, but look hard and you’ll still find some missing names. Joanna Newsom blasted Spotify’s pay structure in 2015, and her music is still unavailable on the platform as of mid-2020. De La Soul’s earlier albums are missing from Spotify due to a record label contract. There’s also the more niche concern of not being able to find a particular track, or a particular version of it, available for streaming. Sure, Spotify has New Order’s studio albums and live performances, but where’s Substance 1987? It may have 99% of what you’re looking for at any given moment, but when you want to hear that one track 1% of the time, it’s a frustrating experience.
To sum up, I just really like the idea of owning my music collection. I’m not the same with video – I have maybe a dozen DVDs and use three streaming platforms – but seldom re-watch shows or movies. With music I always listen to albums multiple times, sometimes listening to tracks well into the triple digits over the years. I like to know that if I want to listen to a specific track, I know where to find it and will have access to it.
THE THRILL OF SHOPPING
Passionate as I am about the idea of owning a music collection, the half of my album purchases that are not CDs consist of digital downloads. I try to buy these from the artists themselves, their label, Bandcamp, or barring these, Amazon or iTunes. This especially is true for new releases, which I need to get quickly in order to review or otherwise rate, and can’t wait until they turn up as a used CD somewhere. Sometimes I just straight up can’t find an album as a used CD after years of searching, and just download a digital copy for $10 instead of paying $15 for a new CD. It took me a while to embrace this change, but I am glad that I can download almost every album I can think of for a reasonable price instead of hoping I’ll find it somewhere.
Yet this technology that has facilitated completing discographies hasn’t dulled the thrill of shopping for physical music. It’s similar to how online booksellers and e-books haven’t completely killed the brick and mortar bookstore for bibliophiles. When I buy an album online, it’s a straightforward transaction where I search for the specific product, buy it, and then enjoy it. It’s ultimately a means to an end. However, I’ve gone full on “kid in a candy shop” mode when I’ve visited Amoeba, carefully going through each stack of used CDs to see what’s available. Sure, I have a list of albums I’ve been looking for in mind, but I often walk out with at least a few more impulse purchases. I recently walked out of a local music store (M-Theory in San Diego) with a few used CDs that I had no intention of buying when I walked in. Used CDs are cheap enough that you don’t feel too cheated if you’re not too into the album, and they’re a great launching off point if you like what you hear. Plus, they look good on a shelf.
WHY NOT VINYL?
I’m sure other music lovers have a similar appreciation for the tangibility of physical music and stores that sell it, but it’s not CDs that are getting the love. Instead, vinyl has emerged as the gold standard for physical music, with sales skyrocketing in recent years. As audiophiles will tell you, a vinyl record has the greatest sound quality of all, blowing away your compressed mp3 files and even topping the CD (allegedly). Since being a bit of a music snob has slowly become synonymous with having a vinyl collection, it sometimes surprises people when they learn I don’t even have a record player.
Why not make like a good hipster and embrace vinyl? For starters, it’s a much more expensive hobby, with the average LP record costing anywhere from $15-30 for a new album, or half this range for your typical used album. I’ll admit that they look better than CDs when their album art is used for decoration, but they also take up considerably more space. Most importantly though, vinyl is for people who want to physically put on an album, whereas I almost never actually put on the CDs I purchase. Instead, I just upload the CD to my music collection and listen to the digital files. This is possible with vinyl, and you might get a better-quality result, but the process is much more complicated. Admitting that I mostly buy CDs to upload them and have the digital files probably exposes that I’m not a huge audiophile, but to be honest, I mostly just care about having and hearing the albums.
Hoping to expand my music collection with CDs isn’t the most practical or easy method of doing so, and unfortunately it looks like it’ll only get more difficult as the CD continues its gradual decline. In April, the reliable online marketplace for used CDs SecondSpin finally threw in the towel. Amoeba is moving to a new location in Hollywood, and their new store will have slightly less room for CDs. Even storage is becoming an issue, as evidenced by Ikea’s recent discontinuation of its optimally-designed-for-CDs “Gnedby” shelf. Chain stores like Barnes and Noble and Best Buy, where you could occasionally find a good deal, have either minimized or completely eliminated their CD sections. Some artists aren’t even releasing their music on CD anymore. However, since vinyl is currently experiencing a renaissance, there’s always the chance that CDs could come back too. After all, even the humble cassette has had a small comeback recently. For now, though, so long as there are places to buy CDs, I’ll keep filling up my shelves.
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