Is physical music useless?

I think there's just a nice appeal to do it. But I agree, technology has given us everything possible with YouTube and Spotify and that, that it just seems pointless to get physical copies.

I'd love a CD collection of my favourite albums. Vinyl would be cool but CD's is my '90's youth. Nicer nostalgia.

 

Not at all. If you're gonna pay the same price why not have the physical copy that you can keep forever

Also you're keeping laborers employed instead of digital where your probably only protecting the guys job who has to upload it to the different sites.

Sound quality is an issue too.

 

No

Keeps the music industry alive, which is vital

 

Sound quality is a big one. Aside from Bandcamp, I don't know of any DD sites that provide a higher quality than 320kbps MP3s. And the CDs themselves serve as a backup in addition to looking nice on a shelf. With DD services, if something happens to your hard-drive your music collection is gone. You either have to buy it all again or pirate it, both being a huge pain in the ass. While ripping CDs is also a pain in the ass, it's less of one than downloading and doesn't hog bandwidth.

 

^ The sound quality is better.

That being said, I honestly just like CD's and vinyl because I like tangible. I like tangible collections. I have a big cd collection, movies, books, and a big vinyl collection that I just got from my Dad. Got about 300 records from my pops, and I love looking at and playing the old vinyl.

But... honestly having a non physical library has plenty of it's own benefits. Just this weekend I was looking through my 500 plus cd's trying to find this one burned CD and I thought to myself "fuck... this would be a lot easier if I could just look through my mp3 collection for this cd" lol

 

The sound quality for vinyls is so far unparalleled by current audio technology, that alone is my reason for loving vinyls

 

but having copies of all your cds would take just as long. if you have all your cds on your hard drive you could make another copy by putting it on an external USB/ drive then if something happens to your hard drive you can add all our music to your new hard drive easily. it will prob take hours and hours to transfer over though but that;s a fuck of a lot better than manually inserting and removing cd after cd after cd after cd for days to get it all back on your drive. i have around 5,000 songs and it;s constantly growing to reupload all of that from cds would take literally days probably.

also, a digital copy is pretty much both a digital and physical copy... well physical copy to be. it;s easy to burn cd's. ya only really need to if you have a nice stereo that doesn't have a usb input for your music player though.

 

Digital format has surpassed vinyl, but there is still something about the 'sound' of vinyl that a lot of people prefer. If I'm listening to older music then I will definitely go for the vinyl copy.

That being said, op, the main reason I buy physical copies is for the album art work and credits. There is some information that is never posted online and its super hard to find credits for the engineers and in some cases producers.

 

I love having CD's way more, though I have been illegaly downloading recently due to money problems.

But I treat my cd's as artwork and pick the best ones and display them around my room. I also love the booklets you get with them often it has the lyrics and if you're like me and you like getting quite unknown albums from the 60's and 70's there is generally a whole heap of information on the band in the booklets. Also if my hard drive gets wiped I still have my music physically.

 

Digital is the way of the future. I hardly buy physical media anymore unless it's BluRay. It's more of a pain to rip and encode. I would rather just get the digital FLAC and never have to worry about a physical copy.

 

It's a lot faster, actually. Ripping a CD takes about 5 minutes for FLAC. DLing an album of the same quality (about 450mb on average) takes a bit longer and I have to spend time searching for it to make sure it's the right quality and version. Switching discs takes 10 seconds max which is a negligible difference in this case.

And a physical copy is a digital copy to be, but with a nice case and artwork.

 

Just bought a whole bunch of vinyl down at the record store.

Another advantage of buying physical copies - you'll end up finding stuff you would never find otherwise.

Also, sample digging digitally never has the same 'magic' to it...

 

Yeah this is true actually, I've bought many a cd I can't find online unless I use itunes, but if you're gonna buy the digital for the same price as the cd you may aswell just get the cd.

 

The problem I have, is that yes it only takes a few minutes to rip a CD to your hard drive. So one CD is nice and easy. But when you want to rip your whole collection... a few hundred cd's.... it's a pain in the ass.
My last pc crashed on me, I had basically everything backed up, info, files, pictures, except my music. So now with a new computer I've been wanting to upload all my music again, but honestly just don't have the time right now to do it. So I rip a cd here, a cd there, from my collection... usually when some one wants me to burn a cd for them.

 

Also, another thing, an artist can't really sign a digital copy.

Sure, they could write you something in the metadata, but come on, lol that doesn't really count.

 

Yes it essentially is, Spotify has all I need, quality is great and I can easily have it on my phone ipod tablet and computer at the same time easily

 

i dont think its useless at all..well i wont ever buy cds but i buy records way too often..i have soo many i kinda think i have a problem. but at least if my computer crashes i wont lose my music

 

As I explained, downloading 500+ albums is a bigger pain in the ass. It's inserting the CD and clicking "Rip" vs. searching for the album and making sure it's the correct format & bitrate. In the time I'd spend searching for an album I would already have it ripped to my PC.

And as I also said, there's no DD store that sells albums in FLAC for a lot of the artists I listen to. So yeah, physical copies have better quality, convenience, and aesthetics.

 

so youre telling me, having to sit there for a whole day ripping music, as opposed to spending an hour finding the torrents and then doign whatever you feel like while downloading them is quicker?

and then while my downloads are free you are spending what like 15$ on each CD?
cause for 500 cds at 15$ each is 7500$. id rather spend an hour, and no money downloading my music as opposed to several thousand dollars and a day or two just to get all my music on the computer.