Continuing with CDs?

1. Oh, sure. I keep trying to reduce using the rule of 'if I get another CD I sell at least one back if not more.' It helps that I always get some credit at Amoeba, sometimes a surprising amount.

2. I guess? A lot of stuff that would serve as a very honest record is long since purged.

3. Yup, but via taking advantage of their nearly-flat value. Amoeba again is very good for this -- their clearance section is always stuffed with good finds amid the crud, I can pick up an armload for a song (almost literally in some cases).

1) Nope or at least not more than I ever did.

2) Uh not exactly.

3) I don't download very much and I still buy CDs and the occassional piece of vinyl.

am getting it down to about 150 left which i guess i'll keep on shelves for a while before just donating them. they never get played once ripped.

I picture Ned strolling into Amoeba, reciting a few bars of "Englande" and the guys behind the counter just give him a shopping cart and say "go for it."

Selling them all seems like a daunting and infuriating task, so I'll probably keep them, but only out of laziness.

yeah, i've got a few boxes of old stuff in the closet that i can't bear to sell for pennies, yet i'm sick of taking them somewhere to have them cherry pick a couple good ones and refuse the rest.

i'm keeping mine just in case a neutron bomb comes along and fries everyone's hard drives. (but, uh, not the cd players)

also, it's good to have cds around to loan to friends. it's easier than zipping up and uploading an entire album, and while sharing entire hard drives is in theory the best thing to do, it doesn't happen that often

i've never sold cds, so i won't be starting now.

i still buy cds.

(a) Too much trouble.
(b) I suppose, but they serve more of a function than that.
(c) Yes.

While downloading is invariably simpler, quicker, cheaper, etc., I'm still a sucker for the tactile artifact. I like liner notes, lyrics, cover art, all that. I'll download stuff I'm curious about, but if I really like it, I'll still buy the disc.

i'd love to get rid of everything, but i'm just not good enough at backing shit up to trust it.

i wouldn't really part with them unless i had one of those fancy things that lets you use your mp3s on a good stereo, but it's like i just picked u a real nice old NAD cd player for only $30 off craigslist so why bother.

plus yeah like ned said it's gonna be sweet in the next few years, lots of crewsh older stuff for dirt cheap.

although...it is weird seems like some CDs are really picking up in value on ebay, out of print stuff...

Yeah I don't see anything that indicates that rare CDs are any less valuable then they ever were.

I am keeping my cds because I want backups in case I have hard drive failure. Even with two hard drive copies of my music, I prefer to have the backup. Also, I may want to rip at a higher bitrate later once hd prices come down.

I'm going to keep my CD's in case I ever need to build a fortress of solitude out of them, Jor-El stylee

a) no, except for ones i get sick of.
b) no
c) i download tracks and sometimes albums, but if i really like what i'm hearing i'll buy it in CD or vinyl form. artwork, liner notes, etc.

i'll never say never though, because maybe someday in the distant future i'll sell everything and have it all digitized.

I'm keeping my CDs.

I'm too lazy to sell and also I have a suspicion that some kind of new digital format will emerge (MP5?) that will make MP3s sound tinny and useless, and that I'll want to re-rip my CDs.

I still buy cds and vinyl. I will keep them all unless I needed the money.
I barely download now, but like always, I still try to buy what I downloaded as long as I liked it.

im continuing! cd's are beautiful

1. No, never.
2. I will keep them as the art objects/media that they are.
3. Until I can buy whole albums from iTunes or Amazon as .wav files, I will continue buying essential CDs.

A lot of good reasons to hang onto CDs in this thread. I still enjoy cases and liner notes and having a good thing around to throw my disposable income at. In a lot of ways, I also find them easier to store and maintain than digital music, where you need at least two forms of backup and need to keep an organized file/folder structure together if you're going to find stuff easily. Finally, I still can hear the difference between reasonably good-quality CDs and mp3s, and with formats, storage methods, etc. changing frequently keeping CDs around seems like less of a long-term headache.

I'll still buy a lot, taking advantage of the lower cost and because I like having the little cardboard boxes from Caiman in the post to look forward to after returning from work.

I keep the price stickers on my CDs, and it amazes me just how much I was paying for music in the 90s. £15 - £16 for some CDs was not unusual.

ridic

its like 12 bux tops for me now. unless its brand new and too good

I'll continue keeping 100s of cds in a sock drawer which I occasionally pull out for a car ride. I wont sell them. But I oughta clean them all. I hate when a cd skips and I hate how I lost some of my cds even though I dont listen to any of my cds much. But I did lose Roxy Music - The Early Years and Tangerine Dream - Rubycon. I broke Thrakattak. And I can't remember what else at the moment. Kinda sucks. Kinda not.

Those of you who sell off your CDs, someday your hard drive is gonna fail. If you're lucky, you'll have it backed up to another drive. But then that one could fail as you're trying to dump it to your new hard drive. Then I will point and laugh.

i hate that too, captain -- i'm actually making a list of CD's i have that are too scratched up/missing. i replace a few ever year

it's like i just realized how to properly take care of a cd.

Fastnbulbous accurate enough, which is why the CDs I sell back are the ones I never listen to, or have only heard once and thought, "Nice" and never went back to at all. Ergo, why keep 'em around?

I moved into a new place two months ago and never bothered taking my CDs out of their boxes. I have a few lying around that I've bought recently, but there's no real reason for me to have them out, since the majority are on my iTunes/iPod, anyway.

Back when I started to download albums, I told myself that if I really liked something I downloaded I'd buy it on CD. But then it just seemed silly to go to the trouble of buying it, only to put it on a shelf and forget about it as soon as it was out of its shrink wrap.

Now the albums I buy are the ones I simply can't find online. I don't use p2p, but I can find most major new indie releases on a couple of choice websites or through friends. So what I buy ends up being not necessarily indicative of what I'm really excited about. A lot of times this amounts to used CDs I stumble across and take a chance on.

Those of you who sell off your CDs, someday your hard drive is gonna fail.
This is exactly right — CDs have become nothing more than backup.

http://www.sevenoaksart.co.uk/images/record1.gif

1) nah, I'm the kind of person who saves everything
2) ???
3) I never exclusively bought CDs, it was always a mix of vinyl, cassette (back in the day), or mp3 formats. I see no reason why this will change for me in the near future.

1) too lazy really - and they're not worth that much anyway
2) never completely stopped buying vinyl, so it's not even an accurate record
3) I''ve bought maybe 6 cds this year and maybe 300 LPs (and some cassettes, second hand for the car)

Also, I may want to rip at a higher bitrate later once hd prices come down.

yeah i thought about that. A couple weeks ago I embarked on digitizing my collection, starting with albums I didn't like that much; I ripped ~ 30 cds @ 320 which is fine for those but my main collection I'm probably gonna want to do in flac or whatever for posterity but i haven't done the math on what i'll need for space. I got 2 500G drives on black friday and I was gonna send one back but maybe I won't. than again i've been latched to rhapsody pretty hard lately and soon even the mp3s might be ancillary to how i'm listening to music. so much up in the air.

soon as I'm satisfied with backing up, and keeping the habit, I'm selling all my CDs. I need the space and I need the money.

i've sold all of my cds. still buy vinyl, which i also sell sometimes. while it's impractical, it retains its value better (and escalates in value far more often) and is more 'fun'. sue me

I keep the price stickers on my CDs, and it amazes me just how much I was paying for music in the 90s. £15 - £16 for some CDs was not unusual.

We still quite frequently pay $25-$35 AUD for some CD albums in this country. And they wonder why ppl use torrents.

resolved, did you just rip your CDs into FLAC format and keep them on your hard drive or something?

i ripped the ones that deserved it to FLAC + mp3 (for ipod), most of them just to variable rate mp3. and then a lot i just sold without bothering.

Will you bother trying now to sell off your existing CDs?

maybe. next year I might be compelled to "monetize" my vinyl collection.

Will you leave them as a record of 80s/90s to early 00s buying?

hate to say it but after sitting there unplayed for awhile they just take up space.

Will you continuing buying CDs selectively alongside downloading, for reasons of completing certain artists or genres?

Barely. I stream music on my computer, listen to old CDs less & less often. CDs/itunes I buy as gifts.

First off, CDs are still the primary way i listen to music, and I don't download very often.

1.) I'll hang onto my CDs for a long, long time, until they rot away (none of them have). I stopped selling back CDs a few years ago, because I tend to regret it later on. I used to regularly purge my collection of stuff if I hadn't played it in awhile, but there are too many CDs that I'm kicking myself now for selling then.

Plus, it always killed me when I tried to sell stuff that I knew was of really high musical quality or that someone would love to have, and the clerk would offer a pathetic couple of bucks (usually less!) for it. Most used stores never offer very much for CDs, and now when I think about it, the best offer I've ever received (about $3 for a CD, not common at all) is just not worth it to me. I'd rather hang on to the album, sorry, then take your 50 cents.

2. I'll keep my CDs as much more than just a record of this particular time, as they have fucking music on them!!

3. I'll probably buy CDs for quite a while. As others have mentioned, there are so many good finds on used CDs right now, it's great. So much stuff that I would never expect to find in used shops. It's only going to get better over the next few years, too.

Newbury Comics usually gives about $3 per CD.

1) No - mainly because CDs are not worth much now, particularly when trying to trade them in at a record store.

2) Most of the CDs I listen to regularly have been ripped now, but I'll keep them as a backup and also because of the possibilty of ripping in higher quality formats/higher bitrates later.

3) I still buy CDs sometimes but nowhere near as often as I used to - I've gone from half a dozen a week in 2001 to a couple a month now. But if I see a box set at a cheap price I'll probably buy it.

Those of you who sell off your CDs, someday your hard drive is gonna fail. If you're lucky, you'll have it backed up to another drive. But then that one could fail as you're trying to dump it to your new hard drive. Then I will point and laugh.

I've never had a hard drive die on me ever before. Meanwhile in that time a lot of my records and CDs got damaged in a flood. Life's funneee.

I wonder how homeowner's insurance would cover a hard drive filled with burned FLACs. Are you just screwed or could you reasonably claim the full value of replacing them on iTunes or whatever?

i sold them on amazon btw, the run of the mill ones at least. you get a lot more money that way if you're prepared to go to spend an hour going packing/going to the post office every few days.

x-post
but when your hd dies it's all gone. and the probability is much higher than all your cds being destroyed at once...

word. i'm still reeling from getting over £30 for a tatty Sasha & Digweed CD. xp

what is with you hd-failure doomsayers? you have to fuck a hd up pretty bad before the data on it is completely irretrievable.

Oh I'm just curious from an insurance standpoint. Like what if someone broke into your house and stole your HD. Can you only claim the HD or could you reasonably claim the cost of replacing the MP3s (I just talked to my boss-a former underwriter--and he's gonna find out for me)?

once i had a hd which seemed perfectly ok. but suddenly it crashed. it had been formatted a couple of megabytes too high. when i reached the limit it was all over.

the mary chain put out several 3" cd singles, i have Sidewalking as a 3" and a 12". and the sunday's first single is 3".

they are a perfect format for singles but always felt like you were getting very little for your money because they are tiny and just came in card sleeves.

So back in 1989 I was on Melrose Ave in Hollywood where many of LA's best record stores were and I picked up the "Blues from a Gun" 3" CD single import at Vinyl Fetish which exclusively contained their cover of The Temptations "My Girl" (and of course the single itself from the forthcoming album). I remember I paid $10.99 for it which was not a good a value! I remember the exact price because as always I walked west down Melrose to Bleecker Bob's Records and then to Rene's All Ears Records where Jim and William Reid just happened to be shopping. I was completely star struck and borrowed a pen from the cashier and shakily handed it over to William who graciously signed the sleeve (Jim had already moved on to the next store). He asked how much I paid and shook his head and said it was too much.

Love those 3" CDs from Metamkine - Fractals by Bernard Font is all-time

My kid has gotten into CDs which isn’t surprising because of me, but she has several friends that actually have CD players. Blew my mind. Maybe it’s a reaction to parents listening to pain in the ass records?

Okay that's an amazing story, Spencer. (But also a classic celebs-on-Melrose moment from that era -- the first time I was wandering around there around that time with some friends, one of them said "You have to get used to seeing famous people and not freaking out." Literally five seconds later Ric Ocasek, accompanied by a camera operator under his direction, darted in front of me, pointed towards something, and the two of them immediate ran towards whatever it was.)

I could have sworn the final disc of Prurient's Rainbow Mirror was a 3" CD, but it's actually a 'minimax' CD with a 3.5" data section surrounded by a transparent border. it looks cool but it doesn't play in my tray loading CD player, only in my portable. it seems like they first started popping up in the mid '90s (like this Olivia Newton-John single from 1995) and peaked between 1997 and 2000, but I don't think they were ever much more than a novelty

https://www.discogs.com/search/?format_exact=Minimax

https://i.imgur.com/0S64xvh.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/LpJruUe.jpeg

I have that but I don't know if it'll play in my system. It probably will; my CD player has a slightly recessed "tray within a tray" that will hold 3" CDs, so it should be able to process that one.

yep those work great for 3" discs

DJ Food's Quadraplex was a minimax. I never thought to even learn the name for it.

https://i.discogs.com/Deo5t5tcuH5k4n-XTqHG9j8N5imQ6W6DJWH1JgYFeAA/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI5MTQ3/LTEyNTcwMDE5Mjgu/anBlZw.jpeg

I had a Zappa 3" mini CD, iirc. "G Spot Tornado"? I think I had one from Keith Levene, too. And I think I had (still have somewhere?) one from Elbow.

Well then, it's off to the "things you didn't learn until you were shockingly old" thread for me, with that tray-within-a-tray intel in hand...

The 'Borders Exclusive ' version of the first Caitlin Cary album came with a 3" bonus disc which (IIRC) was packed on top of the main album on a weird custom spindle.

I have one of the Broadcast Microtronics EPs on a 3" CD - and I think Ghost Box released a few as well.

PIL This is Not A Love Song / Blue Water was a favourite from back in the day!

Vinyl’s become a luxury item, expensive and difficult to play. Gen Z are in a cost of living crisis (like all of us but they’re younger and even more skint). I literally had a meeting on Monday about how students aren’t drinking enough anymore. Of course they’re getting their retro authentic cultural kicks from cheap as shit CDs. That they can actually play.

Jeffrey Lewis did a great commentary on this a few years back. The twist ending is relevant to the current conversation:

LPs

speaking of dj food, strictly kev did a whole series on his blog about these mini cds

https://www.djfood.org/category/mini-cds/

also, when you bought a ninjatune toy :

http://www.ireallylovemusic.co.uk/ninja_toy/ninja%20toy%201.jpg

it came with a steinski vs ninjatune megamix on 3" single :

https://www.discogs.com/release/946733-Various-Rolito-Mix

bugger. here is a link to the image of the toy :

http://www.ireallylovemusic.co.uk/ninja_toy/ninja%20toy%201.jpg

Sweet! Yeah, Kev has a love for unusual formats and packaging unsurpassed by anyone I've ever seen. I follow him on Instagram, but never remember to check out djfood.com.

price point for a standard single disc new release on ecm: $24.98 usd.

dang.

$37, with postage.

and i have to wait until it's been available on streaming for over a month before it actually ships.

ngl, still feels worth it. it's ecm.

So many other things I'd spend 37 clams on that wouldn't give me a fraction of the pleasure as a good CD. Not to say that justifies the higher cost but still.

I feel like my last dozen ECM purchases have been at shows. Not huge savings, but savings nonetheless and it's nice when the artist question can see they're moving merch.

has anyone done the laser adjustment thing to their cd player when it's being finicky?

I never thought of trying to dick with the laser. That’s probably worth looking up. I have a massive boombox and i’m going to be bummed when it kicks the bucket

I've replaced my lazer which was fairly straightforward. They come pre-adjusted. I think you need some kind of test disc and an oscilloscope to adjust a lazer.

Is there such a thing as a scanner one can buy for the home, which would read the bar codes on CDs and transfer the info onto a database on your computer? I dreamt last night that I had one, and was making some serious headway into my collection.

If you have a Discogs account I think you can do so either way their app.

Yup, did that and it was very helpful when I finally added everything back in 2016 or so.

Hmm, I've only ever lurked on Discogs to check out prices of stuff for sale. Will investigate - thx!

i just bought a CD/DVD burner for $30 (to produce my own small release)! the low cost blew my mind.

Is there such a thing as a scanner one can buy for the home, which would read the bar codes on CDs and transfer the info onto a database on your computer? I dreamt last night that I had one, and was making some serious headway into my collection.

― henry s, Thursday, October 30, 2025 5:28 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I bought one several years ago. I used it for a while, but ultimately decided it didn't really save me much time when logging discs into inventory or my collection vs just looking at label catalog numbers and matrix numbers / SID codes. Lots of false positives (ie scanner often pulls up albums by entirely different artists), and they don't work on old BMG / Columbia House record club pressings. You also don't realize how many CDs you own that don't have barcodes until you undertake this sort of job. I'd say if you can find one for under $25 or so, give it a try, but mine just sits in my closet. Maybe they've improved since I got mine.

Thanks! Yeah, I figured that obsolete/inaccurate/absent bar codes would be a headache. Worth looking into, though.

Apologies if this has been discussed but is there a good way to clean up old scuffed up cds - no deep scratches?my copy of Superunknown is skipping at all my favorite parts

dude, spend 5 bucks + shipping on yourself, you deserve a treat

https://www.discogs.com/release/409348-Soundgarden-Superunknown

you can try toothpaste, or if you wanna spend a little, car headlight polisher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XL_rjRV3JU

i tried toothpaste on a dvd and got nowhere with it. i think it has to be the slightly abrasive kind though.

surely superunknown on cd is bobbins via the usual suspects whereever you are based !?
worth every penny.
if not, then holla, happy to help etc.

Not sure if people still have CD burners, but if you do, you could try ripping it and burning a copy. The computer might be able to read it with multiple tries.

you’re going to spend as much on time+toothpaste or buying polisher as you would just buying a used copy, I would guess. unless you’re bored and just kind of messing around with it while listening to your other albums

We all know that "just buy a new CD" is going to work (and probably the right answer).
But how are we, collectively, going to find out about the car headlight polisher solution if you keep talking him out of it?

I bought car headlight polisher for my actual car headlights once. It didn't work very well, imo.

i assume your headlights were yellow and faded - for that you need a healight restoration kit like the one 3m sells and ideally a power drill. meguiars plastx won’t cut it (literally)

That sounds accurate.

The 1975 have just confirmed why you should always buy the cd option whenever possible.

??

see the recent thread revival re the 1975.

The polisher made superunknown sound like the 1975 fuck you guys

I actually am in a region where I can’t find a new or used copy of it but yeah a new copy is due next time I am

lol xp

The polisher made superunknown sound like the 1975 fuck you guys

― Heez,

genuine lol.

There are CD resurfacing machines, but I think they’re pretty $. The only person I’ve own who had one was a dealer.