Anyone gotten rid of all their CD's?

soulsinging

It seems more and more that bands are releasing music digitally, not just as an option, but as the only means of getting it. Case in point, the new Soulsavers album. Before that, NIN and Radiohead released albums exclusively online and then later offered a hard copy (which I'm not entirely sure why I bought, hehe). I also recall an interview with PJ talking about their being conflicted about digital releases... on the one hand, they grew up on vinyl and having a hard copy feels natural, but on the other, there's a lot to be said from a green standpoint for dispensing with plastic and paper packaging.

Anyway, I kinda like having a nice cd shelf to display them all, but as a guy who moves often, it gets less appealing every year Plus, I almost never look at artwork or anything. I'm starting to wonder if I should just make the switch to buying my music online and burning it myself at home. I could even get rid of a ton of my CD's, get a little $, and make my life a bit easier in terms of moving.

Anyone made the move to a completely digital music collection? I mostly listen to music in my car (throw some CD's in a case and go) or on an ipod at the gym... what am I holding onto here?

j-bug

no.

but i did get rid of all my tapes not so long back and am still beating myself up over it.

i like CD's.i like cool packaging and artwork,and notes.i like having a wall of them in my front room.i love going into a shop,or opening the door to the potman,and having a brand new CD in my hand.downloads dont feel like anything.they just seem kinda souless.

Hugh Freaking Dillon

not me. I personally LOVE flipping through the booklets of my cd's. I read all the liner notes, down to the thank you's from the band and the producer and bit players on a given song. I download digitally from iTunes if there is exclusives from a pre-order (like the new Wolfmother I pre-ordered last night, and the JET album I got last night). As music, to me, comes before artwork.

Selling your cd collection won't give you much cash, if any, just headaches trying to sell them. Used cd shops the world over are going out of business. No one's buying used cd's anymore (with the exception of audiophiles such as myself). All those shops either close up or switch entirely to DVD's.

I, also, get so excited when I see a new cd has arrived in my mailbox. Downloading just isn't the same.

But hey, to each their own. If you don't care about the booklet, then switching to all-digital seems like a good way to for you. Just back up your files, cause if it crashes, all your music will be lost!

peacegirl

no...and as long as they keep making cd's I probably never will....I LOVE everything about having a physical copy, the artwork, notes, etc.

j-bug wrote:

but i did get rid of all my tapes not so long back and am still beating myself up over it.

I still have all my tapes and I'll still buy tapes at the Goodwill/yard sales

blackredyellow

Not all of them... When we moved, I ended up selling/giving away most of them, but kept one box (50-100 probably) of some special discs (bootlegs, PJ releases, other favorites). We moved into our house 9 months ago, and they are still in the box in our basement.

If anything, I am keeping them for my kids to listen to, like I did with my parent's vinyl.

decides2dream

never!
hell, i still have cassette tapes and vinyls collecting dust in boxes in the basement and attic. :P i probably 'should' sell those, but yea....unlike you, i don't plan on moving anytime soon. when we did move into our house, i found ALL my books far more a pain in the ass to move than our CD collection. that said, i'd never get rid of my books either. i love books, CDs, DVDs, etc......it makes a place feel like *home*....and i think it says a lot about a person, adds their personality to the space. i will always buy CDs for bands like pearl jam. other bands, not so much....tho still buy some. i really don't buy all that much new music period, tho i do go thru stages. i just can't see letting go of our CD collection.

soulsinging

decides2dream wrote:

never!
hell, i still have cassette tapes and vinyls collecting dust in boxes in the basement and attic. :P i probably 'should' sell those, but yea....unlike you, i don't plan on moving anytime soon. when we did move into our house, i found ALL my books far more a pain in the ass to move than our CD collection. that said, i'd never get rid of my books either. i love books, CDs, DVDs, etc......it makes a place feel like *home*....and i think it says a lot about a person, adds their personality to the space. i will always buy CDs for bands like pearl jam. other bands, not so much....tho still buy some. i really don't buy all that much new music period, tho i do go thru stages. i just can't see letting go of our CD collection.

No doubt, books are worse. But I've already thinned my book collection considerably. I'm thinking of reinvesting, because for some reason having a physical copy of a book means more to me than a CD. And I buy way too many CD's... I buy stuff on a whim and sell it back to a used store a week later. I have maybe 400 CD's, but that's only because I've sold probably another 700 back to various places over the last decade. Maybe if I download I could get off that rat race, lol.

adropinthepark

I gave most of mine away when I moved. I was moving by plane, so keeping them wasn't feasible.

If you do go completely digital, I recommend keeping a good back up in place. My computer did a massive dump once, lost almost all music files. I had a handy tech person at the time who was able to recover most of it, but now I'd be screwed. Guess I need to follow my own advice.

soulsinging

blackredyellow wrote:

Not all of them... When we moved, I ended up selling/giving away most of them, but kept one box (50-100 probably) of some special discs (bootlegs, PJ releases, other favorites). We moved into our house 9 months ago, and they are still in the box in our basement.

If anything, I am keeping them for my kids to listen to, like I did with my parent's vinyl.

That's kinda what I was thinking... keeping the CD's by a few favorite bands that I'll want to buy new stuff from as it's released but letting a lot of the rest go. I have a ton of random single CD's that I feel like I could easily do without.

soulsinging

adropinthepark wrote:

I gave most of mine away when I moved. I was moving by plane, so keeping them wasn't feasible.

If you do go completely digital, I recommend keeping a good back up in place. My computer did a massive dump once, lost almost all music files. I had a handy tech person at the time who was able to recover most of it, but now I'd be screwed. Guess I need to follow my own advice.

Well, I like listening to stuff on a CD player, so I'd likely end up burning most of it anyway and just keeping the music in blank discs in those big book cases. I'm not overly worried about losing stuff.

mca47

Nope.

While I rarely play my CDs, they won't be going anywhere.

I have ripped them all to my computer/Ipod so I rarely touch them. Also a nice little digital feature is the ability to stream all of my music to my PS3. It outputs through my receiver so it's like I have my entire CD/music collection on my TV that I can play through a kickass sound system.

But, despite this fact I rarely purchase digital media. Unless it comes in a high quality recording or flac, I am not going to bother.




Oh!
And like the poster ^^ said, if you go to all digital, be sure to get a backup/external harddrive to copy them all to.
If your computer or harddrive goes, you have also just lost your entire collection of music (photos, videos, etc. too).

At that point you will kick yourself repeatedly for giving up or selling your CDs!

Brisk.

Cant fucking stand all this digital downloading shit, it means nothing!

For the same price more or less i could actually get artwork, the actual crispy cd quality and everything. And like you say, its great to see a massive cd collection.

brother123

I can't even remember the last time I bought a cd.

I don't have too many cd's. Mainly bootlegs that I'll probably keep.

mca47

Brisk. wrote:

Cant fucking stand all this digital downloading shit, it means nothing!

For the same price more or less i could actually get artwork, the actual crispy cd quality and everything. And like you say, its great to see a massive cd collection.

I agree.

I like having a physical copy.

Don't get me wrong, I have an Ipod and I copy all of my CDs onto my computer...so I definitely like the technology!
That said, I also like the "control" I have over MY music. When you buy a digital copy, you pay pretty much the same as you would for the CD and you're stuck with whatever they give you. I like the option of encoding my digital copies at a higher bit rate, etc. If more higher quality digital files (flac) were available I'd be more likely to consider it...I guess I just like the freedom I have with a CD.

mca47

brother123 wrote:

I can't even remember the last time I bought a cd.

I don't have too many cd's. Mainly bootlegs that I'll probably keep.

As someone who actually LIKES having a CD, I can say the same.

I cannot remember what CD it was I got last! Guess that just shows my interest in this quality music that has been coming out lately!
I do know the next CD that I will purchase though...

It'll be around Sept. 20th.

decides2dream

mca47 wrote:

Brisk. wrote:

Cant fucking stand all this digital downloading shit, it means nothing!

For the same price more or less i could actually get artwork, the actual crispy cd quality and everything. And like you say, its great to see a massive cd collection.

I agree.

I like having a physical copy.

Don't get me wrong, I have an Ipod and I copy all of my CDs onto my computer...so I definitely like the technology!
That said, I also like the "control" I have over MY music. When you buy a digital copy, you pay pretty much the same as you would for the CD and you're stuck with whatever they give you. I like the option of encoding my digital copies at a higher bit rate, etc. If more higher quality digital files (flac) were available I'd be more likely to consider it...I guess I just like the freedom I have with a CD.

well said!
i love the technology, i love that i can carry around 80g of my music on a tiny little ipod......but i just love seeing all my CDs lined up on shelves, and sure, the 'safety' of knowing i still have em gawd forbid anything happened to my itunes library!


also reminds me, while we DO have an external hard drive that we save all our music and photos to, if that crapped out :shock: .....thus why i usually burn my photos (or my husband does ) to discs each year. i have all of my photos from 2009 just sitting in a temp file waiting to be 'organized'....and even the end of 2008....i need to get to that soon and burn some discs! i LOVe having all my pics on the computer, but you bet, i am paranoid of ever losing them!

norm

decides2dream wrote:

never!
hell, i still have cassette tapes and vinyls collecting dust in boxes in the basement and attic. :P i probably 'should' sell those, but yea....unlike you, i don't plan on moving anytime soon. when we did move into our house, i found ALL my books far more a pain in the ass to move than our CD collection. that said, i'd never get rid of my books either. i love books, CDs, DVDs, etc......it makes a place feel like *home*....and i think it says a lot about a person, adds their personality to the space. i will always buy CDs for bands like pearl jam. other bands, not so much....tho still buy some. i really don't buy all that much new music period, tho i do go thru stages. i just can't see letting go of our CD collection.

if you ever decide to get rid of that vinyl, let me know



i embraced downloads early on...i loved the convenience and still do somewhat....but a few years ago i realized something...i don't listen to music the way i used to...i used to go buy a cd(s) and listen to it, read the liner notes etc...then i started to d/l every thing (itunes) and i'd listen to it on an ipod but the experience wasn't the same

i also used to make mix tapes...i even bought minidiscs because i loved making mixes (this was before cd-r's took off)...but with mp3 players i stopped making mixes...i just shuffled and still do but that has led to a bit of a disconnect with music and less appreciation of it

so i decided with the resurgence of vinyl i'd buy a turntable and start reinvesting in music both monetarily and mentally...i haven't organized my cd's yet but i will get around to it and combined with vinyl, start actively listening to music instead of passively

so to answer your question conor, no i haven't got rid of my discs and don't plan to

Brisk.

If you want your music digital then just buy a fucking cd and rip it, takes 3 minutes.

Actually reminds me of this kid maybe around 15 at the airport (was coming back for the uk shows) and he had a black t-shirt with big white bold writing on it saying - 'Legal downloads are killing piracy'. Made me facepalm, why not just buy a frickin' cd.

mca47

decides2dream wrote:

well said!
i love the technology, i love that i can carry around 80g of my music on a tiny little ipod......but i just love seeing all my CDs lined up on shelves, and sure, the 'safety' of knowing i still have em gawd forbid anything happened to my itunes library!


also reminds me, while we DO have an external hard drive that we save all our music and photos to, if that crapped out :shock: .....thus why i usually burn my photos (or my husband does ) to discs each year. i have all of my photos from 2009 just sitting in a temp file waiting to be 'organized'....and even the end of 2008....i need to get to that soon and burn some discs! i LOVe having all my pics on the computer, but you bet, i am paranoid of ever losing them!

Yeah, because I have my CDs if my harddrive crashed it would more or less be an inconvenience to rip all of my music again.
Photos are a different story...

As far as I'm concerned, you cannot have enough backup copies of photos. If you lose those, you will regret that the rest of your life.

I obviously have my photos on my laptop, but I also burn a updated copy onto CD, and have a backup 4GB flashdrive I have copies on as well.

hahaha...ya' never know!

j-bug

i miss spending my sundays making mix tapes.there was a real art to doing that.making sure that each song fit,the gap between was equal,that the gap at the end wasnt to long or to short.making compilation CD's just isnt the same.

norm

j-bug wrote:

i miss spending my sundays making mix tapes.there was a real art to doing that.making sure that each song fit,the gap between was equal,that the gap at the end wasnt to long or to short.making compilation CD's just isnt the same.

it really isn't is it?

sometimes i'd spend an entire evening makeweight 1 tape...and this was when i didn't have almost a thousand discs to chose from :shock: