Physical CD Media Poll

blakeh

With vinyl making a resurgence, iTunes purchases becoming more popular, and wireless music systems appearing in more and more homes (meaning that people can rip a CD they borrowed from a friend and/or rip a CD they purchased and then sell it), I am curious as to how many physical CDs those of you out there in Club Polk land still have in your possession. Again, I'm not talking about FLAC files or vinyl, or any other type of media -- just how many physical CDs you own that are sitting on you shelf.

Personally, I have never purchased an MP3 from iTunes or Amazon. And while I do stream all of my music in FLAC format via a SqueezeBox Touch, I never, ever get rid of a CD once I rip it. I own every CD that I've ripped to my server. If the anecdotal evidence I've run across is correct, I am in the minority in this respect. I am always surprised when I hear someone has ripped their CD collection into digital format and then sells all the original CDs. I'm a big fan of having the media, the cover art, etc.

danger boy

i have about 300 CD's... dating back to when CD"s first hit the market...

basically people 30 years and older have CD"s.. people under 30 for the most part will have a digital files of music

Rodeo0530

I'm only 28, but I still buy and keep all of my CD's. I've bought a song or two from iTunes, but I prefer to actually have the CD in my possession.

blakeh

I'm with you Rodeo. I still love hitting used CD stores and buying actual media. I still get a thrill from seeing the spine of a title I don't have and grabbing it to check it out.

danger boy

Rodeo0530 wrote: »

I'm only 28, but I still buy and keep all of my CD's. I've bought a song or two from iTunes, but I prefer to actually have the CD in my possession.

freak

heiney9

Blake, you are more compulsive than most when it comes to having the physical media as well as the digital files. I am to a much smaller degree, but if I ever lost all my digital files from physical media that I don't own, I'd be pretty unhappy.

In the past 6 months I have bought more physical cd's than I had the previous 6-12 months but they have all been from local used cd stores or Amazon market place. I have bought very few brand new sealed cd's in the past 12-24 months.

I also borrow a lot of cd's from friends and I was in the habit for awhile of checking them out from the library. I know that doesn't help the artist or the music industry, but you know my feelings about that.

I hope many people respond to this thread because it would certainly be interesting to see the trend.

H9

Just remember if you have any discs with blue marker on the spine, those are mine from days past

Rodeo0530

danger boy wrote: »

freak

I'll take that as a compliment...I think.

blakeh

I feel like I'm not only a music listener, but a music collector. For me, you can't "collect" digital files because they aren't physical objects. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with having a collection of digital files (music is music), but I like all the things associated with collecting physical media such as the cover art, liner notes, etc.

Polkersince85

I've got at least 400-500 cds in hand. Probably more than 10X that in LPs. What's an iTune?

shack

I'm guesssing around 1,000. I've never sold a CD...given away a few duplicates or something I just didn't like.

joeparaski

As of this date I have 1,420 cd's. I have never purchased digital files nor do I intend to. I will admit that not all my cd's are original as some are copies from my friends collection that I cataloged for him.

I don't have an exact count but I have somewhere around 2,500 lp's.

Joe

LessisNevermore

Blake, you didn't vote yet.

I have ~900 actual original discs, around 150 copies.

nooshinjohn

I have less than 100 cd's and about 1000 LP's

simm

I have yet to buy any music off itunes but I spent about 3 months last year burning all my CD's losslessly into it. I still buy CD's, quite often actually, but I burn them and very rarely play the actual disc again. My company car is a Ford Fusion with the SYNC feature so I have all my music on a ipod classic that I can play through the car stereo and I bought an airport express to run through my system at home so I can access every bit of music I own from my chair using the remote app for the touch. I can't tell a differnce in sound quality between the actual disc and the wireless streaming other than a slight decrease in volume. I just turn the volume up a little and all is good.

danz1906

300ish CD's

Ricardo

Probably around 600 CD's. All of them ripped into my hard drives (duplicated in two internal HD's), plus backed-up in an external drive. I still have the CD's, though I am sometimes tempted to get rid of them. I have not used a CD player since I got my SQB Touch probably 6 months ago.

gfong

I have more records than CD's and only bought the CD's because I could not get the vinyl release.

Just purchased 2 about a couple weeks ago. Buzz King and Regina Spektor.

vstarkwell

I have well over 200 + CD’s, which I have ripped to my iTunes & backed up on my external HD. I stream wirelessly and rarely play a CD on my CD player. In my Car I just connect my iPod and can’t remember the last time I played a CD in my car.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately as to what to do with my CD’s. A lot of them are CD’s you’re not going to find at Best Buy, Target etc; There is a great small independent music store in my area that I buy all my CD’s from. It reminds me of the record shop from the movie “High Fidelity”. On top of that I have a pretty extensive collection of Grateful Dead shows on CD that I was fortunate to acquire over time from a co-worker of mine who had access to the GD vaults. You can’t buy these shows. Since then some have been released as “Dicks Picks”, “Road Trips” for commercial purchase.

The pessimist in me wants to keep all of the CD’s just incase HD or Ex HD were to crash and then at least I would have a back up. Plus I like reading the liner notes, the artwork or in the case of the Dead CD’s the recording lineage. Ie; (Master 7 inch, 2 track Soundboard Reel > Cassette > DAT > CDR).

What I’d like to do is donate my CD’s to my local library system as for the Dead CD’s I’m going to hold on to them. Has anyone donated CD’s to the library?

Danny Tse

blakeh wrote: »

I feel like I'm not only a music listener, but a music collector.

Same here. Last night, an used CD arrived in the mail and I was doing a little bit of cleaning of the disc's jewel case, when I noticed the words "Patent pending" molded into the plastic underneath the dark grey tray. To think that this CD goes back to the time when the CD format's patents were still pending :eek:

I have somewhere between 1,000 to 1,500 CDs....I think. Not including another 400+ SACDs.

blakeh

I have never sold a CD either (unless it was a duplicate). Even stuff that doesn't trip my trigger right away gets kept. I often find when I come back to it at some later point, I might actually enjoy it.

Fongolio

I've got probably around 500 cd's, 350 or so DTS music cd's, about 100 DVD-Audios and 5 or 6 SACD's. I've also got around 2100 vinyl LP's and around 400 gigs of lossless (flac mostly) audio on my computer server. There's also 206 gigs of mp3's on my computer that pretty much gets ignored from the Napster days. I now have most of the MP3 stuff in lossless in one form or another. I have never paid for an MP3 and don't use Itunes.

cnh

I'd say 300-400 CDs. Some of which I've ripped to HDrives--been thinking more about storing things 'lossless' for convenience. But I still love the actual medium...the CD itself and I still buy them. Don't care to 'download' from itunes or any clone of that site? Because I enjoy the actual 'object'. But then again, I'm from that generation that likes to 'own' things in tangible form, i.e., books (1000s), mags, Vinyl, cassettes (100s), CDs, DVDs, etc. I have a room in my house dedicated to storing all that--my home office and personal retreat. And of course it also houses the two channel rig and laptop/PC support. Also have a 'recliner' in there in addition to my L-shaped seven plus foot desk? My own Fortress of Solitude. It is there that I read, write, and muse. And also communicate with all of you? lol

Like H9, above, I have bought a lot of used CDs of late. But I still buy new stuff if I hear something I like. We have a guy down the road, literally, who has been running a place called the Record Exchange since before I moved up here almost two decades ago. He has an old pair of KLH 17s on either side of his shop that pump out the tunes (along with some vintage Hafler and HK equipment) and he sells 'everything' used. Vinyl, cassettes and CDs. It's a great resource and my hat is off to him. Also turns a lot of our 'students' on to the old stuff, vinyl included.

cnh

mhardy6647

just don't ask me how many records I have...

BlueFox

I have not yet gone to a high-res site and downloaded any files. Someday when the selection is better. I buy CDs, and those that I like get copied onto the iPod using Apple Lossless. The CDs get periodically rotated through the car.

vstarkwell

Just wanted to add that I've never purchased any music digitally from the interwebs. No iTunes store, nothing. I would recommend though that some of the free podcasts from iTunes are pretty cool in particular Gilles Petterson worldwide and blackmarket funk. They are collections of various artists and more then then once after I've listened and heard a particular track I liked I wind up researching the artist and then purchasing the CD.

A great example was a Gilles Petterson podcast retrospective/tribute to Freddie Hubbard when he passed a way a few years ago. It was from this that I wound up purchasing "Anthology: The Soul-Jazz & Fusion Years 66-82" a great double disc CD import from the UK.

Bababouey

I have around 750 CD's.
I have just under 20,000 tunes on my itunes library.
I am 57 years old, so I grew up with physical media.. I need it.
Also there is no cpmparison in sound quality versus mp3's.
I use my ipod in the car, going for walks, etc.
When I am home it is 100% physical media.
One thing I like to do is go to the itunes store, put a name in search and then at the bottom of the page, itunes recommends other artists.
You can then sample it.
I have found a lot of music I wasn't aware of.
Umphries McGee for one, a great band from Chicago.
Glen

mhardy6647

Bababouey wrote: »

...I am 57 years old, so I grew up with physical media.. I need it...

Glen

Me, too... I prefer owning stuff to renting it. It's an increasingly old-school notion, though.

blakeh

I'm with you Bababouey! To me "owning" something means you have a physical copy of something that was produced in some sort of finite quantity.

F1nut

Cool thread, Blake.

I didn't vote because I've got no idea how many CD's I own (note, I said OWN) and I'm not going to bother counting them.

m1aman

I have almost 200 cds. Lost about that many lps in a house fire.

On3s&Z3r0s

Just looked at the folder on the media server that stores the WAV's ripped from CD's (downloaded MP3's go to a separate place). I'm kinda surprised there's almost 600 folders there, where a folder is an artist. That's a lot of tunes, but still doesn't compare to listening rooms I've seen with walls full of vinyl.