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Best Buy Stops Selling Music CDs (cbsnews.com) 173

Posted by msmash from the end-of-the-road dept.
Thelasko writes: Best Buy has stopped selling CDs at its stores as of Sunday, CBS Pittsburgh reports. The arrest of CD sales will happen nationwide. Due to digital streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora and others, CD sales have been falling in recent years. Best Buy's CD sales have recently only brought in about $40 million annually.
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Best Buy Stops Selling Music CDs More

Best Buy Stops Selling Music CDs

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  • Got heem! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Best Buy executives can See Deez nuts on their chins.

  • I still buy CD's reguarly (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday July 02, 2018 @09:46PM (#56883402)
    I still buy CD's regularly. Luckily, I've got quite a few local retailers that sell an awesome variety of CD's, at much better prices than Best Buy.

    That being said, good for Best Buy. Best Buy customers are the bottom of the market (the poor, the unsophisticated, and the uneducated), and I would imagine that very few of their customers buy CD's any more (as evidenced by their CD sales). I doubt these people are buying CD's anywhere else, either. I agree with them that most of their customers just stream everything, and quit caring about hearing music in the context of albums or sound quality decades ago (if they ever did).

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      sound quality decades ago (if they ever did).

      Most CDs for the last two decades have been infected by the loudness wars. So they sound worse than streaming.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I buy CDs too. But since CD was the first medium where used was just as good as new, I buy all of mine used.
      I don't know how common this is, but if anyone is still buying CDs it makes little sense to pay the new price.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gnick ( 1211984 )

        I don't know how common this is, but if anyone is still buying CDs it makes little sense to pay the new price.

        Just get everything through Limewire like me.

        I used to collect used CDs and have ripped about 300 hours worth of MP3s, but I stopped years ago. For $10/month with Pandora or Spotify you can select from massive libraries. If you cared, you could trap the stream and keep a copy. My MP3 collection still gets use, but it's not worth what it once was. I gave away all my CDs except for the HHGTTG radio show and don't know what I'd do with them if I had them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      I still buy CDs... used. Luckily music these days is crap, so I'm not missing much. I can even get them for mere pennies at the right thrift stores if I'm lucky.

    • I still buy CD's regularly. Luckily, I've got quite a few local retailers that sell an awesome variety of CD's, at much better prices than Best Buy.

      I also still buy CDs somewhat regularly and although I live in a large metropolitan region of the USA, no local retailers sell any that I'm interested in. It's long been a case of any retailers that still have them for sale only carrying the top 40 and greatest hits. Amazon is my friend as they sell just about every CD I want to buy and for the odd ones they don't carry because they are somewhat obscure, I have other online sources for those.

    • The people that use best buy are people that need something that day, otherwise they can order it on line, even the "peasants" shop that way. CDs which take up a lot of floor space do not fit into that category and can't pay for the floor space they take up.

  • CDs... the most under-appreciated music format (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zobeid ( 314469 ) on Monday July 02, 2018 @09:53PM (#56883436)

    When CDs were introduced, they were hailed as the ultimate audio format--and not without good reason. They're more durable than cassettes or LP records. They don't have DRM, region codes or ridiculous menus to wade through like DVDs. The audio quality is fantastic without lossy (or otherwise!) digital compression. They were hyped as having "digitally perfect" sound, and although that may not have been strictly technically true, the specifications are actually pretty close to the capabilities of the human ear. It was marketed as a serious audiophile format, and it lived up to that.

    And now its name is mud, the CD an object of widespread scorn. How did it come to this? Why did this brilliant thing fall so far out of fashion?

    I personally put a pretty good portion of blame on the crushing dynamic range compression that so many rock-and-pop CDs are afflicted with. It's infuriating when disc after disc after disc comes out ruined (deliberately, it seems?) with bad mastering. It's got to where I'm afraid to buy any CD pressed after about 2000 or so. I'd rather get the LP release if I can, just because they generally don't lay on the super-compression.

    • Re:CDs... the most under-appreciated music format (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Monday July 02, 2018 @10:16PM (#56883510) Journal

      And now its name is mud, the CD an object of widespread scorn. How did it come to this? Why did this brilliant thing fall so far out of fashion?

      I think I can answer that for you.

      Greed. Plain and simple. You buy a copy of something, you can listen to it thousands of times for free after that, you can copy it, you can rip it and put it on your PMP -- and they can't insert ads, they don't make another penny off it -- and you can sell the used CD later if you're tired of it, and get some money back. They don't like that. They want you to pay, pay, pay forever. So they start something called 'streaming services', which is just a fancy way of saying 'rent you some music for a monthly fee', and voila, you pay, pay, pay forever. An essential part of this marketing strategy is to indoctrinate the masses that CDs are 'old fashioned', something your grandparents use, uncool, un-hip, something that you should be ridiculed for if you actually buy them. Sadly, people are dumb, dumb, dumb, and they fall for this bait, hook line and sinker. So you have what we've got here today: 'owning' things is considered obsolete and uncool, and having to pay, pay, pay forever is the new hotness. As I said before: people are dumb, dumb, dumb.

      • And now its name is mud, the CD an object of widespread scorn. How did it come to this? Why did this brilliant thing fall so far out of fashion?

        I think I can answer that for you. Greed. Plain and simple. You buy a copy of something, you can listen to it thousands of times for free after that, you can copy it, you can rip it and put it on your PMP -- and they can't insert ads, they don't make another penny off it -- and you can sell the used CD later if you're tired of it, and get some money back. They don't like that. They want you to pay, pay, pay forever. So they start something called 'streaming services', which is just a fancy way of saying 'rent you some music for a monthly fee', and voila, you pay, pay, pay forever. An essential part of this marketing strategy is to indoctrinate the masses that CDs are 'old fashioned', something your grandparents use, uncool, un-hip, something that you should be ridiculed for if you actually buy them. Sadly, people are dumb, dumb, dumb, and they fall for this bait, hook line and sinker. So you have what we've got here today: 'owning' things is considered obsolete and uncool, and having to pay, pay, pay forever is the new hotness. As I said before: people are dumb, dumb, dumb.

        And some people make rational decisions; just not the ones that you would make.

        9.99/mo is way less than I ever spent on CDs, for access to way more than I could ever buy. I could capture the streaming audio if I really wanted to, which I don't, because I don't want a huge file library to manage and backup.

        Yes, I could scour used music stores and rip everything and have my own disk arrays and it could mine, all mine my precious ... or I could just pay a small monthly fee and not worry about any of that.

        • It's not a rational decision, it's a short-sighted one that will bite you all in the ass.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jjbenz ( 581536 )
        Yeah, they just want to keep that revenue stream flowing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by unimacs ( 597299 )
        Who is they? I thought the recording industry was fighting services like Spotify and Pandora? I think the reality is that technology has evolved and services have come along to capitalize on that. It's not a conspiracy designed to dupe the public.

        One problem with purchasing a CD (aside from the relative inconvenience of the format) is that most of the music consumed is modern pop or hip hop, and it's largely about singles, - not albums. This really is not something that's changed. Buying a CD means you g
        • Does it matter who it is? They're sucking more money out of your wallet, that's all you need to focus on.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by jwhyche ( 6192 )

            They're sucking more money out of your wallet, that's all you need to focus on.

            Let me see if I can correct your thinking on this.

            I have a family spotify account that I pay $15 a month for. For that I have 5 separate accounts for each member of my family that cost me $3 a month. But that is splitting hairs so lets just say I'm paying $15 a month for access to over 30 million tracks.

            To keep it simple lets just say a cd costs $10. Now then my son and daughter would usually buy about 4 cd's a month, give or take. That is $40 bucks roughly. I myself, would buy about 6 jazz, blues,

            • Yes, I am. You can copy CDs, it's 'fair use', you only have to buy ONE copy, and you can listen to it as many times as you want for FREE, with no internet connection, no dataplan usage, and no tracking and logging of what you're listening to from nosy corporations and ISPs. All of your 'calculations' are either worst-case scenarios cherrypicked to make your 'point' or are flat out imaginary. Your'e lighting money on fire every month; stop that.

              ..and since I've run into you before on here, it's highly like

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by jwhyche ( 6192 )

                Hehe. Still hurting over that are we? I don't blame you. I probably should apologize for that. I'm not going to but I probably should. :) Since I'm a regular poster you can assume that you will run into me many more times. But you have my word that I will not deliberately be trolling you again. Once you've been trolled by me, you are pretty much immune to being trolled again. I mean, since I already picked you up and played you like a fiddle, there is no challenge to it. Doing so again would jus

                • I tried it, a couple times. It's no better than radio and less convenient. I can't see why anyone would pay, pay, pay ad infinitum for it. I'll stick to having local copies of what I like to hear, and I'll keep pointing and laughing at people who think they're 'cutting the cord' or using 'streaming services' when all they're doing is trading one monthly bill for another one, and giving away more Personally Identifiable Information about their lives. /subject

                  • Re: (Score:3)

                    by jwhyche ( 6192 )

                    I doubt you really actually tried it. You may have played it but you didn't really try it. It is far superior to radio in virtually every way imaginable. But that is just my option. For all I know you may like listening to the same tired songs picked for you by the RIAA, delivered over a sub par medium filled with static, interlaced with long stretches of advertisements, and topped off with the pathetic ramblings of something called a "dj." You may even enjoy that abhorrent spectacle called a "mornin

    • cd's do have DRM, but its very light.

      it used to be SCMS (serial copy mgmt system) and when taking the spdif stream from cd players, DAT and other decks would see this as an original, they'd let you make one gen copy of it digitally and then a copy from that would be stopped. easily overcome these days, no one even knows (as your post suggests); but its still there.

      once 'ripping' became a thing, no one copied data over spdif.

      ripping cd's never had drm, that's true.

      • ripping cd's never had drm, that's true.

        I seem to recall a particularly ham-fisted attempt by Sony some years ago...

      • CDs have some minor copy protection, but that's not the same as DRM. You can play the CD you bought in the USA in any other country in the world with any CD player made anywhere in the world. You can play your CD without verifying permission first with a server. You can sell your CD in a yard sale, give it to a friend, rent one from the library, and so forth.

        DVDs have an early form of DRM in that it tries to prevent you from playing DVDs if you're in the wrong "region". BluRay has some stronger DRM, as it

      • cd's do have DRM, but its very light.

        it used to be SCMS (serial copy mgmt system) ....

        You are showing a North American bias. Europe and Asia both for a while used true copy protection where common rippers like iTunes couldn't rip the CD at all. Not all CDs had this, but some did. I've got a Spanish CD of the old group Ketama that had a really difficult to crack version of this copy protection and even Exact Audio Copy couldn't fully break it. I had to resort to doing an analog copy of the first track using a mini disc recorder if I remember correctly but I was able to rip the rest of the

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by timftbf ( 48204 )

          Check the packaging, I suspect you'll find that technically these aren't CDs. IIRC, Philips (correctly, IMHO) refused permission to display the 'compact disc' logo on discs which had abused the audio format to defeat rippers sufficiently that the disc no longer met the Red Book standard.

          A company sticking up for having the technology *work* rather than extracting maximum dollars and control from consumers? Must be an old story...

    • When CDs were introduced, they were hailed as the ultimate audio format--and not without good reason. They're more durable than cassettes or LP records. They don't have DRM, region codes or ridiculous menus to wade through like DVDs. The audio quality is fantastic without lossy (or otherwise!) digital compression. They were hyped as having "digitally perfect" sound, and although that may not have been strictly technically true, the specifications are actually pretty close to the capabilities of the human ear. It was marketed as a serious audiophile format, and it lived up to that.

      I completely agree with the above statements and assessments.

      And now its name is mud, the CD an object of widespread scorn. How did it come to this? Why did this brilliant thing fall so far out of fashion?

      I personally put a pretty good portion of blame on the crushing dynamic range compression that so many rock-and-pop CDs are afflicted with. It's infuriating when disc after disc after disc comes out ruined (deliberately, it seems?) with bad mastering. It's got to where I'm afraid to buy any CD pressed after about 2000 or so. I'd rather get the LP release if I can, just because they generally don't lay on the super-compression.

      I disagree with this part. It's trivial to refute - it's not that some well-mastered, high dynamic range recordings superseded the CD. On the contrary, the successor has been increasingly-poor-quality digitally compressed audio - MP3, AAC, OGG (courtesy of Spotify), and Youtube Videos (their own special hell of MP3). You may well value a high dynamic range and be willing to purchase 180-gram vinyl, but if that was a mainstream sentiment, iTunes would be selling FLAC and Best Buy would be selling LPs instead of CDs. Neither of these is the case.

      The reason CDs fell out of vogue is because of everything except the audio quality aspect. Want to play a specific song while driving? "Hey Siri, play Highway to Hell" or something similar. Boom, it's playing. Have the same impulse with CDs? Open your 200-CD binder, flip through pages, try and find the CD with the song on it based on the corner-eye view of the cover art (good luck if it's all burned CDs, which themselves took hours longer to create than iTunes playlists), eject the CD currently in the stereo, put it somewhere it won't get scratched, insert the other one, and change to the correct track number...all with one hand and half an eye. It was approximately as dangerous as texting and driving.

      Driving not the issue for you? Allow Gary Gulman to reminisce about the experience of owning a Discman for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]. For the tl;dw crowd, they would only fit in the pocket of someone wearing pants with pockets explicitly sized for them. Battery life was relatively short (a problem greatly exacerbated by the use of the near-required anti-skip), and again, if you wanted more than *maybe* 20 songs, you had to carry around a CD wallet in addition to your CD player. It was a mess.

      Oh, and just to put to bed the quality argument, CD players seldom came with headphones that were better than Earpods. I got a set with my first portable CD player (it came from Koss) that was halfway decent for a bundled pair of headband-style headphones, but pretty much everything after that was terrible in one way or another. While Beats inexplicably brought full-ear headphones back into vogue, nobody was wearing them at the time...and earbuds were outright atrocious; I never heard a pair that had anything that vaguely resembled bass until around 2011. Now sure, I'll absolutely agree that even a modestly priced set of bookshelf speakers and a budget Marantz receiver will produce an audible difference between a CD and a Youtube video...but I would say that 95% of CDs were never listened to on hardware that could make the difference audible.

      What killed CDs was the evolution of a more convenient means of li

      • Re:CDs... the most under-appreciated music format (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Zobeid ( 314469 ) on Monday July 02, 2018 @11:15PM (#56883748)

        If I get my hands on a well-mastered audio CD that sounds good, I'm happy to rip it to MP3 or (better) AAC/MP4 and add it to my iTunes library. Then it goes on my phone, and then I can play it in my car, everything. The digital compression is very good now, and any difference in sound quality is of no significant consequence to my less-than-perfect ears, even when I listen on high quality headphones.

        The problem is, if I get my hands only a badly-mastered CD that sounds like garbage, there's nothing I can do to fix it. And if I go to buy the files online instead, from ITMS or Amazon, or if I stream it or whatever, in most cases the source of those files was the same badly-mastered CD. And the result is that the only way I can get a decent-sounding version of the recording, in many cases, is the buy the LP record, then needle-drop it and process that to AAC files, and then put those tracks into my iTunes library. And you know, that's absolutely bonkers. It's crazy that after all we've been through, and all the technology we have now, that I have to resort to this in order to get music that sounds OK.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          nd if I go to buy the files online instead, from ITMS or Amazon, or if I stream it or whatever, in most cases the source of those files was the same badly-mastered CD

          This is no longer true.

          Sites and services like iTunes and such have guidelines,on how to properly encode the audio for their services (see "Mastered for iTunes"). For a good chunk of iTunes' catalog, this means the studios went back to the original studio masters and re-mastered and encoded them.

          In the early days of digital services, yes, they

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Zobeid ( 314469 )

            I've seen some documents on the "Mastered for iTunes" program, and they look good in theory. In practice I believe they are only guidelines offered by Apple, but they are not enforced in any way whatsoever. I'm not aware of any incentive for music studios to actually master their online tracks any differently from their CD tracks. And frankly I don't understand *why* studios routinely ruin their CDs to begin with. Given that they do, I don't understand *why* they wouldn't ruin the files they distribute

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dknj ( 441802 )

          Guess what, bro. Your car has a shitty noise floor, so sound quality is pointless. Even if you have a more sound proofed german car, you are still listening to an overly compensated EQ that I'm betting you don't have control over (no the bass/mid/treble settings is not control).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )

        Best Buy would be selling LPs instead of CDs.

        Actually they are. BB ditched CDs but still has a vinyl section.

    • I think it is pretty simple what happened: The Internet happened and cheap streaming. For most people, it doesn't make sense to buy CDs when the vast majority of music is available online for a relatively low fee. Many of the audiophiles have gone back to vinyl, tho given that much of modern music is recorded digitally, it is probably missing the point.

      For me, I still buy CDs, but most of the time they get ripped once and gather dust as I listen to my music on more convenient mediums.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      When CDs were introduced, they were hailed as the ultimate audio format

      You keep using that word ...

      "ultimate" does not mean best. it means final, that nobody will ever create a better one. Stop ruining the language with ignorance.

    • And now its name is mud, the CD an object of widespread scorn. How did it come to this? Why did this brilliant thing fall so far out of fashion?

      Simple: they're physically inconvenient.

      That's relative to current formats and delivery methods, of course, but all things are relative. Fact is that MP3 is good enough for most listeners most of the time, and allows tiny players that never skip while you jog, or storage on devices people are already carrying. The fall of CD isn't about its audio quality in any way. It's about a 4" platter that holds 12-14 songs and requires a laser read-head that isn't tolerant of mishandling.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      And now its name is mud, the CD an object of widespread scorn. How did it come to this? Why did this brilliant thing fall so far out of fashion?

      Because for most people it became a really annoying way to get music on their MP3 player/iPod? Where you could have your playlists, not just in-order or shuffle. It was too much effort to change CDs to hear just the hits, so you listened through a lot of filler. Maybe a few albums were solid start to finish, but they were the exception.

    • > When CDs were introduced, they were hailed as the ultimate audio format

      No, they weren't.

      In theory it should be sufficient, but in practice 2-channel, 16-bit @ 44 KHz is NOT the ultimate format -- it was simply "good enough" and "cheap enough".

      Not all Hi-Fi audio is equal, as Malcolm Hawksford, emeritus professor of electronic systems engineering at Essex University, and author of more than 250 papers on music reproduction, points out [theguardian.com]:

      "There is witchcraft in hi-fi, yes," he said. "People often try exper

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Only $40 Million (Score:5, Funny)

    by aybiss ( 876862 ) on Monday July 02, 2018 @09:54PM (#56883438) Homepage

    Oh well, makes sense to completely stop doing that particular thing.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Desler ( 1608317 )

      It's a drop in the bucket to the $42 billion in revenue they made last fiscal year.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by fleabay ( 876971 )
        That is if your bucket only holds 1,000 drops.
        • Or how about if your bucket is massive and takes up room that could be better used for other buckets which are more efficient?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Desler ( 1608317 )

          Or you realize you can make more money off of something else using the same floor space. I'm pretty sure Best Buy knows better than you do about how to allocate their retail space than you.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      I was thinking the same thing. I never understood the idea of stopping something that is not profitable ENOUGH. I get stopping if you're right on the verge of losing money, but because you're not earning enough after all expenses (including your own salary) are paid ... I just don't get it.

      • That shop floor area and that employee time can be used for some products that are more profitable. Those same resources can yield $1k from CD sales or $4k from $LATEST_FAD per day. Depending on the store's profile, that may be an attractive proposition.

      • Suppose you have 160 square feet of space in your store that isn't uses yet. You can use that 160sq feet to sell something that'll make a $10 million profit, or something that will make a $50 million profit. Which would you choose?

        "Not profitable enough" means "not as profitable as the other thing we can do with the same resources."

        This is an issue I am continually reminded of at work. My company is growing fast. There are a LOT of things we can that are good ideas - we can spend $100 and get $125 return. W

  • In other words (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They got their clock cleaned by Walmart that still does sell music CDs and DVDs.

  • A bit player... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Monday July 02, 2018 @09:57PM (#56883454) Journal
    Around 87 million albums sold in the US in 2017 [statista.com]. At an average price of $14.99, that's around $1.2 billion in revenue. BestBuy did $40 million? That's a pitifully small number for the industry as a whole, especially given the number of BestBuy stores (1000) - that's about 200 CDs a month per store, at best.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Around 87 million albums sold in the US in 2017 [statista.com]. At an average price of $14.99, that's around $1.2 billion in revenue. BestBuy did $40 million? That's a pitifully small number for the industry as a whole, especially given the number of BestBuy stores (1000) - that's about 200 CDs a month per store, at best.

      The last time I looked at CDs in a Best Buy (about a year ago) the selection was shit. You can't sell something that you don't have.

  • Owning is better than renting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Monday July 02, 2018 @10:11PM (#56883502) Journal
    'Streaming services' are just renting in disguise, if you pay for it. They'd put an expiration date on you memory and make you forget you heard any of it if they thought it was possible and they could get away with it. Eventually people will come back to wanting to own copies of things they like.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      Eventually people will come back to wanting to own copies of things they like.

      I think you're grossly overestimating the average person's intelligence.
      • Let's just say that underneath all the cynicism I display there seems to be an indellible spark of hope that people will evolve and stop being so gods-be-damned dumb about everything. I hope that they wake up one day and realize they're being ass-raped by streaming services, and they turn around and start wanting to own copies of music, movies, and printed books again.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by DogDude ( 805747 )
          I wish I could be as hopeful about humanity as you are.
          • I said it was an indellible spark, not a huge bonfire. My entire species overall disgusts me with how unevolved they are, they're an embarassment. If there are indeed starfaring alien civilizations out there, it's no wonder to me that they never openly contact us, we've got to be cringeworhty as a species to anyone who can accomplish that.

    • I stream, and click on the download button when I want a local copy of the song in MP3 format.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • And if you calculate the lifetime 'rent' vs what it would take you to buy enough CDs to have a tolerably sized library, the rental option appears vastly superior
  • This announcement was bound to happen. It's just a shame Best Buy didn't properly position themselves 5 years ago to reap better returns.

  • It's pretty trivial to activate Spotify for a month and rip all the albums you want at the bitrate you want through Audacity.

  • ..I come to slashdot. I find people here who also buy plastic discs and rip to digital format, for many of the same reasons I do. And others who reject this for also good reason. My tribe, I guess..

  • "... Interestingly, though, Best Buy will continue to sell vinyl records for the next two years. Vinyl has seen a resurgence lately, with vinyl album sales last year at a 27-year-high, according to Billboard..." from that article link.

    I am surprised that is doing better than CDs for Best Buy!

  • ... the problem is the "Shopping Experience" at most Best Buy stores, which is typically on a par with Dollar Tree and about as welcoming as an unannounced cavity search.

    When I shop for music, it is a "Shopping" thing; I want the assistance of knowledgeable sales staff, just like a woman wants knowledgeable staff to help them find the right makeup, and for the same reason.

    Most Best Buys I've been in in the last decade have been dingy, poorly laid out, some with utterly hideously stained and ripped carpeting

  • I remember in the 90s they stocked obscure techno CDs among other things.

  • I remember looking through the selection of CDs at Best Buy and finding on one of them, in small print, a warning that it may not play on some CD players because of it's "special features" or some nonsense. I picked up another and found a similar warning. I picked up a third, and now knowing I might have to look closely this time I didn't see a warning but I also didn't see the "Compact Disc-Digital Audio" emblem I've seen on older music CDs I've bought.

    I've lost all confidence that any "CD" I could buy a

    • I think I've only run into a CD that couldn't be ripped once, and it was paired with an audio DVD that ripped and converted to MP3 just fine, so I don't think you need to worry too much. The only hardware with CD readers in them these days are probably off-the-shelf CDROMs inside anyway.

      • I think I've only run into a CD that couldn't be ripped once, and it was paired with an audio DVD that ripped and converted to MP3 just fine, so I don't think you need to worry too much.

        Sure, but why bother when I'm looking for music that I'm already buying on an impulse? I'll peruse the offerings of the music in a brick and mortar store with the intent to listen to it on my truck stereo on my drive. I'll rip it when I get home so I'll have it in lossless format on my desktop and loaded as a high bit rate compressed audio to fit on my cheap iPhone. (Cheap is relative, the iPhone cost a lot of money but I saved quite a bit by getting one with less storage knowing I'll be listening to it

  • See https://gizmodo.com/no-best-bu... [slashdot.org]> No, Best Buy Has Not Completely Stopped Selling CDs—Yet, Anyway

  • I purchase physical media for a reason (Score:3)

    by acoustix ( 123925 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2018 @08:49AM (#56885444)

    I want to own the art and hold it. Just like any other art form. I want to have the album, and read the liner notes. I also want to be able to rip the audio to any format I see fit. I don't stream and I hate most lossy compressed formats (even SiriusXM).

  • As most of them on Amazon have free "auto-rip". So I effectively get both an digital copy and physical copy. Often the CDs are no more expensive, and once in a while they are cheaper than the digital album.

  • meanwhile over the past 20 years, the RIAA was busying suing single mothers to convince everyone that the decline in CD sales was due to copy write infringement and piracy..

  • Along with the seasonal fireworks sale at our local Walmart was a not-half-bad selection of LPs ---- strategically positioned near the bleeding edge 4K UHD HDR brand name TVs, sound bars, steaming media boxes, video game consoles and so on, You can sell CDs, if you where and how to place them.

    The appeal of subscription audio is straight-forward: Instant access to some twenty-five to thirty million tracks, ideally supplemented with subtly animated graphics and text, as an integrated part of a home theater

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