While my first experience of home audio was via vinyl records, the miraculous CD, or Compact Disc, was the gold standard music format of my childhood. I never liked how vinyl sounded or how annoying it was to operate. The first time I put on a pair of headphones and listened to a CD blew my mind. Crystal-clear stereo audio like I’d never heard it before practically suffused my soul.
Yet, vinyl has experienced a massive modern revival that I doubt CDs will ever get. You could argue that CDs never really went away, of course. After all, most major artists still release physical albums. However, the steady decline of the CD format in exchange for music streaming is undeniable. Why do I think CDs won’t ever get the vinyl treatment? It comes down to the job these discs do.
CDs no longer have a unique reason to exist
They were just bridging a gap
Audio CDs are a relatively short-lived format compared to vinyl. It did, however, burn ever so brightly during its peak days, solving all the issues I (and most people) had with vinyl or cassettes. The “compact” part is easily overlooked, but these discs are so much smaller, lighter, and less fragile than vinyl.
It finally made it practical to have high-quality music in cars and in portable form as well, with CD boomboxes and, of course, devices like the Discman. For a while (if you ignore MiniDisc), CDs were the only way to get high-fidelity digital music anywhere, at any time. Even in the early days of MP3 players, storage was so limited that you had to butcher your audio quality to fit enough songs.
Apple’s hard-drive-based iPod changed that equation, and suddenly you could have hundreds of albums worth of music in the palm of your hand. It was exponentially more compact than CDs, and you could retain full CD quality because suddenly space was plentiful.
Brand
Philips
Colors
Black, Silver
Measurements
11.14 x 10.24 x 6.26 inches
Battery
6 C batteries
Weight
3.25 pounds
The Philips AZ318B/37 costs less than the company’s bigger vintage boombox, making it perfect for those who just want a retro experience and possibly a CD player. There are some features missing becuase of the low price point, however.
Streaming replaced the convenience that made CDs revolutionary
And the MP3 player started the decline
Credit: Dibakar Ghosh | How-To Geek
Once people got used to the convenience of having all their music on a little palm-sized device, Apple switched it out with another palm-sized device called an iPhone, which has an internet connection. The rise of streaming services, where you pay a subscription and have access to practically all the music in the world (or seem to), is obviously much more appealing than buying albums or even songs.
Removing the idea of ownership, offering endless choice, and changing the perception of value, it’s no surprise that streaming has become the dominant way people listen to music. Vinyl collectors are a sign of people rebelling against it to some extent. After realizing that music can disappear from streaming services and perhaps be available nowhere.
But on average, convenience wins, and streaming fits into our lifestyles better. It’s more convenient than CDs, and even more convenient than ripping your CDs to use with an MP3 player or phone.
CDs aren’t collectible in the way vinyl has become
A jewel case just can’t compete with a record sleeve
Credit: Derek Malcolm/How-To Geek
As much as I love the CD format, I have to admit that when it comes to collectible desirability, vinyl has a CD beat. The large sleeves allow for much more scope when it comes to creating a desirable object.
If we’re being honest, I doubt most people who buy vinyl to collect listen much to them, if at all. Rather, choose to consume that music via streaming. But performing the ritual of listening to a vinyl piece on special occasions has an allure that listening to a CD just never will. That same convenience that let the CD rule (for a while) now makes it feel clinical and cold as a format. Even though, again, from an actual musical perspective, CDs are better than vinyl in every way. I said: every way.
Although the high-quality digital audio on a CD is about as good as the average set of human ears can appreciate, it doesn’t actually matter where those ones and zeroes live. That’s another thing you can say about vinyl. The audio is etched into a physical material, and there’s no way around the fact that digitizing that audio technically transforms it into something else. Even if a lossless recording of a vinyl is subjectively indistinguishable from the original.
So, in a sense, vinyls aren’t fungible, while the ones and zeros on a CD don’t change at all if you transfer them to a hard drive or SSD.
If you want ownership, digital files are often the better choice
Music sidesteps the physical media issue
In the world of movies, TV shows, books, and video games, there’s always the issue of ownership and how physical media give you de facto control over that medium, even if you don’t have de jure ownership rights. So you can argue that physical media matters, and therefore CDs should offer something special that sets them up for the same physical revivals happening elsewhere.
Except that DRM-free music is easy to buy and preserve. As you can see above, I bought a track from iTunes on my Mac and then simply copied the file over to my Android phone, where I can play it using VLC Player. Yes, it’s only high-quality lossy AAC, but you can find online stores that will sell you DRM-free lossless music. The point is that digital music as files that you burn to an archival disc or save on a hard drive somewhere gives you no less control and ownership than a CD.
I’ll keep picking up old CDs, but what I’ll most likely do is transfer them as lossless audio to my Plex Amp server. In the end, I think CDs are simply stuck in a middle ground that’s unlikely to trigger a nostalgia-driven revival.