I’m 40, and when I was a teenager, EVERY band had CDs. And I know a lot of music has shifted to digital. So much so that I heard Best buy stopped selling CDs. Presumably because nobody buys them.
So I wonder what musicians sell besides t-shirts and posters at concerts. Do the kids have ANY CDs? Do they buy mp3’s? Do they just use pandora and spotify? Do they even own their own music?
I’ve given up on trying to understand the lingo. Other generations lingo sounds stupid to me, but still understandable based on context.
I have NO idea what a skibifibi toilet is…sounds like a toilet after some taco bell and untalented jazz, but maybe I can try to understand their thought process on media consumption.
I’ve gotten a free CD at a concert recently. I don’t have anything to play it on.
I dug out my Wii for it once… Which probably proves im not a young person anymore
Could the Wii even play audio cd’s???
It had the capability (as with DVDs), so as long as you’ve got a modded Wii and the right homebrew software, yes!
Ahhhh not stock, only via mods… I have the black “unhackable” Wii :(
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rleF4f1dBVo&pp=ygUaSGFja2luZyB0aGUgdW5oYWNrYWJsZSB3aWk%3D
Not anymore, my frend
Get an external drive, it’s useful to have lying around for those rare occasions where you have something on an optical disc.
The weirdest one that we had recently that comes to mind is when my wife has an MRI recently, they gave us the scans on a DVD. We had no external drive or any other way to view it / transfer it to a USB.
Yeah, I don’t own anything that can play optical media. When downloading MP3s became a thing I just stopped using CDs.
Omg come to my house! I have a computer dvd-drive and a 4k drive for ripping. I have 3 gaming consoles with disc drives. And I have 9 portable CD players and 3 portable DVD players.
I am a collector. I have a hobby of making my own CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays.
That does sound fun. How far from Berlin are you, in rough terms? Can I walk over, or is it more of a cycling distance?
I’m about 6000km from Berlin I’m afraid.
Yeah, that’s a bit of a hike, probably would throw my plans for the week.
New York?
I’ll bring the pizza and some two liters! Who wants what?
What 4K drive do you have, and how do you like it?
It’s an Archgon Md-8107-U3. I got specifically because the firmware could be updated to allow ripping with programs like Make-MKV. Works great.
Yep, last time I owned a CD drive was two laptops ago, around 2016 or so…
Do you have a game console? Uhhhh…besides Switch I guess.
I have a switch emulator on my pc. Ones for other consoles too. Don’t see much added value in a physical console, since I need a reasonably powerful PC for work anyway.
Also, to touch on the other questions in the post, I have an Apple Music Subscription, but do have about 50 GB of flac files of my favourite music mirrored to most of my devices, in case I’m holed up somewhere without Internet access.
This was my first thought as well, but disc drives are an option on them now, not a standard.
Sometimes I buy CDs and rip to flac so that really obscure shit doesn’t get lost forever.
Upvoted. Because my favorite music comes from bands that I’ve been in tiny concert venues, where I’m 1 of 13 people in the crowd.
I’ll admit that even though she’s not my style, Taylor Swift has some…as the kids would say…bangers.
But my favorite music is with bands that I 100% can say you’ve never heard of, and is so obscure I doubt you could even find it.
But people like you are helping make obscure music easier to find. Awesome!
Can’t be 100%, there’s 12 others
…found the dedicated mathimatician.
I had to fix my ratio on redacted. I found I had so many CDs of random local bands that were handed out at shows that weren’t online. It was weird to basically be the only person that had some music online.
I did the same thing at the same place a few years ago!
It’s crazy, because I know a lot of those bands aren’t together anymore. They never made it and are effectively forgotten to the internet. I feel like a custodian of music history. If I didn’t put them online, they’d have disappeared entirely.
I appreciate people like you.
I’ve definitely had that feeling before. I was really into Chinese rock bands and bought a bunch of CDs. I’ve been slowly uploading them. I mean China is a big country with lots of people, so it’s not like these bands are completely unknown, but when I used to go to concerts in China some of the groups that I thought rocked the hardest didn’t tend to pull big crowds. And when you look on Chinese Internet for this stuff, you usually find crappy MP3s, not rips following proper procedures.
I still think about the band where I showed up late because the train to Beijing was delayed and then the taxi driver couldn’t find the venue address, so I just barely caught their last song. Then afterwards I was hanging out chatting with people and they were like, since you only got to hear one song you deserve to meet the singer. And they were friends with the singer so they called her to come out. It seemed like she was blown away that any foreign fans at all are into her music, and when she found out I didn’t yet have a place to stay for the night and was planning to find a last minute hostel or hotel she said “no, you’re not doing that, you’re staying with my friends who have a spare room”.
Whenever I rip & upload Chinese rock, I think about those people who were so friendly and gracious towards me. Like who tf invites some random stranger at a rock concert over like that. And none of those bands, even the ones that made it “big” really got the attention that I thought they deserved. They were pouring their heart and soul into their music.
You da bomb.
Man, I started answering you and realized I am also 40 and…yeah.
But, were I to go to a show, a CD? Nah. But a sticker or socks or something, certainly.
I would buy their vinyl though! I’m also in my 40s, never listened to records before 2023. I jumped on the bandwagon and haven’t looked back. Something about all that effort to listen to 22 minutes of music and getting to enjoy an entire album is just fun.
What’s your setup, and do you find that the sound quality is superior to streaming or physical media?
I’m by no means an audiophile, I just have a Victrola I bought at Best Buy and run through my Bose sound bar using the headphone jack. I wouldn’t say it is better audio, but the highs don’t hurt my ears as much as digital music does.
I’m in my 40s too. I usually look for vinyl, if I’m inclined to buy music at a show.
I just turned 40. For my birthday I went to go see a small disco funk band. They run their own merch table, tour around the country in a van, have day jobs, etc. I wanted to support them so I was gonna buy a T-shirt, but it was $25, I only had $20 on me, and they didn’t take card. So I got a $15 CD. They also didn’t have any change, so I had to wait 5 minutes for them to go to the bar and get them to break a 20.
Then I got home and realized I didn’t even have a CD player. So I dug out an old DVD drive and installed in my desktop, ripped the CD to FLAC, pulled the drive out, and threw the CD into my old box of CDs I haven’t opened in 10+ years…
I was gonna say “only $25 for a concert t-shirt?” because they wanted like $50 for one at a Pantera concert about 6 months ago…then I saw this was over a decade ago.
No, this was 2 months ago
Its an independent band that runs their own merch table after the show. Its not a band with 3+ decades of content that can charge $50 for a shirt.
Ah, I misread the last part. Of course if it’s a small Indie band they’re not going to charge out of the ass for stuff, that’d be dumb on their part.
Yeah, but that’s Pantera. Any time you go to an old head concert they’re going to charge you fuck you prices. My wife went to see Motley Crue a few years ago, and they were charging about the same, and a bit less for Jett’s merch. As she so eloquently put it, “the main reason old bands go on tour is they need money”.
Going to smaller/newer bands’ shows has much more reasonably priced merch. But for those old heads, you’re paying for the well known name and so they can supplement their social security payment while trying not to break a hip on stage.
The tickets were only like $100 a piece for second level seats and that was mostly because of the ticket pricing bullshit. It was like $60 for the ticket and $40 of “fuck you, pay me” money and then the taxes on top of that. I saw Metallica back in 2018 and it was $100 for pit tickets. I was like 30 feet from James.
Not a younger person, but last concert I attended, the artist was selling bandcamp codes for their albums (I got two for €5 each). On top of that CDs and vinyls, each would include a bandcamp code too, so I assume people without CD players or turntables can get the physical item and still enjoy the music digitally
Thats pretty awesome.
Teenager here, I regularly buy CDs at bagpipe concerts* because there’s no unique bagpipe music on streaming services.
*Bagpipe concerts here means renn faire performances
This comment made me day. Bagpipe music at a Ren faire. What a homie.
Thanks for the clarification. I’m 43 and have never seen a bagpipe concert and thought I was missing out. I don’t consider renn faire or highland games to be bagpipe concerts since that’s just a small part of the larger experience.
This comment makes me extremely happy that a teenager is going to bagpipe concerts.
May I introduce you to Ally The Piper
I have seen people purchase vinyls instead of CDs.
I came across a quality cassette tape player while cleaning out my MIL’s house. I’m keeping it for when the cassette tape fad rolls around, with people claiming the sound “just sounds more authentic” or some shit. Then I can sell it on eBay for a grand or something stupid.
Already there in Japan so give it a few years
Do the kids have ANY CDs? Do they buy mp3’s? Do they just use pandora and spotify? Do they even own their own music?
Yeah, from what I tend to hear from teenagers, I don’t think most of them own their music.
The thing with CDs or MP3s is that it takes time for you to build up a collection. If you got started on that before streaming services took off, it’s probably worth listening to.But if you’re starting from scratch today, you’re basically deciding between listening to one or two albums in your collection vs. all the music you can imagine for a monthly fee. The value proposition of the latter is then just hard to beat.
I believe, streaming services generally don’t allow you to add your own MP3s into the mix either, so even if you get a cool CD/MP3s from a local band that’s not on these streaming services, then there’s still not much you can do with that.
Spotify at least does allow you to add local files on a computer, and they even sync tracks to your phone when they are on an offline playlist when the devices are on the same network. I’ve done that myself to get some otherwise unavailable songs into my catalogue, and am thinking of starting the move to owning all my music that way
Ah okay, that is cool then.
Apple Music allows you to add arbitrary audio files to your cloud-synced library. I believe it will even generate streaming revenue for the artist if the file is recognized to also be in the catalog of iTunes Match (but I’m not sure on that one).
No? I don’t have any way to play it. If I wanna listen to a song, I just do it on Spotify or I pirate the FLAC if I really like it…
E: I really don’t know why you associate younger generations with a “lingo” or “skibidi toilet”… Sure there are chronically online people who use it unironically but like… Cmon.
I’m probably too old (29), but I do tend to buy CDs of artists I like. 2 weeks ago I was at a festival and bought 3 CDs (as well as some other stuff). Today I’m expecting another CD to arrive in my letterbox.
I still buy CDs. I have a player in my car and in my hifi. My desktop has a BR drive which I use to rip the disc and then I use it how I want when want. They also sound fantastic. Streaming is great, but you give up a lot compared to owning physical media.
I’m not much younger & I’m not going to read the comments. They’re either ignorant, or they don’t care, or they’ll reflect my opinion. You need to stop & think – how do I get money from my hand directly to the artist(s)?
The artists receive very little from streaming revenue or CD sales (unless onsite at concert, maybe). The recording label eats up a lot of profits. So honestly I’d buy tickets, I’d buy merch at concert, I’d put cash money directly into their hand.
Anything else might be stolen by the venue, the recording label, the third parties, the goddamn United States government, etc etc etc.
My car still plays CD’s, so if the price was right and the band actually got a solid cut of it, then yeah I would buy one.
I’m 29 and 13mo’s
I’m 32, I bought a cassette at the last concert I went to. (I generally prefer vinyl, but I don’t wanna buy a vinyl before a show starts cuz then I have to awkwardly hold it for the whole show)
I’m 38 and man, you sound like you’re 75 🤣
I’m assuming you haven’t been to a concert in a few decades? I went to see Pantera and Lamb of God about 6 months ago and the only merch being sold was overpriced t-shirts, like $45-50 USD.
That’s probably just because those are old acts that have the benefit of charging fuck you prices for a shirt. The last time I saw disturbed, their shirts were priced like that.
Other I saw alestorm and gloryhammer last year and the shirts were like 35, CDs were 20, and I got a rubber duck captain thing for like 15. mc chris had similar prices, but he also had a full discog flashdrive for like 100, and as much as I’d love to support mc on that, I have all but like 2-3 albums so it’s just not worth it to me.
40 meaning 49 years old
