And even mentioning K-Mart shows the times we are in.
Nothing wrong with the humble cassette tape either, I have hundreds of them and play them nearly as much as vinyl.
Agreed on Barnes & Noble and add Books A Million to that list too although I fear it is more to be "trendy" and attract some of the "hip" crowd than anything else.
As a kid, one of my fondest memories was riding my bike to the local K-Mart and studying the cassette section. I couldn't afford a CD player.
I would spend an hour to pick out what I wanted that week and can remember the unmitigated joy of finding and hearing something spectacular for the first time like Black Sabbath's Sabotage. And the sadness when you realize the failure in a purchase like Steelheart.
In some ways I feel sad that those moments have been lost. Good news is Barnes & Noble has blown out vinyl and cd sections and they are a great place to browse until they go out of business.
My smartphone let's me hunt for LPs with ease - no need to leave home! Yes shipping takes a few days to a week and patience is required. And I prefer original pressings, which the Big Box stores don't carry.
uberwaltz Target and Walmart have cut way back on their Music and Video sections. The new business model from these entertainment companies is to have the consumer rent/stream everything. This means no longer owning a physical product, at least, new product. This is the main reason why I am not into music servers/streamers-nor paying for that kind of service.
@blindjim, well thought out and said! We are in agreement on all points. I still go for the tangible media when serious but must admit to succumbing to convenience on rare occasions. We are a dying breed.........literally.
Couldn't care less about Walmart's cd's! More than likely all they carried would have been "Popular music" cd's Are not dead by any means. I can find nearly anything I want on Amazon and various other sites. I also have a couple of record stores near me that sell new and literally thousands of used cd's! I love going to the record stores occasionaly and browsing through the used cd's! I always find at least a couple if not quite a few Gems that you could not even buy new. Some also say rock is dead which is not the case. You only have to seek it out. Plenty of great hands still making great music!😎
Indeed. My heart goes out to you for not being able to go to WalMart and get whatever you want whenever you want it.
This must be a real hardship for you and I can see why it would rank so high on your list of injustices in this world.
I only hope that that you can find some comfort listening to some of your older CD’s on your multi-thousand dollar audio reproduction system.
FYI, buying stuff online does not equate to not getting out. I buy most of my basic necessities online yet have lived in 7 countries in the past two years.
I guess if going to Walmart with a stop at Chick-fil-A on the way home constitutes getting out then perhaps your right.
Hey, its all good. Its cool to miss the good old days and think back fondly. The irony for me is that I put myself through undergrad working at a book and record shop in the early 1980’s. Those were the days before soundhound and other eservices so, when someone would come in and sing a part of a song it was my job to name that tune LOL. Sold alot of Allman Brothers and the Anarchist’s Cookbook along with zen and the art of motorcycle repair.
I too miss those great times and I also regret that today’s young people don’t get that experience. I further regret that today’s youth can’t send themselves to college with a menial job. Oh well, I learned alot about dealing with the public and how to ask someone nicely to leave. That was fun....
I’m outdoors and generally out and about and active. That does not mean that there is something wrong with staying inside, especially on a bad weather day, and listening to real music on a very good quality hifi...and yes its in my basement lol. and just to add, I’m 52 and change sucks for the most part. No use for tidal, spotify, etc etc....to me the only thing that matters is owning physical media, LP’s cassettes, and CD’s. It truly is a sad state of affairs. I do hear that CD’s are staging a come back! Whether it will be as big a come back as vinyl....who knows. I always thought that cd’s sounded just fine on a high quality player, and they did not take up too much space. I have heard hi res this and that and I’m truly not that impressed, yes its convenient, but I want something i can hold and interact with. Something that involves me getting off my couch and doing a bit of work, whether it be cleaning a record or loading a cd onto the tray. I find it relaxing and rewarding to do either. Lastly, there is just something inherently right about browsing through LP's and CD's in a brick and mortar store. I find that it takes me back to my early years in the hobby, ahhh the memories...:)
In everything that changes, there are tradeoffs. With high quality streaming, maybe some of the religious experience has been lost, the walking over to one’s wall of lp’s or cd’s, picking one, cleaning it a bit, placing it on or inside the playback device, returning to one’s seat between the gargantuan speakers in the solitary chair and listening. Repeat for next album, etc.
With streaming, sit in that same chair and do it all from a tablet. BUT, here is where it gets interesting. The kids in the next room with their half dozen friends can access the same library and play their selections while the parents are enjoying a cocktail on the back patio listening to their selections. I have my entire library on my Nucleus Plus and have 2 backups, one at home and one at the office. At my office I have a audio wonderful setup there as well so I always have access to all my owned music as well as Qobuz and Tidal through Roon. People come in and out of my office all day, they hear music playing and often comment favorably on the music and the playback quality. I’ll have brief but sometimes lengthy discussions about the different music I am playing, their favorite music and then since I have immediate access to basically everything...I will play their favorite music over a high quality system and several have purchased their first (humble) high end gear. It’s often the first time many young people have ever seen tubes let alone understood their virtues.
so, all the hand wringing is valid if you happen to feel it is. The lamenting that there will no longer be a social hour at the Walmart CD bin. The mourning that a certain record store closed as the end of an era has got to stop. Water either flows around obstructions or pushes them downstream. With a limited perspective, some may say that the social aspects of music are gone forever. I would posit that just like the music formats have changed over the years, the way that the social interaction happens has shifted as well...like at my office.
All the whining about change is really tiresome. Im presently in my mid fifties but have chosen to live in an area where outdoor recreation and an active lifestyle is the norm. Alot of people where I live listen to alot of music but they are on the go more frequently so they listen on their mobile devices. They also take time to listen to the wind, to streams (water in this case), waterfalls, birds chirping and singing. Oh, and plenty of live music. Every generation is certain that when their norms are being disrupted that everyone’s in the same boat. Not hardly! Heck, clothing stores around here don’t even carry pants/slacks in waist sizes larger than 36 or rarely size 38. Not a pair of “dad jeans” in sight.
Get out of the basement, there’s a great big beautiful world out there.
@simao : I too miss going to a local record store and looking through the bins for something new and unexpected! I wish Tower was still around! They had most everything - particularly jazz and classical!
I get the OP; that feeling of "saudade", the Portuguese word for the yearning for a time and circumstance that will never return. It's got nothing to do with CD's themselves, but what their sudden absence indicates about change.
Much like when Borders went under and took with it all those CD listening stations. Or when, as previously mentioned, when Tower Records vanished. There's an impersonal nature to streaming and house hermiting; and while CD's were always overpriced, they did represent a schema of socialization that neither Tidal nor Alexa can ever really replicate.
what do you get when you mix together Holy Water and Castor Oil?
A religious movement.
what do you get when you eliminate hard copy media sales?
a movement aimed at price gouging and distribution of unverifiable content.
do bare in mind, current online suposed HD file sales are presently based on retail CD sales!
competition is based on a set of altrnative paths for consumption of goods, and it is competition which serves to maintain more or less appropriate pricing with respect to merchandise.
removing alternative buying choices erases aspects of competition thereby enabling inherent price controls to be less encumbered..
essentially, this loss at wally World is just the tip of the iceberg and others are folowing suit.
once ther are no online, local, or secure sales of CDs, then what?
we are already seeing streaming subscription service wars.
soon we'll see or there will be proprietary file sale wars from BMG, SONY, UNIVERSAL, EMI, WARNER, POLYGRAM, and various independants, as they attempt to obtain their market share for the artists on contract., and themselves by foregoing the 'middleman'.
thereafter how long do you think dedicated music stores wil stand?
Hard copy vinyl sales will either die off or their cots escalate enormously .
I see the eventual online only file sales as just one more forced change in formats. one which carries with it an extremely inflated profit margin, and simultaneously an unverifiable product.
luckily, this theme will take longer than I have time on this planet, to fully culminate but it bodes poorly for new generations and falsely adds to a upwardly spiraaling needlessly inflated economy.
as was near immediately said, some are deliriously content with this prospect whose only saving grace is pure convenience at higher costs.
If they are loving this burgeoning business plan they must be unbalanced as they are merely being taken unjustifiably. and rapidly to the cleaners.
least I appear at all hypocritical or hard lined I am unopposed to online files sales. I have and likely will again buy them, now and then.
however, I am against having different possible outlets for obtaining media inordinantly removed. in the guise of some inauspicious formulae.
in spite of the complaints about the environmental impacts of hard copy production, it seems easy for them to ignore the loss of jobs that entire process endows.
manufacturing, distributing, archiving, shipping, receiving, displaying marketing, inventoring, selling, all require hands on.
BTW isn't recycling the move to reduce or eliminate environmental impact and prevent landfills and off shore venues from being over burdened with shiny discs, straws, cups, balloons, etc.?
if so, its not the CDs that is the problem, it is those who refuse to recycle,.
the bottom line IMO is IF indeed this is a better more cost effective, safer for the globe maturation of technology whose inherent attributes convey lower operational costs, then there should unquestionably be a comensurate more modest purchase price attached to a verifiable product.
if not, its just another format change which refuses to, or can not, give an appropriate justification to its end result
or re-learn how to be happy with MP3s again.
this should indeed make everyone deliriously happy.
that is of course when no one can recall when music could be acquired, touched, held, admired, , and enjoyed without the need for connectivity and redundancy.
BTW... due to the online forum colective bargaining agreement i'm paid by the syllable, not the word.
i've reached out to local 'On & On' self help groups, consequently truncated or abridged posts may be delivered by me soon enough.
There are more than a few reasons to dislike Walmart, but the biggest for me is that they sometimes censor the content on CD. Walmart’s clout in CD retail - at least at one time - meant record companies were willing to alter cover art, and even edit or eliminate some tracks, to suit the company’s moral sensibilities.
It doesn’t matter to me that the discs I’d probably be most interested in wouldn’t likely warrant such censorship. I think the company’s practice is so repulsive that I wouldn’t buy any CD there.
"Change is inevitable, growth is optional" George Maxwell
I enjoy listening to the LP's and CD's that I have, but find myself streaming music about 90% of the time. Internet radio has provided a wide range of musical options from all over the world. It sounds fine to me through my outdated streamer, through a decent DAC, to my entry level stereo system (or high end mid-fi?). I just like listening to music.
Blind listening tests on my rig proved Tidal sounds as good and sometimes better than my ripped CDs. Innuos Zen III. My ripped CDs sounded as good as my past CD transport/dac combo....PS Audio Perfect Wave Memory Player. Ended up selling off all my CDs. Nice space saver and clutter reducer. I thought I would miss my CDs, but it turns out I never even think about CDs anymore.
Searching for new music on Tidal is like shopping online for me. I avoid the crowds, hassle and exhausting shopping experience of brick and mortar stores. More time to ride my bike 😄.
It is kind of weird to experience the extinction of a particular physical media that was once so ubiquitous. DVDs/Blu-Rays are on a similar path too. I'm amazed how small the movie section is at Best Buy these days.
On the other hand, it takes very little walking in any direction and these days I bump in to a record store selling vinyl. So that's been really nice to see.
That said, while I do like to occasionally visit local record stores, I actually do most of my vinyl (and rarely, CD) purchases online.I love the ability to sample a lot of an album before buying - via discogs or youtube - even some of the most insanely obscure stuff. It's simple to purchase and, because records are a cool physical media, I still get a thrill when it shows up at my door. I don't really need to go to a record store for that.
(But..I actually try to throw some of my business towards a local record store, to support it).
The last time I fell in love with music I’d not previously been exposed to... I was overseas. And even though I didn’t speak the language I still recognized what was a “hit.”
Walter, Another thing is I have Tidal Hifi. My CDP blows away my Yeggy DAC w/ Great streamer it's just way more open on the stage .& highs even better. i lean to Tidal Hifi because i can skip around easier. lazy thing for me. Don't toss out CD.s yet
First and lastly, you were in WALMART!!! The single most destructive evil to ever descend upon American retailers. I could not care at all what happens there. It’s like feeling bad for the locusts after they’ve devoured every crop
I can sign under this sentence, but many people who are as old now as I was when I started liking what I still like, would be baffled. They like music made today much more than music made yesterday. Their kids will like the music made the day after tomorrow.
"Teo-audio" apparently lacks the mental authority to understand how modern technology can enrich one's enjoyment of music. Rather than trying to come up with a unified theory of the end of the world, I might advise a subscription to Tidal and listening to some music he/she has never heard before.
I understand that not all of us have the IQ to fully understand the marvels of technology, but even intellectually challenged individuals such as "Teo-audio" are capable of making an emotional connection to music well conceived, recorded, and played back.
I'm playing at least one Doris Day album (LP) per night for five nights as a tribute to "The Girl Next Door." She sounds terrific, especially on the "Day by Day" album. It's the kind of mono recording that has you wondering ... who needs stereo?
Did someone mention something about streaming? :-)
No coltrane1....you are not alone. Most music made today imo sucks! I'll take the old standards any day. Most new pressings suck too, you cant beat the older vinyl, those engineers knew what they were doing back then and they seemed to care. Unless you buy from say acoustic sounds or what have you, then for the most part you can score a decent sounding reissue etc....
What’s really “sad” is what passes for a hit song. This is the “Golden Age?” For convenience you mean?
Has there been a legitimate hit record since the late 80’s?
Am I the only one who hasn’t watched the Grammys in 30 years because the music or artists can’t sing or write a hit record? Is this generation deaf at recognizing a “hit” record?
And I never step foot in Walmart. They don’t support their employees with a living wage much less healthcare. Why anyone supports them is part of what’s wrong with the world.
Vinyl rules anyway. CD had a 40 year run. Vinyl never went anywhere. Get off my lawn!
Recently in Munich I ventured in to the Saturn Electronics store opposite OlympiaPlatz Mall. Down the back right hand of the store was a treasure of cd’s dvd’s Blu rays and uhd movies. It was an absolute treasure trove. I immediately invested €200 and loved the finds there. The original Bohemian Rhapsody live concert ColdPlay box set etc. Unique experience today! Attending Munich HighEnd Show suddenly became worthwhile 🤗
May I remind some folks of fiat currencies where with the flick of a pen, countries can be made bankrupt or with the flick of a pen, be made flush. Economies are manipulated by the few, under the cloak of security and secrecy.
Historical records can do the same. Hard copy is critical. The same can go for the social and cultural avenues. the only way the new can be sure it is on real footing is to have the had copy record of the old.
The council of Nicaea (there were two, actually) was all about the problem of hardcopy getting in the way of the desire to re-write the world as a new thing in a new way, in the form of advantage of the few in power in the given moment.
When all the representatives of the different Christian sects arrived at the council to debate what to do..after having been asked to being their best and finest hardcopies..those hardcopies were confiscated.
Hardcopy is, in the final analysis...everything.
No sane man trusts the impermanence and fluidity of the internet, cloud storage, hard drives, etc... when it comes to knowing your history..and making sure the ills of the past do not repeat and that those who are rotten to the core, to do not alter the record in their favour.
We see it now in the purging of Facebook, google and so on. Danger Will Robinson, danger. The motions are careful and inch by inch small, but the cumulative danger is sure, real, directed, consistent, relentless.. and ...immense. Human life and change itself lives and exists only in the extremes and edges of humanity, and has nothing to do with the unchanging and essentially dead middle masses of compliance. The problem for oligarchy is that corralling and creating commodities out of humanity is the only way to assure their maintenance of power and control. So they go after the very edges of humanity with unrelenting force and will. Gotta get that fence around it.
Of course the middle does not understand any of this. So they (the middle of the IQ and societal curve) comply, stay ’safe’ and ostracize the edges of humanity...and thus kill their own future. Ie, if there is a hell, it looks a lot like this.
It only stands to reason that a sane, experienced, intelligent, and observant person.... does not trust the door and potential/problems/issues of similar scope and shape...in the world of music.
It's about how they run their business. In today's world, much of business is moving online. So many retailers going out of business. But, those who embrace an understand the new reality are doing well. Best Buy, for example almost went the way of the dinosaur. But, adjustments in their marketing model have helped them come back strong.
Walmart is a bit of a dinosaur. They are trying, but don't really get it.
Also, if you shop online with Walmart, be careful about security. My credit card was copied and stolen, and I can track it back to only one place because I don't shop with this particular card very often. It was at Walmart. The brick and Mortar store. I will never shop with them online due to this, and the fact that the sellers are not actually Walmart.
@larry5729: What I don't like about streaming is the "verification" problem - particularly of data sourced from analog tape. What generation was used for the data conversion? The master tape, the second copy, the third copy ... ? Analog tape is certainly prone to degradation by making multiple copies! Digital recording, no! I tend to favor recordings from the pre-digital era (before 1978).
With the right equipment, and not necessarily the most expensive, you cannot beat or duplicate analog sound reproduction, ie LP’s. There is just something inherently special and warm about playing a well recorded record. I mostly own and play older original copies of 1950’s and 60’s records, a lot of them bought on both Ebay and local thrift stores. Some of these records were scores and virtually unplayed, while others were a bit of a disappointment . In general, with a proper turntable and cartridge etc I think my records sound better than any download or streaming medium. I probably continue to buy at least a half dozen or more records every month, even though I say no more, enuff etc....lol. I will also buy a cd or 2 or 3 when I see something I dont have. I grab these mostly from yes...my local Walmart! They still have a pretty decent selection for the time being. If I dont find what I need at Walmart, I buy on Amazon or Ebay. Right now I play my records on a pro-ject the classic sb using a hana el low output mc, playing through a pro-ject tube box ds. A great combo for not an outrageous amount of money.
Did they stop selling dial telephones and Elcassettes as well?
Don't knock dial telephones - at least they work in a power failure when land lines don't and after cells run out of juice.
I still buy CDs to rip to my server and keep them as safe back-ups, but I guess the same thing happens with downloading - unless your digital backup crashes, gets stolen, or corrupted. All of my buying is new/used online at prices that generally beat any retail source quite handily.
Ironic that while the CD is now on the way out, vinyl LPs seem to be actually increasing share a bit - and they are a 'safe' storage medium.
The smartphone/’Net has radically changed people’s buying patterns for music/movies. Along with a home computer/cable. New technologies are inevitably disruptive!
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
