You should listen to the CD

The CD is dead. In 2020, U.S. optical disc sales revenue will reach 483 million USD, Which is a 97% drop from the peak of the 2000 format. Only 31.6 million CDs transport In the United States last year.In comparison, Bee Gees alone has 16 million per month Listeners on Spotify. How dead is the CD? More dead than disco.

Cause of death: The incredible convenience of streaming platforms. For a modest monthly fee, Spotify will give you instant access to every song you record. Its recommendation algorithm is based on continuous monitoring of users’ listening habits, and consistently provides first-class recommendations. It’s amazing. Listening to good music couldn’t be easier.

In fact, it is also Simple.

The design of the streaming platform does not take serious music fans into consideration. Back when you had to buy a physical album to listen to it, you really listened to it-even if it was a song you didn’t like in the first place. Eventually, some of these tracks will become your favorites. (Of course, the other tracks are terrible.) After all, you spent a lot of money on that CD. Skipping half of the track feels like admitting failure.

On-demand streaming is not the case. When you can listen to any song at any time without paying extra, there is no pressure to immediately listen to what you don’t like. This may lead to a broader and more superficial taste in music. Thanks to Spotify’s recommendation function, I found a lot of music, especially music from Latin America. If there is no algorithm, I might not encounter these music. it’s great. At the same time, however, I rarely challenge myself to listen to music that I don’t immediately like. Why should I do this when I can switch to other things so easily.

In fact, instant, frictionless availability Something else Prevent me from spending as much time as possible on the music I really like. In the pre-streaming era, I would buy an album and listen to it over and over again. Using Spotify, I often find a new artist, I am very excited about them, and completely forgot their existence after three months. If it does not occupy the space on your wall, it may not occupy the space in your mind.

There is an obvious antidote to this situation, you may have thought of it: vinyl records. many thousand of Character I have written an article about the comeback of vinyl. It has a natural symmetry.Where streaming media turns songs into fleeting and interchangeable things, records are largely a thing. It is huge. You can hold it in your hand and admire the artwork on the sleeve. If Spotify’s problem is lack of friction, then the friction of vinyl records is all you can get. They really need friction to work.

Another way to put the above is that recording is a huge pain. In the past ten years, I have a turntable. This summer, when I was about to move around the country, thinking carefully about what is worth shipping or squeezing into my car, I realized that I have almost never heard of my records. This is just too much work. The records are dirty; you must clean them up. Same as the stylus. The records are huge and shockingly heavy; it is difficult to find space to store and display them. They are expensive. Halfway through the album, you have to get up and turn it over. Then you have to get up again at the end of the recording, unless you want to wear the needle. As the senior editor of WIRED-and the masochistic owner of approximately 1,300 LPs-Michael Calore Take it, Vinyl records are “a bulky music playback format that sounds worse every time you listen to it.”