Direct at the gig will do that… Touring artist live and die by Merch sales. After the show, the merch stand is the most important place in our venue…
I’ll mention (again, sorry) that a good source for music that I use a lot is secondspin.com as long as you don’t mind jewel cases that are damaged in shipping and poor support. I choose carefully and throw away the cases (the CDs are stored in an amazon storage case), so I can build out my music collection at moderate cost. Of course, ripping and tagging comes with that approach. EAC and MP3Tag are my best friends :_)
Cheers
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I buy the CDs because I will never trust the record companies to do anything in MY interest. Ultimately the CD is my insurance policy to a future “Netflixing” of music I love. “Oh, sorry. That’s no longer available…”. That also gets the artis a royalty payment.
Then, I will generally stream the same music that I’ve already bought to give those artists I love a chance to make a buck down the road from my monthly streaming music subscription. That way some small portion of what I listen to doesn’t go to the flavor of the week, but to that person who makes things that make my world more beautiful.
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Thanks, just bought a bunch.
Just bought 250+ CDs from eBay on the spur of the moment for £65. Local pickup so I have them … now for the boring bit. Rip time!
Never thought I’d do it, but it was a personal collection and covered a period–after my kids were born–when I wasn’t buying many CDs.
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I am with you on that. If I can I always buy CDs and Merch at shows. Online, I try to buy from Bandcamp where I think, not really sure, the bands get a better cut. Many HD indie titles on HDTracks for example, are also available on Bandcamp for cheaper.
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This is the number one reason I buy CDs. It’s amazing how many bad remasterings are out there. I listen to music mostly from the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Most of the early CDs from this era are great. Most of the more recent releases and associated masterings are highly compressed and sound horrid in comparison.
The second reason is that I am old school and like to own the music I have in my library. That way I can listen to it on or off grid at home or on the road.
Finally, the watermarks some online releases have. Even if they are good masterings, the watermarking is often obvious and ruin the experience for me.
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I buy a lot of discs (SACD, CD, records, etc.).
I like quality mastering.
Audio Fidelity, DCC, MFSL, etc. along with specific masters are of interest.
I like having my discs ripped (SACD, DVD-A, etc.) and digitized (quad reels, records, etc.).
I can see buying less common CD releases that are easily streamed on Tidal, but I also still like having the artifacts and who knows how long the titles/versions will be available for streaming. I have seen a few of my streaming titles stop being available.
I am still buying lots of used CD’s and ripping them to FLAC. Here in Canada I buy them for $2.00 (about $1.40 US) for each CD. At that price I have found many good surprises in music and artists that I would not have even known about had I not taken the chance to spend such a paltry sum to buy each CD.
I have not signed up for Tidal or any similar service yet but I wonder how many people listen through Tidal to one song by a musician and then decide they don’t like it and then do not listen to their other songs? What I am finding with some of the CD’s that I have purchased is that while I may not like the first song on the CD, I really like other songs on the CD once I hear the ripped version from my NAS connected to my good audio system.
I also listen to LP’s and have cleaned all of them using an LP cleaning machine which uses liquid cleaner and a vacuum to do the job. The are pro’s & con’s to analogue and digital media but I enjoy both.
I continue to buy records of the things i really like. I then use Mac XLD to make a FLAC transfer of the CD to play using Roon. I prefer this arrangement for favored artists current catalog as the artist receives significant royalties at the time of purchase. It takes about 1000 streamings to match the royalty received from a CD purchase. Support artists so they can continue to perform and record.
The availability of a title from a streaming service is subject to the conditions agreed to by the publisher and the service. When the agreement expires, the title disappears from your service “library”.
I personally find anything less than TIDAL premium gritty and annoying, like 70’s bad transistor amplifier sound. TIDAL premium FLAC titles are bit identical to the original master.
MQA is doing trickery to encode the smaller high frequency components in the last 8 bits of the 24 bit sample. Only MQA players can properly reconstruct the full 24 bit MQA sample. I don’t know enough about MQA to comment on how the first 16 bits are related to a regular 16 bit FLAC sample. The last 8 bits will introduce artifacts into the reproduced sound if interpreted by a player that is not MQA aware.
iTunes and its brethren have regional agreements. An iTunes user had a number of “purchased” titles vanish when he changed regions from Canada to Australia. Apple had different deals with the publisher in the two regions and the tracks that were Canada only vanished after the move.
Purchased tracks that have been downloaded will remain available locally but Apple will not replace them should they go missing in a region in which they are not available from the publisher. Who would ever think New Zelanders would want Justin Bieber music?
I have gone the completely opposite way. I got rid of my turntable in 1988 and my CD-player in 2006. Since then I have been trying most of the streaming services.
This year I got a new turntable in January and a CD-player last week.
Even I have Tidal Hifi, I purchased 73 CDs until now this year, maybe half of them used. This is much more than ever before, and I felt it was not enough to rip them and store them away. My wife may think it is strange but she accepts my hobby.
I also occasionally purchase albums from HD Tracks and Bandcamp. The latter often combined album and download.
I have reached an age where the kids are independant and I can spend more time and money on myself.
Thanks, I just bought a lot of them. If someone interested, they arrived safe and sound (no broken cases) and after some disinfection, cleaning and changing the cases, all of them are working perfectly.
I still have over 200 CDs to rip … but I can’t find my Brasso!
Best CD restorer available and cheap too.!
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That’s a new one on me!
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I’m almost 100% Tidal listening now via Roon. I have quite a few ripped CDs and some HD downloads, but I rarely buy any new content anymore… Tidal MQA is quite a big factor for me. I find that I almost always really like the MQA version in comparison to a CD quality version. True HD (~192K or so) I find I slightly prefer over MQA, but not by much… Amazing times in which we live with all the options!
And here’s some info on the music industry that is turning around a lot - due to streaming. Of course many artists aren’t getting much, but that’s more of an issue between an artist and their label. But the labels are getting more money this last year. Hopefully the artists can increasingly negotiate for better terms than they have historically. But the overall revenue flow (music sales) is going up! https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/23/streaming-services-like-apple-music-spotify-helping-to-turn-around-global-record-industry
I’m on both extremes: Tidal Hifi into HQPlayer (converted to DSD256), or my old vinyl. I handed down my “ordinary” vinyl to my hipster kid, and kept my imports (especially German and Japanese), plus audiophile pressings. Best of both worlds and sounds wonderful. CDs are collecting dust.
Just received my first SecondSpin order of CD’s, I’m sure it won’t be my last. Thank you for turning me on to them.
Buying more Vinyl and CDs than ever!11
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