Anecdotally, I haven't bought a single CD since the Sony rootkit fiasco. I had bought one, got rootkit'd at the time, and vowed not to buy another. I don't regret not buying any more.
Modern software makes that rootkit seem almost pedestrian by comparison.
Also, I believe you had to install junk software from the CD to a Windows or Mac Computer, before those OSs were hardened somewhat. Avoiding all things Sony seems a better strategy than otherwise benign CDs.
Once upon a time, iTunes would automatically rip a CD for you. It would even name the tracks, artist, and get the album art for you and integrate it all into your regular itunes library. I don't know if they still do (or if apple even makes cd drives anymore).
Until your streaming service gets sold, goes out of business, "pivots," decides you or your worldviews aren't trendy, thinks you're a hacker, screws up your billing, drops support for your device, or any of the hundreds of other reasons the music suddenly stops.
Yes, this happens once in a blue moon. I've bought one album because of this, and the content returned to Spotify within a few weeks of its departure.
It is still, for me, a cheaper and more flexible option despite licensing squabbles. It also gives me the opportunity to find new artists and give albums a few listens before deciding on whether or not they do it for me.
My views are USA-centric, perhaps licensing issues are more prevalent in other countries.
Why not both? Spotify is cheap. I spend a fair amount on vinyl and CD/SACD (SACD/CD for classical and the occasional jazz record, vinyl for everything else) and still keep a sub for spotify for work listening and being able to just check something out - although I guess YouTube can do that for free in most cases, and with electronic music, often the only streamable recording of a lot of records.
More and more phones are removing uSD card support. It's a losing battle.
I don't want the plastic, the physical storage requirements, etc, of a CD. With digital I don't "own" the music, sure, but I've definitely lost more music in my life from scratched discs, people not returning CDs than I ever will through Spotify.
I think the biggest difficulty right now is that streaming is probably more lucrative for distributors, so there's very little incentives for artists to continue releasing albums. Buying compact discs is something that will likely get increasingly harder to do.
And unlike streaming services or paid "digital downloads", there's no chance of an "inaudible watermark" that turns out to be audible in some cases! Thanks, Universal Music Group.
Well, there is that. But there's also the music produced by independent artists who release on YT. So much music isn't ever mastered to or printed on the cheap plastic magic mirrors.
The last time I bought a cd-looking disc, the "CD" "CompactDisc" logo/words/terms were nowhere on it, inside or out.
I seem to recall that meant they weren't actually CDs, they just happened to look exactly like them, and usually function in a CD player. Computers often had trouble with them.
I don't know if this is true, or just bs, but there you go.
The logo you want is the CD Digital Audio logo which requires adherence to the red book standard. Music discs with Sony root kit DRM did not have this logo.
CDs aren't lossless unless the material was recorded at or below 16 bit/44.1kHz.
You can argue whether the difference is perceptible - some blind studies suggest not - but this fact is what led to a variety of semi-obscure audiophile disc formats that offered higher sampling rates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD).
That's not a definition of lossless that anyone else uses.
The definition of lossless is that either no compression algorithm was used or the compression algorithm is capable of precisely recreating the original bits in as bits out. If you feed a lossless mechanism an 8 bit 3.5KHz mono bitstream, it must reproduce the same 8 bit 3.5Khz mono bitstream at the other end. Quality out equals quality in.
In your definition, no sound is ever lossless because no microphones can ever capture the complete audio experience available from a live performance - if you move your head a quarter of a wavelength, the sound will change.
OT but since there are tons of professionals and audiophiles here - do anyone notice what can only be called CD artifact? There seems to be something "wrong" with CD that no other formats has, digital or analog.
There is no such thing as a CD artifact for a CD in good condition. You can burn a 44.1/16 WAV to CD, rip it, and get the same exact file out. I do, all the time (I burn indie CDs and this is how I verify them).
Wow, 26Khz at 110 dBSPL? That's just stupid. You might as well argue that incidental exposure to wifi is certainly fatal because you wouldn't survive being cooked inside a microwave.
110 dBSPL represents thousands of times more energy (in watts) than you could plausibly expect in any musically derived ultrasonic content played at a volume level which doesn't pose a significant risk of permanent hearing loss. At such insane power levels, obviously nobody will be hearing the actual frequency but rather sub-harmonics and/or other physical sensations derived from that moronic level of sound pressure.
At normal listening levels, yup. I'm 30 and I can certainly hear the hideous 19 kHz anti-rat blasters they have all over shops in Tokyo (and I think they almost certainly cause ear damage and should be illegal - IIRC they are marketed as putting out 138dB SPL!) but I am rather unlikely to hear the difference between music low-passed at 19kHz and 20kHz.
They are called _Compact Discs_ and you can get them pretty cheap these days!