CD player or not?

I own the cd.

I know the artist gets paid.

I have to listen to the whole thing, so I discover the stuff that isn't promoted.

I don't have to remember a password to listen.

I'm 60.

I put all of my CDs into iTunes. I have enough music on my phone to not repeat a song driving across country and then some.

In reply to preach (fs) :

I guess I'm not a music person. After hours on the road music is just background noise.  But an engaging story can hold me spellbound for hours upon hours.  I often drive virtually non-stop from Minneapolis to San Diego about 1500 miles.  
I can change up from thrillers to technical or even humor. . A brief respite listening to some classical music and  maybe that Tom Clancy  one or John Grisham.  Because my mind is following the story and my eyes are watching the road I'm relaxed and not thinking about how stiff and sore I am. 

fatallightning said:

Keith Tanner said:

"Add lightness" to a Power Wagon. Nice :)

So here's a serious question for those who are younger than I. It's very likely that college is when you're exposed to the most new music, and a high percentage of that will not be major label acts. Like in my examples - the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir. A regional band that was great live but never broke into the mainstream, just the sort of stuff you hear (heard?) on college radio. How do you listen to that at the time, and how do you listen to it today? Not through Spotify, that's for sure.

Most of what I listen to is considered niche, and almost all of it is on Spotify. Small bands that don't tour nationally need that exposure. It seems not terribly hard to get published if you're a small indie artist on Spotify now. If you're not doing it, you're setting up for failure. It's only about $10 to get a single, or $30 for an EP to get up on Spotify. With older legacy niche things, the monetization probably isn't there. Or straightening out rights from defunct labels and artists. 

Okay, that makes a lot of sense, especially if it's that cheap to get yourself on Spotify. I was impressed to see the Planet Smashers on there including their early stuff.

But it does make it more ephemeral. College for me was 25-30 years ago. Will Spotify be around in 25 years or will it be something else? Will those little indy bands bother to move their stuff over to the new great thing, or will they disappear? Or will it have to be Bandcamp, which has some of the Jivewires? Or Soundcloud, which has one song from the Angstones and an album from the Jivewires that is not on Bandcamp? I can't find the album Smokin' the Goats by One (the least googlable band name ever) anywhere. I'm just using these bands as examples because they come readily to mind and I have them all on CD. I like to listen to One, but the only reason I can listen to them is because I bought that CD. 

When my grandfather died, I was able to listen to his vinyl records. That's why I still buy my music on physical media :)

I'm nostalgic for CDs, even if it's less versatile than streaming or whatever. Sometimes you gotta root through the bargain bin at the thrift shop and pull out something amazing and pop that disc right in the car on the way home.

If someone wants a physical media for music, buy vinyl. The analog format is superior for archival purposes. I have CDs that are 20-25 years old now and about half the time they no longer play. I have some 78-rpm records from my father that are a century old and still play. 

I have not bought a CD in over a decade. I ripped all my CDs to MP3s circa 2008-2009. Now I either purchase digital music or often if I buy a vinyl pressing it will come with a code for digital downloads.

AUX jack or Bluetooth from my phone to the head unit. I have ~350gb of music on my phone. 
 

In reply to David S. Wallens :

How big is you cd collection and have you many that have not been ripped?

I look at my cassette collection and think there is a ton of good music i can't listen to there. 

I like cds. It’s nice being able to just stick the disc in and hear music, no messing around with bluetooth pairing or pushing the magic combo of buttons* to find the right audio input. The music always plays whether or not I’m in an area with good cell data signal.

*I drive a Focus with Ford’s SYNC, which is pretty much a terrible interface all around.

David S. Wallens said:

I was looking at the CD player in the Miata and wondered: Do people still buy CD players these days? I can totally see installing a media player, but do we need the CD function? 

Yesterday, on my way to work, I was listening to the Ride the Lightning CD that I got as a Christmas present in 1991.  It has a scratch in "Escape" but I usually skip from For Whom the Bell Tolls straight to Creeping Death, so that's fine by me.

Gotta have a CD player.

lrrs said:

In reply to David S. Wallens :

How big is you cd collection and have you many that have not been ripped?

I look at my cassette collection and think there is a ton of good music i can't listen to there. 

I went to my local Goodwill store and grabbed a few boom boxes for $5 and I listen to cassettes in the garage.   The first one is still working decades after I plugged it in. In spite of sawdust so thick at times I can't see my hand in front of my face. 
When that finally dies Ive got two more left. Hopefully by then I can bring my good stereo equipment down into the finished man cave. 

lrrs said:

In reply to David S. Wallens :

How big is you cd collection and have you many that have not been ripped?

I have a lot of albums in MP3 format.  They are annoying to listen to because car-based media players have a little hiccup between tracks, and the worse ones "make up for it" by cutting off the first second or two of the next track. 

This is annoying as all hell on albums that flow without breaks.

In the old days, if you were lucky, you had an AM radio. It was a big deal when AM/FM came around.

For recorded music it was tape - an Italian car I owned was fitted with a Lear 8 track player (a playback mechanism guaranteed to result in tape stretch, BTW) and every time I was cruising on the highway, happily listening to the exhaust, and I shifted into 5th gear, my knuckles would push the 8 track tape in and it would start playing. The car was a 1969 model - how soon we forget older music sources.

I shifted to cassette in the 1970s, which was considerably better, but still occasionally subject to tape snarls (you needed the pencils that were octagonal section to run the extruded tape back in - round pencils with no 'sides' were useless for that).

CDs were really only common starting in the 90s (my 88 Fiero had a cassette deck, but I found a slightly later Pontiac that had a CD player that looked identical to the Delco cassette deck and swapped it in.

One thing that some manufacturers started using the CD drives for was data installation for updates. Remember when you paid about 4-5X what a Garmin would cost you to have a factory on board nav system that didn't work as well? Some of them were only updatable using CDs (BMW was one such, right into the late 2000 decade).

USB drives seem to have come in in the late 2000 decade (e.g. only in 2009 in my Pontiac) and that is a nice compact way to carry a lot of digital music.

BTW, vinyl in cars was here for a flashing moment  - if you are interested see https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/obsolete-car-audio-part-2/

One of the problems with those units was that in order to avoid skipping, the stylus forces had to be so high that they in effect turned the player into a vinyl lathe that ruined a record in relatively short order.

Streetwiseguy said:

I own the cd.

I know the artist gets paid.

I have to listen to the whole thing, so I discover the stuff that isn't promoted.

I don't have to remember a password to listen.

I'm 60.

But you need special gloves to use the CD player.

When I replaced the head unit in my Tahoe a few months ago, one of my requirements was a CD slot.

I don't actually PLAY CDs in the truck, I just stream via BT, usually Spotify.  But my phone mount locks into the CD slot, and I really like my phone mount.

In reply to wspohn :

I was going to mention it earlier, when I was 4 or 5 my Dad had a Lincoln with a record player.

And leopard skin upholstery.

Dad had style.

This thread reminded me that I've been listening to CDs in my van lately because the radio tuner is broken. I went searching for a new head unit with HD Radio capability, and it looks like most have been discontinued. I really liked the HD Radio that came with a hooptie I had a few years back, is the format really dead already?

My wife was very disappointed that her 2019 Ridgeline wasn't available with a CD player. Fortunately, Canadian spec Ridgelines got them, so I was able to buy the parts from Bernardi and get her the CD Player. 

She also wanted heated seats but didn't want the leather/sunroof/touch screen radio that came with the higher trim levels so I installed some cheap aftermarket ones.

A vehicle is not a good environment for CDs... the vibrations and high temperatures and humidity swings will accelerate their degradation. Best thing to do is rip CDs to FLAC and use 3.5mm Auxilary connection in the head unit with a 400-500Gb (or more) card in your phone or DAP with of all your ripped and hi-res downloaded library. Will have your entire collection at the tip of yor fingers and full CD quality playback with zero additional weight and in a package that can take all the shock you can through at it and never miss a beat or be damaged by it. Bluetooth/streaming may be convenient, but it sounds bad in comparison... though in a vehicle there is a higher noise floor than you'd normally want for listening to music so it's not as bad as if you were at home.

CDs are best left at home and kept in a controlled storage environment for use in headphone or 2-channel speaker setups.

I like to listen to CDs in the car so I need a cd player in the car. At home, I use my phone to play the app from the station I listen to the most and also have a transistor size portable radio with am/fm/shortwave/bluetooth tuning that I listen to at home.

Spotify is pretty great for the listener. Not the greatest sound quality ever but Bunches of bands.

As a musician......my old band is on Spotify and I didn't sign up for it. I get .0027 every time someone streams it so I expect to be a millionaire any day now. I don't know how we got on it actually.

BlueInGreen - Jon (Forum Supporter) 

*I drive a Focus with Ford’s SYNC, which is pretty much a terrible interface all around.

I have SYNC in my Mustang and I like it. Much better than the old AM radio and underdash Lear Jet 8 track I had in my 69 Mustang. Don't even get me started on folding paper maps vs. using a nav system.

I still prefer a map

In reply to Peabody :

While I'm a certified card carrying Luddite and second degree curmudgeon I like a GPS to tell me to turn right at the light and the next turn is 1.7 miles ahead. 
The nice thing is it's a very clear speaking lady with a slight British accent ( my preference ) who if I make a wrong turn or something tells me to return to the route.  
I prop it up someplace where I can hear it and it leads me where I need to go. 
 The trouble with maps is two fold.  First you can't always tell which direction you're heading so you don't know if you're supposed to turn right or left.  And second while you are studying the map you can't be driving ( safely )  and yes, it's impossible to neatly fold them back up while traveling in a convertible with the top down. 

I just put one of these in my '89 Probe GT, and love it.  It doesn't have a CD player, but has a hideaway phone holder if you wanna be subtle, and if you wanna be snazzy.... it uses your phone as a screen/remote with the Pioneer App.  Lots of features and customization options.  I found mine for $129.

I am a Luddite who is still using a DAP from 2004 in my car,  but it has been converted from using a 20gb 1.8in IDE hard drive to one 128gb SD card