Throwback Thursday: CDs

By on May 5, 2011 at 3:45 PM
General May 5, 2011

A friend of the site recently brought our attention to an interesting service called Murfie, which allows users to trade in old CDs for digital music downloads. After taking a trip down memory lane to a time when lining up outside Tower Records for a new album release at midnight was a regular occurrence, we decided to dedicate this week’s installment of Throwback Thursday to the Compact Disc. We typically reserve this segment for products that are dead and buried, but we thought we could make an exception since CDs definitely have one foot in the grave right now. CDs took music album revenue to the highest point it may ever reach back in 1999 when sales totalled a whopping $14.6 billion. Fast forward to 2010, however, and revenue from CD sales fell to just $3.36 billion — compare that to $2.2 billion in digital music sales in the same year. Of course the music industry as a whole is in the midst of a steep downward spiral that not even the advent of digital music has been able to impede. Only 13 albums went platinum in 2010, and only four albums sold 2 million copies or more last year. According to Nielsen SoundScan, 326.2 million albums were sold in 2010 — the lowest total the company has ever recorded in the 20 years it has been tracking album sales.

BGR’s Throwback Thursday is a weekly series covering our (and your) favorite gadgets, games, and software of yesterday and yesteryear.

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  • DonRSD aka PSN DonVCorleone

    i just got done converting about 1000 cds to my hdd this past week.

    im going to sell them all.
    all hiphop albums from 1992 – 2004 or so :)

    • http://infotainmentempire.blogspot.com Rob

      and if they are priced anywhere around DVDs, you’ll get jack shit for them when you sell them. I just sold an asston of DVDs (like good movies, not the $5 bin of shit you’ve never heard of at Wal-Mart) and I only got between a quarter to $2 for them. Special editions even!

      But I still sold it since I ripped them and would rather use XBMC and a small keyboard than change out DVDs.

    • Anonymous

      You might as well have just pirated all of the tracks if you are just going to sell the discs when you are done. The point of ripping is to have a convenient digital copy. Do you rent from Netflix and rip it to Divx or MKV before sending the disc back too?

    • Emily

      If he doesn’t want em. $250-$2000 is a lot of money.

  • Payperkut909

    Poor artist… Maybe if they would stop ripping off soundbytes from each other, there music might be impactful again where people buy the whole album.

    • http://twitter.com/oecreative Openended Creative

      most rock was stuff musicians borrowed from each other. Most of the hits they had were others songs, Joe Cocker’s “help from my friends”, Clapton’s “I Shot the Sheriff”, Hendrix “all along the watch tower”, The Byrds “tambourine man”… the list goes on and on…

  • jmc

    Gah if that were my CD collection, I wouldn’t want CDs either!

  • Which way is Up?

    My first CD was Cypress Hill’s maxi single for “Stoned is the way of the Walk.” It cost about $7.00 at Tower Records… Ah, the memories…

  • Anonymous

    My first CD was Britney Spears’ debut album. Not joking.

  • Scott

    “Only 13 albums went platinum in 2010, and only four albums sold 2 million copies or more last year”

    That doesn’t surprise me at all. Most modern music sucks! Hip-hop/rap has really gone down the crapper and even rock music is run by the media. The days of good metal, hair banging music and good beats like The Chronic will probably never come back.

    And speaking of CDs, last year I bought a new head unit for my truck. It has no CD player and I love it. All I did was rip my CDs to laptop and then transferred them to an SD card and put that in my new radio. It’s great to never have to go looking for a CD or worry about it skipping because it’s scratched.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GP2WYAHXS6CRUREISWBGPUSUGE Michael

      That doesn’t surprise me at all. Most modern music sucks! Hip-hop/rap has really gone down the crapper and even rock music is run by the media. The days of good metal, hair banging music and good beats like The Chronic will probably never come back.

      couldn’t of spoken it any better.

    • Emily

      “Most modern music sucks!”

      This is the reason. Record companies profit more off one hit wonders than Frank Sinatras. So they don’t care what horseshit the band is as long as they have one song that’s catchy and can battle on the radio. Which by the way payola is not gone and is the reason why you hear the same crappy shit all the time. Most people listen to music the record labels tell them to like, not what they actually would like.

  • Anonymous

    how is this throwback?!?! i still use ‘em! :) i’m just too lazy to convert em

  • http://twitter.com/bradenmcg Braden McGrath

    Until online music stores get a clue and sell me lossless (WAV, FLAC, Apple Lossless, I don’t care) versions of the album, I will continue buying CDs.

    Yes, a large portion of my listening is done via portable player in the car, but I use relatively high bitrate AAC in there (~225kbit), and we have no idea what future compression schemes may come up that improve lossy compression. I don’t want to be stuck with generational loss.

    I keep all of my CDs on a Windows Home Server as FLAC, and then I have another folder full of the exact same stuff re-encoded to AAC or MP3 for portable use.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZX7I3VN423YBFEWTEQOQ5JR5ME Retro

      ^+1 That’s the way to do it.

      Apple lossless stored on my iMac with an Apple TV hooked into my Arcam. Everything is hardwired.

      I’m really happy with this setup.

      PS still love my BB :)

  • Anonymous

    More proof that ‘sheep’ have been lining-up for decades; first at Tower Records and now at the crApple Store. My first CD was Justin Bieber’s “My World” or as they say south of the border “Mi Mundo”.

  • http://infotainmentempire.blogspot.com Rob

    What I’d like to know is:

    $14.6 billion in CD sales in 1999

    $2.2 billion in digital and $3.36 billion in CDs in 2010.

    That $14.6 billion in dollars from ten years ago sure seems like a larger number. Or maybe shit was just that much more expensive per track back then?? Or are THAT many people downloading/sharing for free? :-P

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=122613122 Gyubok Baik

      Cheers.

    • Emily

      I highly doubt all the illegal downloading causes a $9 bil. decrease no matter how much those executives with their heads up their ass want to believe it.

      People just aren’t excited about music. The mainstream music is crap. People don’t want to pay for crap. And they know the albums will suck other than that one song on the radio.

      They pump out albums way to fast without any effort going into them as a whole. The artist suck so bad they probably a lot more post recording processing to make it palletable. The mainstream artist come out with new albums every year, 2 at most. Bands that actually create their own music and write their own songs take at minimum 2 years to make an album. Dido took 5 years to write and record “Safe Trip Home” and it shows. She played the guitar, recorder, piano and learned how to play drums for the album. How many of these popular “artists” can even play one instrument or write their own music.

  • http://twitter.com/lgtspecb Stewart Gateley

    While my days of sticking a CD in the player and listening to a single album in chronological order are well over, the Compact Disc is still my preferred method for obtaining music. At least until there is a service that can offer true lossless quality without DRM and can be transferred to any or all of my devices and computers simultaneously.

    I have quite the habit, I pre-order most of my CD’s on Amazon, for the very few major label stuff I might buy, I look for them in used record stores. Around an albums release date there will be tons of demo copies, gift returns, or people that ripped and sold the original. Once the CD is in my grasp, it gets ripped to FLAC and store away the CD in its original jewel case never to be seen or touched again. The FLAC’s get stored on my media server which can stream to any computer or TV in the house or to my cellphone. If I want a mobile copy, I transcode it to OGG.

    There are a few albums or singles I have bought from Amazon MP3 or Ubuntu One, but they represent a tiny fraction of my collection. Google’s music service might be the first to interrupt this cycle, it will be a long time before i’m ready to say R.I.P. CD’s.

    • Emily

      Every legally downloaded song I own has come from Amazon MP3 and the free credits Amazon gives me with purchase of physical copies of CDs and DVDs.

  • http://twitter.com/lgtspecb Stewart Gateley

    There sure are some young ones here, my first CD was Bon Jovi, bought in 1990.

  • Roland

    Buying CDs have their own passion, but now, Internet kill that passion… you don’t need CDs if you can access itunes

  • http://twitter.com/TheBrizz Brian Jones

    Though most of my music is acquired digitally these days, I kinda miss the thrill of unwrapping a fresh new jewel case or digipak and flipping through the artwork and liner notes as the disc begins to play. Just for old time’s sake, I actually went to Best Buy and bought Adele’s newest album in CD form a couple months ago. I hope they never go away.

  • QNX Please

    Murfie…. has your friend not heard of CD ripping software?

    • Emily

      CDex 1.5. Simple light and amazing.

      • Emily

        oh and how could i forget. FREE

  • Orangemaze

    The music industry should sue ‘idol’ and all those crappy tv reality series that pump out crappy tunes. One hit wonders are not money makers. Great albums like ‘the dark side of the moon’ and ‘the wall’ are still selling, and will always sell.

    • http://twitter.com/oecreative Openended Creative

      most of the “great tunes” people think of are one hit wonders.

    • Emily

      One hit wonders are the money makers for the record labels.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Stuff-Isay/100001775803332 Stuff Isay

    I lol’d.

  • Anonymous

    Times change.

  • http://www.apexcarpentryinc.com/blog/ Craig

    Many CD’s were bought to replace tapes or records. After people have digital music they do not need to repurchase the same music.

  • Anonymous

    Isn’t this kinda jumping the shark a little? Usually Throwback Thursday’s focus isn’t something that is still being mass produced and readily for sale at all retailers.

    • Emily

      If you took time to read the post before you commented you would have seen that they agree with what you but give reason as to why they chose the compact disc.

  • Emily

    I still buy CDs every time an artist I like has a new album. I own about 300 CDs and have no intention of getting rid of them. I rip every single one to my computer and then they just sit there. Any CD i play in my car is a burned copy. About 250 are basically still brand new.

    I don’t purchase download versions. I think that’s crap and a ripoff.

    I do still pirate albums i don’t like enough to buy, or can’t afford yet. Even the bands I love I pirate the album a month before it comes out, but then I still go that Tuesday and purchase the album instore.

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