"CD-Loving Japan Resists Move to Online Music"

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/business/media/cd-loving-japan-resists-move-to-digital-music-.html?_r=0

Fascinating stuff here...

It's strange; even my family has, recently, been buying more music on disc rather than digitally.

I love getting CD's. Having the physical format in front of me to gawk at is thrilling. Yes, digital is more convenient, however, all the top streaming services never play what I want, and just downloading the music feels soulless. That's why I like working at the radio station in my college. We get loads of new CD's every week. I root for Japan for keeping the CD alive.

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One thing I like about CDs is the nice cases (particularily the special/collector's edition ones) and the fact that they will come with extra stuff such as booklets and extra CDs/DVDs.

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Yeah, I love physical merchandise. I can actually hold the music and the packaging just adds to the experience. I love flipping through actual liner notes while I listen to a CD. Yeah, when I get a CD I'll definitely rip it so I can listen to it with ease and on devices that don't have a frigign' CD drive on them, but actually having the physical object itself just feels good to me. Also, if I ever lose the files, I know for sure I can get them back easily. I'm also with Japan on this one.

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So much this.

But CD is the future...If the future is 1982. I'm still in favor of getting CDs. Cover Art, Booklet info, & Disc Art...You don't get that digitally.//

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It's kind of strange seeing how Japan is a country that's looked at as being ahead of the technological curve when compared to everyone else. Interesting artificial.

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The main issue with the digital format is that it is still being treated as if the song(s) can only fit on one CD. There is no reason for a streaming service or a digital music store to continue hosting mp3 files (at 256knps) when it's not on a CD.

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I'm going to go on a little bit of a rant here and say I honestly hope the CD format does not die out here in the United States. One place here I know of used to carry lots of CDs, and now they have maybe 3 or 4 titles and that's it. The rest of the music selection is a few crates of Vinyl. I can't even really believe Vinyl came back and took over the physical market in some places, but yeah, back to the main point. I think it's good if Japan holds on to the CD format, and it's not like they don't have iTunes over there anyway. It's still an option for those who prefer that. But yeah, digital music is convenient and all, like to get an album I really only have to Google it or log in to Spotify to access, but I'd rather have a physical object that I actually own instead of only having a digital copy of something that I could possibly lose in a crash or delete accidentally and then be F'd in the A afterwards if it was something I didn't want to lose. Long live the CD, please, for the love of [insert figurehead of your beliefs here], long live the CD!

I used to buy music from iTunes until I realized the importance of audio quality overall, not just CDs. A physical copy of the music is a great thing to have as a backup, although having a (FLAC lossless) digital copy ripped from a CD rather than an MP3 (less than 320kbps) downloaded online feels much more satisfying and convenient to me. I also recently became a radio DJ at my college station and learned that having a collection of high-quality music in my computer to be able to mix together with ease is necessary for streaming music as well (and I don't have to carry a bunch of CDs around either).

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This is honestly how I feel.

Personally, I would rather buy a physical CD so I can have the option of what quality to rip it in. I would consider buying online if there was a place where we could choose flac or something without that much (if any) of a price increase. Like Bandcamp.

CD's are easy to lose / break / scratch. Many stories of days past where a person would break into a vehicle and take a huge CD collection, the person that bought the discs originally now has no rights to the music they would have to pay full price to recover the collection and the thief has all the legal rights to enjoy the music files because they posses them. At least with digital you can backup important data and most services that sell music allow you to re-download music you own. I'm all for digital.

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Oh, yeah, you're right. People do lose physical media just as easily as digital in some cases. Actually, that makes me recall how I myself used to own loads of CDs until one, I sold off my first big collection I owned back when I lived in Texas, where I'd bought lots of CDs while I had a few jobs there, and two, a large collection of physical and digital media that I forced myself to part ways with when my big depression hit for a while, which then compelled me for whatever reason to offload nearly all of my worldly possessions, so now stuff I bought back in the day, I no longer really have access to, for the most part. I only really have modern conveniences like Spotify and other internet resources to thank for being able to access older music that older memories bring my awareness of back to.

And CDAudio quality is superior than AAC or mp3.

Also. I like to get a full album instead of getting pieces of it from a digital store.

Another thing that is important is that when you buy CDs, you inmediately "own" the songs for private use and you're able to share it with family or friends. That's legal. But that's not the case with iTunes stuff (Read Terms & Conditions).

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This is coming from a guy who has torrented all his BEMANI albums. I'm such a hypocrite, aren't I?

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I still buy CD's very frequently so I'd be pretty pissed if they stopped making them. I like being able to look at the artwork and attach some sort of sentimental value to it. You can't really do that with a bunch of files on a computer. Things like iTunes/eMusic/Bandcamp etc are great for independent artists, though. It's good way to get more people into your music if you're a band from say, Portland, Oregon who wants to see if people from Philadelphia will like your music.

I still prefer physical copies over anything else though.

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This handy song will explain everything :