Question(s) Of The Day: Do you prefer CD's or Vinyl or digital or cassettes or 8-tracks?

[ChristianReject]

I prefer CD's since they are cheap and smaller and easier to store. I like having a physical release but I have bought albums off of iTunes in the past. And I love listening to my iPod while I do cardio. I understand people going with digital but I found it to be very unfullfilling at times.

Vinyl are prettier to look at, but not full price pretty. I'll gladly take my .95 coaster over a $24 frisbee.

What about you? What do you prefer?

BONUS question: What's the weirdest/oddest song you've ever heard? Post it! If it's not on Spotify, post it from YouTube. I'm a sucker for weird, odd-ball songs.

HAPPY LISTENING AND REMEMBER THAT I LOVE YOU.

[Taylor]

Always will be a digital person myself - when I first started listening to music I was a CD person however Spotify became a "thing" very soon after, I started using it, and so now all my music is on Spotify and I have nothing physical whatsoever - plus I'm disorganised anyway so would probably lose all my CDs if I had physical media 😛

Taylor

[seanb2294]

I prefer CDs as i like a physical copy, only ever use iTunes to buy apps or movies. Most of the CDs I have I put on iTunes anyway so for me no need to buy songs or albums, normally I will find an album or band on spotify, and if I enjoy it/them a lot I will go out and buy the album. 

Although my mate has a big vinyl collection and I can say there are a lot of bands that do sound better on vinyl, it has much more of a raw sound to it, but I do not have a vinyl player and if I had one I would probably start collecting vinyls. 

[OviiiOne]

I'll choose vinyl, I know that CDs are practical and that, but I like vintage things, and everybody say that vinyl have a better music quality, and my family has a lot of vinyl discs, mostly of Supertramp and Bruce Springsteen.

I can say that I grow up listening to vinyl and cassettes.

And I think that the vinyl is back in fashion, a lot of music groups sell their music in vinyl too (e.g. Coldplay, Imagine Dragons...).

[sohopgal]

At home, when I'm relaxing absolutely vinyl... Out side just Spotify 🙂

[crematedman]

@ChristianReject obviously my music is mostly on spotify, but, having a vinyl collection, i have to say i appreciate the classics too ^_^

this is one of my favourite weird songs XD

comes from this playlist:

[spiritofradio]

I'm very happy with streaming. I dont own any other formats at the moment. I sold my CDs when i started on Itunes. My only grip is that I dont play my itunes files as much since using spotify because I tend to access Spotify and Sonos via my phone or tablet but my Itunes library is on my laptop which I dont use as much these days. When I was younger I bought cassettes rather than vinyl because I moved around alot and cassettes were more convenient to transport than vinyl. Ive never bought into the hype about vinyl being better than other formats.

[Jazzwhatever]

@ChristianReject Nice topic. There was a good blog post about this a while ago: 

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Community-Blog/Collecting-Your-Music-Spotify-amp-Vinyl/ba-p...

It's always interesting to read how others collect their music. Before Spotify i was collecting cd's and vinyl. At some point i sold my funk&soul vinyl collection because it was getting too big and too expensive to keep on buying rare Soul Lp's. And i hardly play vinyl because you need a really good stereo set to hear the difference (between cd and LP). So i preferred cd's. When i started on Spotify i stopped buying cd's and lp's. 

Since a year i buy cd's and lp's again because i work in a thrift shop (2nd hand shop) and i'm sorting the lp's and cd's for the shop. So i got first choice. I have to dig up the good ones though from the big pile of James Last's and Mantonvani's 😄

And i sometimes buy a digital album through Bandcamp so i know most money goes to the artist / label. I just see it as a way of supporting the artist directly.

[BismuthBorealis]

Generally Digital, CDs for some things (*cough* hitchikers guide *cough*)

(Bonus Answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuO9xtNsRs0)

[thesatellite]

If youre the type of person whe prefers to own a physical copy of an album, why not get vinyl (go big or go home)? I spent my entire teengae years buying CD copies until my sister bought me my first ever collectable vinyl and i was hooked. My reason is simple and cliche: it has a different (better) sound.

[xboss]

I grew up with vinyl and  I stll love to smell and hold them. Beautiful covers with lots of great memories, but I never listen to them and I have not by any vinyl since Achtung Baby - U2 and Screamadelica - Primal Scream. I remember when the casette came and 

you could listen to your new album in the car and make all these "best of"- compilations. And than with Walkman you could listen where ever you wanted. I bought a lot of CD:s and they are all somwhere in the basement now, with these worthless plastic covers broken. I have many albums on both vinyl and cd because I wanted them in my car and our summer house and on all my long walks.

A short period i bought albums from iTunes (and I did some Pirate Bay downloads too)

but now it's only Spotify. I always got the music with me and I love that.

[ChristianReject]

@thesatellite Mostly why I don't get vinyl is because they're really expensive. They warp easily. They're huge. That's why I only have 5 records. I'm just gonna start hanging 'em up on the wall. At least they're pretty to look at.

[Dj_tomsten]

Still love the cd have it still in my car but love the usb as well

[eursasineurope]

Honestly digital music is the most convenient for me. I think cassettes are really neat. They are very cheap to produce, last 30 years or more, and are great for newer bands to produce and give out, without breaking the bank like CD's and definitely vinyl will.

Cassettes can sound great with a good system and excellent decks can go for cheap on online auction sites now.

Never got into vinyl because of the cost.

[Will181]

Started getting into vinyl a few years ago, just assuming it was a better sound. Did a bit of research and I'd have to say digital's the way to go in general... Vinyl's still cool for rare stuff, and just the novelty of having this big spinny thing that makes a cool noise.

Wouldn't trade anything for digital though. Was big on iTunes til this year when I got Spotify Premium. Sounds best imo, and you can't beat the convenience

[WheresLee]

First of all, let me say that I love this question. I think about this one all the time.

My answer changes frequently, however I think recently I've come to the conclusion that I'd much rather build up my CD collection over anything else as I can transfer it onto my computer if I need to.

This being said the atmosphere changes according to what you listen to the album on. Vinyl is great for those great albums we all know that transition seamlessly into the next song and the crackling is just so great. They are however now becoming a little played out with the hipsters making it a trendy thing now.

Cassette tapes are great. They have this certain D.I.Y. feeling to them, very Daniel-Johnston-like.

So yeah, I guess for me, the answer is CD's for the practicality and Vinyl for the feeling it gives you while listening and the cool factor too.

[Dj_tomsten]

agree

[willow1800]

everythings better on vinyl. its always more exciting to get a new vinyl, even if you don't know any of the songs on it. getting a cd may be cheaper and physically easier to manage (you don't have to flip it) but when you find an interesting looking record at a goodwill or buy your favorite from a record place and listen until the needle gets fuzzy, its totally worth it. and it makes u look cool af

[fduniho]

I grew up with vinyl records, audio cassettes have been around since I was young, and I got a CD player close to finishing college. 8-tracks were never really a big thing, and I never got any myself. During high school and most of college, I mainly collected records and cassettes. Cassettes were more convenient, because I could carry them around and play them in a portable tape player, but they usually had worse sound quality than records.

When I started listening to CDs, I was amazed by how much clearer and cleaner they sounded than records and how much fuller they sounded than cassettes. Records often had skips or scratches, and CDs didn't have this problem in the same way. While some CDs did have skips or scratches, this was something that would ruin the whole CD, and it mainly happened only with CDs from the library that had been mishandled or listened to a lot. For the most part, CDs were crystal clear compared to records. Soon after I got a CD player, I began replacing many of my favorite vinyl albums with CDs.

Besides having clearer sound quality, CDs were more convenient. With all the music on one side, there was no need to flip a CD over. Since they took up less space, I could store more in the same space, and I could carry some with me to play in a portable CD player. For a while, I was carrying several CDs around in CD sleeve cases. This let me carry even more CDs than I could cassette tapes.

In more recent times, CDs have gained the advantage that I can rip music from them to play on my computer or in an MP3 player. Instead of needing display space for my CD collection, I have been able to stuff my CDs in milk crates in my closet, and instead of playing the CDs themselves, I play music on my MP3 player, where the music from all the CDs I've ripped, as well as digital music I've bought online, are now on a 200GB micro SD card that fits in an MP3 player that's the size of a small dental floss container.

One more advantage of CDs over records and cassettes is that they more easily stay in great shape. Jewel cases protect CDs better than record sleeves protect records, and CDs are not subject to the same mechanical failures that can ruin cassettes. To my knowledge, none of my CDs have gone bad, but records can get scratched by accidentally dropping the needle, and old tapes frequently become unplayable.

In short, I'm more into music than the format. I have no nostalgia over vinyl or tapes, and I prefer CDs for their convenience and clarity. I do still listen to records of music I don't have in a digital format, such as Switched-On Bach, but I would prefer to have the CDs. 

[Jazzwhatever]

@fduniho Totally agree with you about the advantage of Cd's. Alot of hipsters say Vinyl sounds better, but the vinyls are a pain to store and play. And the sound quality is only good when played over a 10.000 euro soundsystem.