It's not that I don't get the appeal of having larger artwork. But the medium itself in the way it's used and produced doesn't make sense. The whole audio production pipeline is digital. Producers take analogue audio, introduce quantisation and digitisation errors immediately to be able to use their fancy computers to produce the music (which introduces even more errors due to all filters being digital) just to then dump that digital piece of sound into an analogue medium at the very end. Nothing is gained except the digital-analogue-conversion happens before creating the medium whereas with CDs you do it after reading from that medium. Which is a stupid idea, as dust and other issues will then mess with the result you're hearing.

Now, if you're a producer that actually uses an all-analogue workflow, ignore this, I don't mean you. You also have my deepest respect for enduring that pain. Please point me towards some records that actually did this though.

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[–] 5 points 1 week ago (1 child)

I don't agree with you that being hipster is the only good reason for it.

There are many benefits with physical and DRM-free media.

I just posted another comment on this post making my point though 😄

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Compact disc, compact casettes, eight track, even reel-to-reel tape are also all DRM free physical media formats for the same type of content, too. And yet, there is no CD renaissance happening. Nobody is making daily posts of their cassette deck showing off the album art on the tape case propped against their stereo.

    Maybe in another 10 or 20 years there will indeed be a CD renaissance, if it becomes retro enough to be fashionable. It's already happening with video games (says the turkey with two entire bookcases full of old cartridges and disks).

    If somebody likes vinyl records I'm certainly not going to stop them. Even if they like them for spurious reasons.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago

    You are wrong about CDs, which have exploded in popularity. 2 years ago, I could walk into any Goodwill and walk out with dozens of excellent classic CDs for $.50-$1 each, and I'd still have to leave some good stuff behind.

    Today, I walk into any Goodwill, and they have hardly any decent CDs. The used CD market has completely flipped.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    CDs are making a comeback already!

    Albeit not as big as vinyl yet, but it might catch up given time!

    A couple of months ago I overheard a couple guys in their early 20s who were happy for finding some specific CD in a local record store.

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