the cd is dead - and so are you

brittleblood

the gentle tide has left countless, yet meaningful, grains of sands at my shore and i have come to tell you the cd is dead. for good.

let me back up a bit...i'm pulling up an old box of cd's that has sat in storage for a minimum of 5 years. probably 150. i'm thinking "i can sell some on craigslist and then pack the balance up to the resale shop...i'll get a premium ($5!!!) for some hard to find things (ever try and find the ramones' "subterranean jungle"?) and the resale shop might give me 2 or 3 bux for the leftovers. and there you have it - whoever buys them (from me or the resale shop will pay 5 or 6 bux for the used ones, rip and then go right back to the store for the 2 - 3 buck buyback. the days of the cd collector are over - simple as that.

there's a whole stream of "why sony pushed emusic over and went digital AT ITS PRICEPOINT", but that's for you to draw weapons + engage.

68

cafreema

I'm dead? Eternity is going to suuuuuuck.

Craig

Brighternow

My goodness !
My CD's are dead ?

I've just bought 4 and the content seems pretty much alive to me.
I'd better check out my collection to see if any of them are still kickin'

BTW I've just pinched my arm, just to make shure....
That hurts.

Katrina

I'm glad I held onto my CDs. Over time, a track here and there has gotten corrupted on my PC. It's nice to have the source for a re-rip.

brittleblood

and just when will bestbuy announce they will no longer carry cd's? 10 years from now? 5? 2?

jackedUPjazz

CDs will last as long as there are blow dried boy bands and pimply faced teen girls with too much allowance money

brittleblood

that's one hell of a link!

once they stop making cd's, they'll just keep re-cycling the existing inventory that is out there. new releases are all being pitched in digital format. my contact at the library has informed me that a few of my recent requests are only available via download - no way for her to secure a hard copy.

it's gonna happen.
----
o - those pimply teens are now dl'ing like mad...the dj on serius xm just attributed the same teenage girls for making the number one album downloaded on itunes this week...some movie soundtrack.

brittleblood

how 'bout some pricing advice - i'm thinking of listing about 50 on craigslist with pick any 5 for $25 and see what bites. thoughts?

amclark2

cd's are daid, but vinyl is back! i'm gonna start hording cassettes - they've gotta be next on the list for a comeback.

frogkopf

8-tracks man, the future is 8-tracks!

frogkopf

Craigslist might be an option, although most people looking there a bargain hunters. If you do it try to sell stuff that is similar, as people usually look to buy albums in a particular genre when they make multiple purchases.

My choice is Amazon. Shipping usually costs you around a buck or so to send it out, but you get $2.98 credit. Figure in the $2 profit to your pricing. If it's something that's not all that common to find, you might get $5-6 on top of that. the beauty of Amazon is they fill in most of the info for you, and you don't pay them anything unless you actually sell something. To me, the big barrier to selling CDs is the work involved vs the price you get. Making only about $10 an hour, just isn't worth the trouble (that will change if I ever get laid off).

I sold most of my box sets about 7 years ago and averaged over $30 each. Now I'd be lucky to get $20.

brittleblood

so, i list out all my cd's and then send the list to amazon...who will charge me 15% of the transaction, right? when one is sold i ship it out to the buyer?

by the by, if anyone here is interested in older (imho best) nick cave material, i have a lot. same with pj harvey (*), cramps and gun club...i'm sellin'.

---

* pj's early stuff dwarfs all other female vocalists of her era.

lol! i am now a batch file wizzard...having figured out how to create a text file, convert it to batch then duuble clixing it!

choiceweb0pen0

i've been randomly selling some of my used CDs on eBay a few times a year and lately have been lucky to get $5 for a cd in excellent condition. Granted much of it is Indie music, so the interest is smaller, but still. It's hard to say that they are dead though. They will be around for sometime somewhere, even if less are bought every year. I'm definitely keeping most of the CDS I have and imagine getting a few every year for the foreseeable future.

luddite

>>>>>>
by the by, if anyone here is interested in older (imho best) nick cave material, i have a lot. same with pj harvey (*), cramps and gun club...i'm sellin'.
>>>>>>
I'm interested in what you're trying to unload. What Cramps and Gun Club do you have? Secondary interest in what Nick Cave you're looking to unload. Don't care about the PJ (no offense).

brittleblood

luddite - shoot me an e-mail address and i'll send you the list i've cobbled together - but heads up - the resale shop guy has asked me to stop in this afternoon with about 150...he said he'd give me between 3.50 and 5.00 per cd after reviewing my list (3.50 low end based on cd being beat up or 5.00 if in excellent condition) - that is what i was hoping for - get rid of them all at once.

fire of love
miami
las vegas story
death party

smell of female
psychedelic jungle
bad music for bad people
stay sick
rockin and rollin in aukland

10 nick cave recordings

thomnottom

Still have some time to go before the CD dies. They don't project digital sales to equal CD sales worldwide for another 6-7 years.

brittleblood

i am flummoxed. went to the cd resale store. with my box of 160 cd's. an hour into it i'm given a total of $2 hundred and some gibberish cash and $2 hundred and some gibberish in store credit. this was so far off my "mendoza line" + i was already carting them back up before i said "no thanks."

he did provide me with a breakdown of $5 cd's and $4 cd's - you guessed it, the $5 cd's > the gun club, cramps and nick cave (+roky erickson). a quick slide down to a small stack of $3 and $2 ones...but about 100 they'd give me a quarter. the thing that sank the deal was seeing the psychedelic furs "all this and..." at the top of the quarter pile. that was just absurd.

amazon here i come.

cafreema

Psychedelic Furs for $0.25? I need to get into the CD resale business (but not for resale).

Craig

amclark2

I'm interested in From Eternity to Her, Kicking Against the Pricks or Let Love in ... just one for now because that's the only way I'll absorb it the way I want too.

and do you by any chance have any Yoko Ono? I've been thinking I should get some.

Bad Thoughts

$2/disc average is probably pretty good, if you want to get rid of them quickly. The problem for used CD merchants is that they can get major label fare in abundance through distributors. They don't need to get these CDs from their customers in order to keep their shelves full; instead, they think of what the distributor would pay to take it off their hands. It's the indie stuff that is harder, and more expensive, for them to get their hands on, and which they will jump all over. 25 cents for the Furs doesn't surprise me one bit. Your buyer would have tossed it in a box to ship to a distributor. Your $5 discs would be proudly on sale by the end of the day.

brittleblood

well, little does everyone know that xtrev has given me advertising privileges and i will soon be plastering the site with pop-ups of nick cave singing murder ballads to yoko ono - all with fuchsia mint dragon-fonts proclaiming prices, terms of shipping, payment and disclaimers.

k-teleriffic

amclark2

now if i could just find the credit card slot on this lap-top. maybe it's under the cupholder.

cafreema

Post 'em up!

Craig

brittleblood

ok - if anyone really really wants to see the list of cd's, just e-mail me at brittleblood@yahoo.com - that gets to me. i'll gladly ship these u.s + canada. let's target 1 cd = $5; 5 cd = $20; 10 cd = $35. i have tons of these mailers so mebbe add a buck for shipping 2 or less - $2 for up to 5 and $3 for more than 5.

i can take a check as long as your good for it.

frogkopf

would you take amie street credit in exchange?

brittleblood

flim flammer.

street cred is over-rated.

cowrun

I used to sell CDs at flea markets for $3-5 bucks each, but the last one I've sold at you were hard pressed to get $2. One day when I had help to watch my stuff, I took a stroll and noticed there were several vendors selling used CDs for .50 and $1.00. I grabbed up six Clan of Zymox, Anthrax, Poison and a Pig CD from the .50 guy when he said he'd sell me everything he had for $10. They were all in pristine condition and what I didn't want, I resold at another market.

I'm actually taking my emu SFL list with me as I'm finding many of them at flea markets and pawn shops. Seems if they're not a famous or well-known band, the CDs are cheap.

Found one guy at the flea market selling 8-tracks for $2 and moving several of them. Maybe I need to drag out my Nazareth, Kiss and Aerosmith 8-tracks and sell them too.

cowrun

brittleblood

further evidence the cd is dead:

- the media acquisition director at my local library has, for the third time in the last 4 months, informed me my request for a recording is unavailable as it is only distributed as a downloadable product. (three different requests)

- emusic pulls its pants down and lets another major label drive right in. its sony and universal's proxy-play to bridge into the all digital distribution world.

what the what is going to happen to best buy's shelf space when all that real estate is delivered thru the web?

Doofy

CDs are never going away. They are different from previous sound (and data) recording technologies, in that they hold a lot of info, are easily manufactured, duplicated, pretty durable, inexpensive, portable, etc. Whether music CDs will still be manufactured by record companies is a different issue. I've been wondering lately if there's going to be a shift back to lossless at some point. Granted people are used to mp3's now, and maybe it will be an audiophile-only thing. But as speed and storage continue to increase, the need for lossy encoding seems to be dwindling by the day. Makes me wonder if I really want to continue 'investing' in mp3s.

Best Buy will strive to meet the apparently bottomless demand for cute lil cell phone accessories.

amclark2

fill it up with twinkies and and doritoes and change the name to Wal Mart.

but really, Best Buy has to make most of it's money from big big box items. I can't see getting anything from bb that I could get from Amazon with free shipping. But washers, dryers, fridge-idgerators, giant tv's, car stereos - stuff you want help installing - seems to be bb's territory.

So why can't a library purchase a download and put a cd-r on the shelf? It should be just as legal and copy-safe as a cd.

BigD-Bluez

I haven't bought a CD at Best Buy in several years, their selection of obscure old fart music being so limited, except for 2 of the Beatles re-masters the week they came out while I was hunting for crack cards. I really miss being able to wander through Tower Records and being able to find amazing things that I hadn't even known I needed.