Just thinking out loud...

Quite some people would like music back on a tangible medium. Yes or no?
I think Yes and would support it fully.

For the sales of it, the artwork, the collecting, the joy of taking the time to play through it, the story behind it etc.

Now CD is dead. No 44khz anymore going forward. Phones playback at 48khz or higher. Video is 48khz.

Vinyl is back but for how long?
Analog vibe is in the music through mixing and processing. No need for a vinyl record to have that actually.

Streaming is now a standard for convenience. But what tangible digital can there be for high quality music? And in what format?

Then it hit me: DSD. The highest quality bit master.

There is not much software nor hardware to use DSD. And these may be made so that conversion to PCM formats (wav,mp3,flac) can be made nearly impossible for most people.

DSD with watermarked coded files on a romcard. The files contain watermarks of artist etc and romcard number and is scrambled. Playback only with registered DSD playback devices. Sales profits for sure directed towards the artists again.

Romcards in a lile DVD case with artwork and all, the lyrics in full, a small merch item.

Would you take it?

Op out of curiosity how old are you? I’m an elder millenial myself and not trying to judge, just trying to understand the conversation.

I think vinyl is the only format that still could be played if there'll be power outage on a global scale. Just spin it with hands.

I think CD quality a thing to strive for in the age of compressed YouTube audio with loading or processing stutter.

That would make it non-tangible to me. I need to be able to copy the track, open it in the editor, slow it down, hear individual channels and such. All at any time I want without need to be online.

CD's are not "dead" by any means. Just go to YouTube and search "CD Comeback". Loads of vids on it.

New cars no longer include CD players, but you can buy bluetooth CD players dirt cheap at Amazon.

Computers no longer come with CD/DVD drives...but again, external USB CD/DVD burners/players are cheap and easily ordered from Amazon or other online retailers.

CD audio is still WAY higher quality than MP3. But most significant is the nostalgia for CD's..because they are a physical product u can hold and come with a booklet with details about the artist or band.

Sure, the bulk of listeners subscribe to streaming services. But the CD is not dead..it has come back from the brink.

Personally, I much prefer CD's. Especially when driving through Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, where I often lose internet radio or streaming.

I have always wondered if there is a way to protect your wav files on a memory stick so they can't be copied.. also if you can include your info and maybe a picture with it.. that would be great for merchandise sales but I could never find anything like that while still being affordable to make money on.. I wish a new standard besides streaming would come.

Almost nobody cares about the ultimate quality of the media. Most mixes sound like absolute shit anyway, CD or otherwise. Some buy vinyl but Vinyl is 99/100 times just shit mixes on vinyl. And how many people buying vinyl own a *good* turntable and hifi system?

Few notice the degraded quality of various streaming codecs and some Bluetooth devices. They like convenience and the cost.

I don’t love streaming or whatever but I also don’t like buying something that’ll just become inevitable household detritus. Buy a CD or vinyl just to end up ripping the mp3 / downloading it myself and never use the media again.

As for copy prevention on USB drives, I think most artists have bigger shit to worry about. If ONLY I could give some stranger a usb and they’d share my tunes with 100,000 of their closest friends. The last label release I did they tried to dmca people sharing it online and ultimately didn’t make one but of difference in the end, and would have been better if we really got that kind of attention instead of falling into obscurity.

Sadly Lou Ottens is no longer with us - I guess out of anyone he could've given an extremely well qualified answer to the OG's question.

Personally, I like the convenience of MP3's that one can simply upload to their phone.

I still have the capacity to play CD, DVD, Minidisk, 'Philips' cassette, VHS Video & Mp4's. However aside from my collection of CD's the other formats are pretty redundant.

I don't use Spotify (I prefer to stream music from YouTube if I don't have it in any other medium).

I really liked vinyl in 12inch & LP format in my formative years.

One of my most memorable moments - buying Oxygene on vinyl for the 1st time with my paper round money circa 1981, putting it on my deck, then laying down on my bedroom floor with a speaker either side of my head whilst playing through side one eyes closed - short break then rinse & repeat for side two.

Blew my young mind (without the need for additional chemical stimulae I might add).

And yes, the album artwork and inner sleeves were great to admire & contemplate. But the vinyl was a bugger for getting scratched, warping or just wearing out so give me durable & convenient anyday.

For me it's mostly about what the music is saying anyway, so cover art etc has always been a lesser influence in my experiences.

In conclusion, as an older gentleman, I don't want yet another format to have to transfer my musical collection to thanks, even if it does cartwheels around Mp3's quality-wise.

P.S. MP3's are also a great final medium to master my own modest musical ponderings to, from a convenience standpoint - too late to worry about copyright theft with AI absorbing everyone's content like the massive Borg assimilation machine that it is!!!

And tbh I'd be quite flattered if someone wants to rip my music for their own personal enjoyment.

I still buy CDs of stuff that I really like. Even Blu-Rays of my favorite movies. I still mostly stream stuff. Life's busy, and it's rare I can just sit through a full album uninterrupted.

for myself i have many cd's of photos and music
infernal external drives necessary if not in the machine

physical media is an established niche for certain consumers

been digging out old CDs recently. i like it.
absolutely despise the concept of streaming.
vinyl is more like committing to print and making an audio artwork piece. which i like the idea of as well. niche market.

but CDs get corrupted (quite easy lol just write on it with indelible marker, guaranteed to kill it, every time. all those ones are dead. was surprised that most of the others have survived, 20 yrs later - self-written CDR pirating.. however even when i had loads of legit CDs, some of those would have weird things happen)

mp3s are good/very useful, but there's a weird flatness if you're not directly in front of the playback eg: over a distance - not sure about this, would have to study more closely.

one of the great sources of inspiring audio - for me - used to be SoulSeek. which is filesharing, but i'm surprised nobody found a format for that that remunerated creators.
eg: buy your music by 'weight' - i guess that's happening on these streaming sites but i don't participate in that.

Sorry for being Freudian, you miss something else from that era and tangibility is the illusion attached to it

I dont miss Beatles technology, i miss a time were there were plenty Of places to play Live music.I'm being paid for that. That's why that era music very good, Not the format or the media's Surface material...

Music never stopped being Tangible; by you in a CD, of by others in a HD in the cloud. This changes nothing.

What do you mean "back to tangible media"? I never completely stopped buying it. Sure enough, now that we have streaming (Tidal lossless quality is my preference), physical media is no longer a necessity, but that just means I am more selective in what I buy for my permanent archives. Still buy CDs, C-cassettes and vinyl, and could even see myself buying 1/4" reels (15 or 7.5 IPS) if they werent stupidly priced like they are now.

I think this sort of discussion smells a lil anachronistic - its like ITB vs OTB all over again. The future is hybrid, and digital and physical media will coexist in varying combinations.

Something they can make from the plastic bottles in the ocean.
Which I think should be banned. Liquid must be stored in glass. How's that for a law.

It can be allowed. but not for sale.

DRM-crippled formats? **** that - total clown show. Feeds into the hands of the big media corps only

I agree with the artist above who blames the lack (or low demand) for venues to listen to music. I include both live performance and smaller-scale DJ spaces within that - a new DJ wanting to learn their craft has even fewer options than a new band around here these days, albeit the bands aren’t exactly rolling in venues either

Can’t go anywhere to hear music anymore. Everywhere used to have music

It’s interesting on streaming - I listen to virtually nothing but YouTube in the car, as it’s full of fantastic old DJ mixes. In my garage bar, I have an ancient iPod stuffed with music, but quite a limited selection - I actually enjoy the warm blanket of that limited selection as I listen to it over and over …. With random streaming people are less likely to do that

I think any “new” (maybe already avaible, but “niche”) physical format would be going nowhere. If I have to buy a dedicated player, it has to provide a substantial advantage in comparison to what it’s already avaible (and in comparison to streaming as well).

Vinyls (and, up to a certain degree, CDs) can leverage on nostalgia, there are good chances of finding some kind of CD player in any house, while record players almost feel like a nice piece of forniture… and you have a huge catalog avaible (you only need money and storage space!).

Can you say the same for other formats? So, what would make a “new” format worth a widespread adoption? It’s critical to get reasonable prices and to have a decent catalogue of titles… otherwise, why bother?
Honestly, I see mostly downsides/issues…

Also, any physical media doesn’t go well with the requirements of modern lifestyle, so whenever I buy music in a physical format it has to provide more value than what I’m losing in lack of convenience and higher costs.

I love music, I still buy it (mainly lossless files, sometimes also physical such as CDs or vinyls) and I love a high quality sound… yet I doubt a “new” physical media can be successful.
A lot of people don’t even buy music and don’t really understand what audio quality means: how would you sell a “new” media to them?


If I want to dig a little deeper, I have a feeling that physical media is not the real issue. People buy physical in a search of something they can connect with… but maybe the issue is music with no longevity, which you hear once or twice in your life and that’s more than enough (and, of course, it’s not worth of a physical purchase). And, maybe also out lifestyle is too fast and we don’t have time to appreciate?
But even if people had the chance to connect more with the music, would they choose the physical media or would they keep the convenience of the modern computer media?

I appreciate the cover artwork, the booklet, reading the credits and the lyrics, knowing I will always be able to listen to that music and then one day I will be able to pass it to someone else (if the media doesn’t degrade)… but sometimes I wonder if physical is a surrogate for “connection” with the music?


I don’t know, I have no clear vision, other than a gut feeling that any “new” physical format is likely to fail and become niche at best.

The point is that if the music could be sold as not able to copy, well not easily with just a button, artist would have the option of not releasing music to Spotify or something and at that point it is free.

If you can hear music, you can copy music

Until such time as they can stream it directly into your brain, which is now of course possible as everyone who had a Covid jab now has five full bars of 5G inside

I think cd is a great format and I still buy tons of them. I think I bought about 20 or so the last week.

I don’t use any streaming services, as I find the concept to just be slightly more moral than stealing through Pirate bay or similar criminal sites.

Have never stopped buying records, CDs, or cassettes. Have received new ones of each in the mail in the last week.

Have never paid for streaming, don't care about digitally hoarding files of music i don't like enuff to just buy so I don’t do that anymore.

Much like with music production software, i just pretend none of it exists and simply keep on going doing the things that actually interest me.

This weekend will be spent almost exclusively hand silk screening sleeves for my album which drops next weekend. Black matte sleeves, two color screens on each side, blood red and reflective silver. Shit is gonna look bananas.

You don’t have to do shit to keep up with the Joneses. The Joneses have shit taste in music and don't know dick about art so why give a shit what they do!

Light years to late, this sentiment.
5-10 years ago I was thinking about offering my elaborations on SD cards.
I was years too late, of course. A decade off.

To the younger generations, music is a comodity like tab water.
You turn it on, you switch it off.

Tangible is the switch, at best.

Aside from the sentimentality of it, what really interests me is the economic differences. If you buy something on physical media, the fee to the artist is paid, regardless of if one ever listens to it. Alternately, if I listen to it a lot, and then sell it to someone who then also listens to it a lot, the same single fee is paid. Unlike streaming, the number of times a track is played is completely decoupled from the fee the artist gets. But the streaming companies pay such a tiny fee to the artist that it's basically nothing, unless you can scale up to a huge factor.

Meanwhile, I pay Apple a fee that is essentially what I might have spent on a CD every month to get all-you-can-eat access to their catalog. My fee doesn't change depending on how much I listen. I could keep the music going 27/7, or never use it, and the fee is $10.99/month. Actually, I pay a bit more than that for a family plan where 5 people enjoy the same access. Does my nephew and sister actually use it? Do my parents use it? I have no idea, but they can. I had to laugh that my dad, in his 80s, was frustrated when he was trying to buy a jazz album and he couldn't figure it out. I had to explain that he could listen to anything on Apple Music at any time for free, like Netflix.

maybe it's not the same feeling as having it in your 'library'.

like, .. you might not have instant recall of everything you've liked, whereas flipping through a collection, you come across stuff you might not have been thinking of. .. ?

Tangible is cool until you gotta move. I like cassette for my own output.

Records have charm, streaming services suck.

Used to listen to Barry White in my car that had a cd player. Thrift store cds are one of the best ways to find music.

what.a.tune.

masterclass in disco strings.

I just got a box of my old CD's. It's nice to look at the covers, art, credits and comments. Every single one of them recalls a memory of the time I bought it. I can't say the same about music that I bought online digitally - absolutely zero memories of those.
I still have covers of my favourite cassettes but no cassettes - I don't miss that format at all. Noisy in annoying way - either this or muffled with Dolby noise reduction - no thanks.
For me CD's are the best but I grew up with them so this is why. All of them copied as flac to my phone because I'm not gonna buy portable CD player lol those were absolutely horrendous. Never again.

Whatever the new format it would be in the future, it will be only for hardcore enthusiasts. General population is lazier than ever and they don't want to bother with anything than cheap/free streaming. If making playlists is too much of work for general population, I can't imagine how annoyed they would be if they had to do physical activity to play some music. Too much work man, too much, too much

Spot on - I don’t have a cassette in the car, but I have one in the garage and I listen to a bunch of old tapes

In the car I have a six disk CD changer, plus a CD slot in the radio I can use, and I use both of them all the time

Her indoors car has car play and all that shit, where I listen to YouTube off the phone, but I much refer getting in my own, flicking through the six CDs in the changer and making do with what I have

The six CDs are approx one of the Anthony Rother “machine” mixes, a Ms Kitten mix Album, brotherhood and power corruption and lies, then unknown pleasures and still by joy division and finally Squirrel and G Man 24 hour party people carnt smile and white out

Surprising to find out the new playstation doesn't play cds.

Afaik.. I've just searched it. It does have a drive though. Whether you will find something that plays cds in every household in years to come may be dwindling.

There's a thing called mix cloud. Or mixtapes or something, came across it searching a certain club.. And ended up on a mad hyperlink spiderweb mission to all kinds of things.
Club tapes from all over the world (a lot not on the youtube)

Listen mother licker, all media is valid. If it sings to you, it sings to you

If it doesn’t , then it doesn’t

Come, fly … the teeth of the wind!

All copying is valid. There is no copyright

Anyone who claims copyright? **** you - go liste to the future sound of London or something

I may have had a few beers and a nice bottle of Alsace wine (my fave)

Totally agree.. The only thing I can't play is reel tape

Well, edison toilet roll things and 8 track tapes... I don't have playback for those either

I don't know what they're even called. Tube records?