PSA: cheap CDs

rsvmark · February 2018

i may be hopelessly behind the times here but I discovered that Amazon are punting out CDs from about £3. Massively cheaper than iTunes and I picked up some Jeff Healey, No doubt, John Mayer and Iron Maiden but you do need to wade through the crap.

TTony · February 2018

I do find it odd that you can often buy a CD from Amazon for less than the cost of the digital download alternative!

Vaiai · February 2018

Similar to an article I read about 1p books
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/14/selling-used-books-on-amazon-for-a-penny

piercelmno · February 2018

TTony said:

I do find it odd that you can often buy a CD from Amazon for less than the cost of the digital download alternative!

Even more amusing that when CDs have autorip you get the download free with the CD.

ICBM · February 2018

Charity shops FTW

. £1 or £2 a go, or sometime even less. You also never know what you're going to find, and sometimes it can be real gems or things you didn't even know you were looking for.

But you *really* need to wade through all the crap...

impmann · February 2018

ICBM said:

Charity shops FTW . £1 or £2 a go, or sometime even less. You also never know what you're going to find, and sometimes it can be real gems or things you didn't even know you were looking for.

But you *really* need to wade through all the crap...

Amen to the crap! Local charity shop has *at least* 15 different albums of military band music!!!!

rsvmark · February 2018

Conversely I was finding CDs for Paul Gilbert, Ritchie Kotzen, Andy Timmonds in the region of £20+. As if they think anyone in their right mind would pay that over and above a down load...... And no cheap gags please about why would anyone pay £20 for a cd by.....;-)

Sassafras · February 2018

My local charity shop sells them for 50p.
Trouble is, they're invariably rubbish.

ICBM · February 2018

Sassafras said:

My local charity shop sells them for 50p.
Trouble is, they're invariably rubbish.

The problem for me is that it's not quite invariable - it's a fairly low rate, but just high enough that I spend a hour or more every week in the four charity shops in my nearest town flicking through racks of them (and the DVDs) on the offchance I'll find something good. It's actually fairly rare to come away with nothing, although it has to be said I have a fairly broad range of taste...

thermionic · February 2018

Reminds me of record fairs in the 80s... you'd find multiple copies of the the same albums everywhere.

I've been lucky in some second hand record shops, but not often. Not had much of a success rate in charity shops though.

DulcetJones · February 2018

thermionic said:

Reminds me of record fairs in the 80s... you'd find multiple copies of the the same albums everywhere.

I've been lucky in some second hand record shops, but not often. Not had much of a success rate in charity shops though.

"Frampton Comes Alive". One local charity shop in my area still has lots of LP's, CD's, Cassettes and the odd 8 track. Most of the LP's are like "20 Country Hits", Glen Campbell, 101 Strings etc....

guitars4you · February 2018

rsvmark said:

i may be hopelessly behind the times here but I discovered that Amazon are punting out CDs from about £3. Massively cheaper than iTunes and I picked up some Jeff Healey, No doubt, John Mayer and Iron Maiden but you do need to wade through the crap.

I still prefer a CD to a down load - something of substance on my shelf - I still like to read who is playing on that track - who wrote it - who produced it - etc etc will have a look - yet such prices also tells me in a few years time I won't be able to buy a CD

Winny_Pooh · February 2018

I just bought a brand new Charlie Winston album (recent too) for £3 shipped from Germany via ebay. Fopp also have new albums where you think, "how's that so cheap?" and a fair bit of that psychology is probably a holdover from the inflated prices of new albums in the 90's.

TTony · February 2018

music magpie advertise a lot of s/h CDs on eBay.

Easier to search through those for what you want, rather than trawl through all the High St charity shops with a load of stuff you don't want.

Bygone_Tones · February 2018

Most CD's are worthless thesedays, if they can be found on spotify or youtube. Pick them up on ebay for next to nothing if you still buy them. I just sold a job lot of albums on ebay, about £25 of them, got about £4 in my pocket after all the fees. Took forever to sell too.

Only the rare tracks you cant find on streaming services are worth buying / keeping.

Winny_Pooh · February 2018

The stuff that is still expensive and unobtainable 2nd hand is from smaller labels like ECM, much of which you do not find on spotify.

Philly_Q · February 2018

rsvmark said:

Conversely I was finding CDs for Paul Gilbert, Ritchie Kotzen, Andy Timmonds in the region of £20+. As if they think anyone in their right mind would pay that over and above a down load...... And no cheap gags please about why would anyone pay £20 for a cd by.....;-)

Yeah, it's gone to both extremes. A lot of back-catalogue stuff is really cheap, but a lot of new (or newish) releases, especially on independent labels, are £15 to £20. Plus you get all the super-duper-deluxe editions for £80+. And vinyl's expensive too (not that I've re-embraced it).

It's all a bit of a shambles.

darthed1981 · February 2018

The pricing is partly down to who it is aimed at. Reissues are almost always aimed at huge fans of the bands in question or at collectors, who likely will not mind the £15-£40 cost of the CD version ,depending what is in it.

However just bog-standard Cd issues drop in price staggeringly quickly. Unlike Vinyl, which is again aimed at collectors, CD remains horrible to store in it's original brittle jewel cases, and the plastic ages as well, going foggy, hence the rise of the Digipack, but this doesn't protect the discs as well from dust. The discs themselves, early ones anyway, do decay over time!

Although CD isn't going anywhere, it is hard to justify having thousands around your house these days, when Spotify et al offer digital music so conveniently.

As has been pointed out, even Music Magpie have cut their offers for CDs and DVDs so much now that they are basically scrap value, if you have 10 CDs to get rid of, better save your time, maybe a charity shop will get £1 or £2 for them!

thecolourbox · February 2018

Bygone_Tones said:

Most CD's are worthless thesedays, if they can be found on spotify or youtube. Pick them up on ebay for next to nothing if you still buy them. I just sold a job lot of albums on ebay, about £25 of them, got about £4 in my pocket after all the fees. Took forever to sell too.

Only the rare tracks you cant find on streaming services are worth buying / keeping.

I disagree with that personally, I do find YouTube and Spotify interesting and useful, they never sound as good as putting a CD on and listening to it properly. I think that is a mix of sound quality and experience, probably more the latter.

ICBM · February 2018

I’m not going to stop buying CDs. I prefer to have something physical, as well as the higher sound quality.

Although I dislike jewel boxes I haven’t had any go foggy - breakage is the issue, and a large number from charity shops come that way - but they’re easily replaced anyway. As far as I know I’ve never had a CD decay... and I’ve been collecting them since 1989.

Digipaks aren’t the solution either, they fall apart.

richardhomer · February 2018

I still buy CDs - though I don’t have a CD player. I rip them to a NAS drive using DB Poweramp software and play the files via a quite high end (Naim) streamer. Compared to Tidal lossless - which is ‘CD’ quality - the ripped CDs sound better.

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PSA: cheap CDs

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