Best Of 2000-2010 Tracklist

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Danny Boy said:
I can't imagine that enough people will still be buying compilation CDs in 2020 to make this worthwhile.
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People will still be buying CDs, certainly. Compact Disc sales still make up half of the record industry's profits and could end up becoming a larger slice of the pie (along with vinyl) now that download sales are starting to drop due to the popularity of streaming. So a $12 disc is going to make a lot more revenue for an industry that is now relying heavily on .001 cent royalties for song plays on Spotify.

As far as compilations go, they sell like gang-busters (even in the era of streaming playlists), so there will be plenty of demand for such a release. A new U2 Best Of would clear a million worldwide fairly easily.
 
LemonMelon said:
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Taylor Swift rewrites. For shame.
 
I went into a FYE a couple weeks ago, and found about 3 essential cds in the bargain bin, but I didn't buy them because I realized I could just listen to them on youtube whenever i wanted. I know, I'm part of the problem.
 
BVS said:
I'm guessing you've never seen anything pre 87?


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Apparently the 97 Bono/Edge Muscle suit and Adam Clayton helmet/face mask combo eluded him also.


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Headache in a Suitcase said:
How many cassettes do you still buy?
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Oh, hush.

2020 is not that far away. Assuming CDs are still around and not $30 a pop or something, I'll probably still buy them.

I mean, I might finally decide to go all-digital in 5 years and decide I'd rather sit around and stare at empty shelves or blank walls in my apartment and won't have CDs or books as conversation-starters when I have guests over, but at least I'll be all hip and digital or something.
 
If presentation is your concern, vinyl is a better conversation starter than CD by far. Get frames and really show your collection off. Maybe by 2020 you'll own Starbucks and can afford to completely repurchase your collection in a new format.

CDs are actually cheaper than digital now, which makes no sense whatsoever as you can rip (most of) them to digital for free.
 
But vinyl won't fit on my CD shelves. And I can't get rid of my books to make room for vinyl on those shelves. And I can't fit any additional shelves along my walls.

So. Yeah. Keeping my CDs, thanks. ;)
 
Again, half of all album sales last year were CDs. Still. They aren't going to just disappear in a few years.

If anybody does purchase digital music, I do think they'd be crazy not to buy the CD. You can often get a CD for less or the same amount as the album costs somewhere like iTunes, so why not have a physical disc with superior sound quality/artwork? Even if you just chucked the albums up on a shelf on the wall, you're still getting more bang for your buck.

The industry definitely won't be giving up the disc anytime soon. Are young people really buying them? Not really. Downloads (and some vinyl, mostly for indie releases) are what young people are grabbing up whereas middle-aged to older folks are still buying CDs out of habit. A few years back, there was something I saw that revealed that like 80% of Lana Del Rey purchases were downloads whereas 80% of the sales for the new Leonard Cohen record were CDs...

It will be hard for it to ever go away, especially since the cost to produce them isn't that much. There will always be a market if they're selling for about the same as a download.

Vinyl will eventually overtake CDs for a lot of releases, particularly indie ones. There's next to no young people that will suddenly decide to collect the latter.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
How many cassettes do you still buy?
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As you've probably seen me mention before, I buy a ton of cassettes. There's a bunch of tape labels out there with great stuff and it's a cheap way to support some cool artists.

What you may not know, is that sales of blank cassettes for these purposes are actually at an all-time high! While almost nobody in the traditional Nielsen Soundscan range is releasing cassettes (although there's been a big few the last couple years including the Guardians of the Galaxy Soundtrack last fall and the Metallica Demos release this week), there's a very, very thriving underground culture with thousands of artists selling hundreds of copies of their tape releases. And the companies making blank cassettes have been astonished at the turnaround in the last few years and how they're having record sales.

The boom is helped by things such as Cassette Store Day the past couple years, but it would be helped more if players became available. There's no real affordable cassette players out there that are new anymore. I bought a maxed out new deck on Amazon because of this with practically every feature imaginable for $200 and it works great (although the same company supposedly now makes a cheaper produced model for the same price without a ton of important features). The second a couple companies release some solid cassette players for people to purchase at a reasonable price, the market will have an even bigger resurgence. Vinyl's problem in the 90's and up until recently was that nobody was selling good players at an entry level price and now the market is bombarded with them. You've got to have the devices in order to grow the market share...

CDs, on the other hand, will never make a resurgence. They had the cool feature of consistent audio and some of the highest quality audio (in some ways) at the time. But I was only ever excited by them because it was the way I could actually listen to albums in the first place. They now hold no real purpose since you can easily download a CD-quality rip at around 200-600MB (usually FLAC) and there's even better hi-res options out there such as HDTracks. Why own a non-analog disc that lacks a signature sound when you can just play the files via a top quality computer system nowadays (or a handheld like the Pono)?

But they will always be there and people will want to listen to music on their CD players or own a physical souvenir while supporting an artist. After the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack, the next best selling tapes last year were Spanish language releases that each sold a few thousand copies on that format in the United States. So yes, there was still a small sub-group of people that wanted and needed a cassette in 2014 in order to listen to music...and via that same logic, CDs will always have a place.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
So they're making fewer and fewer CD players. Car companies aren't installing CD players as a standard option anymore. The medium is going away.

Will they still be around in 5 years? Sure I suppose. You could still buy a cassette in the late 90s if you so desired.

But they're going away. Quickly.
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Cassette players are harder and harder to come by yet the market has increased greatly as I mentioned in another post. Obviously, a lot of people still have working players to keep all these tape labels around the world afloat.

I agree that the elimination of CD players from cars and computers will lead that market to shrink even faster, certainly. But the market isn't going to collapse that fast. Even if they're only selling 30 million CDs a year total in the US five years down the road, that still means millions upon millions of dollars for someone like Adele who will surely sell at least a few hundred thousand copies, if not millions, in that format. They aren't just going to let the money flee, especially now that downloads have peaked and are starting to fall in revenue thanks to streaming.
 
I still buy CD's, but like 1 or 2 a year. You can't rip a cassette into your computer. Lol! If you take good care of your CD, it can last forever. If you listen to a cassette a lot, it eventually gets worn out. I remember back in the day when I'd get pissed when one of my favorite tapes would get eaten in the tape player. Or when the tape player started to go and you'd have to jam a pack of matches in there so it would still sound decent.

Oh yeah, I guess I'd buy another U2 Best Of. I'm a sucker for their compilation albums.
 
The format will be dead in less than 7 years. You're fooling yourself mac.

-digital formats will change
-less is more; being green, clearing up shelf space or the car console, whatever the reason people don't want or need the physical format anymore
-why buy a physical format if all you're going to do is upload and play on other devices
-the cd will never have the vinyl resurgence


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BVS said:
The format will be dead in less than 7 years. You're fooling yourself mac.

-digital formats will change
-less is more; being green, clearing up shelf space or the car console, whatever the reason people don't want or need the physical format anymore
-why buy a physical format if all you're going to do is upload and play on other devices
-the cd will never have the vinyl resurgence
Click to expand...

Aw, c'mon, there's nothing quite like the smell of the CD booklet. I agree, though, the buggers take up space.
 
I just can't see the format ever dying given that the cost to make it is negligible. The major labels in particular can easily sell thousands of the things with hardly any cost per unit (why wouldn't you sell something for $10 that costs you $1 to make). Even with the startup costs (and a lot of the artwork stuff is negligible since they still use that for digital releases, vinyl and promotion), that would be $10,000 in revenue for selling 1,000 copies of a disc.

Even if it gets to the nitty gritty by, say, 2025, plenty of major labels will have a lot of artists on their roster that can sell 1,000 compact discs with a new album. They aren't going to scoff at free money like that. Plenty of major and reissue labels right now issue compact discs of old material that they know are only going to sell like 500-1,000 copies over their lifespans. They're paying for new liner notes, packaging and remastering because they can still make a tidy profit off the endeavor. There's just zero chance they won't be able to still sell thousands of copies on CD of a new Beyonce record or whatever ten years down the road.

I can foresee plenty of indie artists foregoing the effort. They'll be more focused on the vinyl/digital and getting their name out there for tours then to potentially move a few hundred compact discs or whatever. And I don't think there's going to be a market for reissues of old movie soundtracks or forgotten 60s soul records on compact disc ten years down the road like there is right now...those markets will dry up once the CD collector basically disappears from the scene. Already, the vinyl collector has taken over CD in that regard...just take a look at Record Store Days over the past few years and how there's now barely any CD titles left.
 
BVS said:
The format will be dead in less than 7 years. You're fooling yourself mac.

-digital formats will change
-less is more; being green, clearing up shelf space or the car console, whatever the reason people don't want or need the physical format anymore
-why buy a physical format if all you're going to do is upload and play on other devices
-the cd will never have the vinyl resurgence


Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference
Click to expand...


- Audio formats will stay the same. FLAC has been the standard for high-end audio for awhile on stores like HD Tracks and for CD rips in general and I doubt that will change. MP3s will be the cheap option that comes with vinyl records or is sold via iTunes. There's no point in switching the technology when the multitude of formats we have get the jobs done in terms of high-end audio or compression.

- Agreed that people aren't as into collecting physical artifacts nowadays and it's a key reason for the CD's death.

- Absolutely. It's what makes the CD useless. Vinyl has a ton of plusses over CDs, particularly when it comes to mastering because you can't master a loud vinyl the way you can a Loudness Wars CD, etc. and, like tapes, has a unique sound to it. CDs are useless in that regard.

- Agreed. It will never, ever happen. No CD comeback. It's not analog, it's not cool, and you can get the same benefits elsewhere with modern technology without needing the whirring of the disk.

My only disagreement is about their lifespan. I still think they'll be selling millions for quite some time and that fans of major artists in particular want the keepsake for their collection (and the end of the line will only leave room for those bigger name artists the same way they tend to hog the DVD/Blu-Ray Audio market - because there's enough listeners of those big acts to keep it afloat).

The end of the era will be the $4.99 CD for new album artists and some reissued classics. The record industry could sell those directly via outlets like Amazon and it would be about equivalent to the royalties they get off iTunes or whatever. It's a way to sell to people that demand the physical artifact or they won't buy a record regardless. This will come soon enough, but I don't think it will ever really go away.
 
For all we know, the Vinyl release for The Best of 2000-2020 or whatever could be the definite article. It would certainly sound a lot better (and less loud) than the recent albums, and by that point, it will likely be the top physical format.

U2's got a hardcore base of fans/collectors that want the physical item for their libraries...it will get out there somehow even if most of the sales are just digital ones.

On another note, the CD player will actually be easy to manufacture for quite some time and people will want one if they have a massive collection (and there still are tons of people with thousands of discs that have been collecting for decades). Unlike cassette players that use a great deal of moving parts, compact disc players are pretty simplistic in that regard. As long as someone wants one, somebody will make one. We had $10 players in the Wal-Marts almost 15 years ago and I doubt they would cost much more now.
 
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