I’m 40, and when I was a teenager, EVERY band had CDs. And I know a lot of music has shifted to digital. So much so that I heard Best buy stopped selling CDs. Presumably because nobody buys them.
So I wonder what musicians sell besides t-shirts and posters at concerts. Do the kids have ANY CDs? Do they buy mp3’s? Do they just use pandora and spotify? Do they even own their own music?
I’ve given up on trying to understand the lingo. Other generations lingo sounds stupid to me, but still understandable based on context.
I have NO idea what a skibifibi toilet is…sounds like a toilet after some taco bell and untalented jazz, but maybe I can try to understand their thought process on media consumption.
Nkt exactly young anymore, but I would and I do. Music you don’t own can disappear any day on the whims of a company. I don’t like that.
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Thanks for the clarification. I’m 43 and have never seen a bagpipe concert and thought I was missing out. I don’t consider renn faire or highland games to be bagpipe concerts since that’s just a small part of the larger experience.
This comment makes me extremely happy that a teenager is going to bagpipe concerts.
May I introduce you to Ally The Piper
This comment made me day. Bagpipe music at a Ren faire. What a homie.
If they did, it would likely be a collector thing.
What would they even put them in?
It still blows my mind that CD players aren’t something young people have.
And don’t even get me STARTED on dvd players!
I’m 19 and made it a point to include a CD/DVD read/write in my PC! Mostly as a même but it comes in useful the one time my dad needs to digitalize something lol (also I got it for free from a friend who had some laying around for some reason)
Age is such a strange thing to me. While I was waking up, and seeing some strange news report on tv that some government building had been blown up or something, you were still a few years away from being born.
I was all of 17, about to be 18 in 2 weeks, and I yelled down the stairs like a smartass “MOM!!! THE PENTAGON IS ON FIRE!!!”
As if she was going to personally do something about it. Usually, me being a smartass would warrent something being yelled back at me. Something like “LOST_MY_MIND!!! QUIT BEING A SMARTASS!!!”
Except on this day…silence. I could hear the TV on downstairs, and she ALWAYS yelled at me for leaving lights and tvs on if I wasn’t in the room. So it would be highly hypocritical of her to leave the TV on, and leave the house. Very out of character for her. She wasn’t yelling at my dumbass dubachery, but also the tv was on. Was she ok?
Mom??? You down there???
Silence besides the talking news report of the TV.
Hmmmm, maybe I should go check if she’s home. What would make her leave the tv on, but leave the house in such a hurry?
Thats when I saw her. Wrapped like a burrito in a blanket in her favorite chair, tears running down her face. Openly weeping.
You have to keep in mind for context, the ONLY time in my 17 years I’d EVER seen her cry was 2 years earlier at her dads funeral.
Oh shit…something is real. It was at that moment I knew to shut the fuck up, sit on the floor next to her, and watch this news report. Don’t say one god damned word until you know 100% whats going on. Mom is crying. Why is mom crying???
And thats when the tv changed from the pentagon, which was on fire, to the world trade center towers, which had massive smoke pumes coming out the sides.
Oh fuck. What the hell??? The pentagon is on fire, two different world trade center towers are both seperately on fire???
Now they’re talking about a plane crash in PA.
I have zero clue what the fuck is happening. I only know two things for fact. Number 1, our country is under attack. And number 2, I’m getting drafted to war in 2 weeks when I’m 18.
Turns out I was wrong about the second point. No mandatory draft for my generation ever took place. Though I stand by my reasoning for why I thought that at the time.
Local news in Cleveland was showing bus shelters that had been spray painted to say “Death to America”. All of this shown to me in a 15 minute period around 9:30am.
Despite the fact that I was living in Elyria Ohio, a city I’m sure terrorists couldn’t find on the map, much less pronounce, our mall was shut down for the day at 10am. Which is when it was scheduled to open on a Tuesday.
This affected me, because at noon I was set to start my shift at McDonalds in the food court of the mall. I got the call at about 9:50am. I remember feeling angry, and wanting to argue that I didn’t deserve to miss my 2nd ever day of work. However the only words I spoke were “Hello? …yes…Oh…ok…yeah, no I understand. You keep safe, ya hear me? Ok…ok, yeah, ok bye”
I’m not sure I can put into words a way to fully articulate the emotion in the air that day. Even though I knew I was so far from any place that would recieve danger, I knew my place was watching tv, next to my mom, knife in my hand. My mom tried convincing me I was being silly, but in that house was just her, me, and 2 cats. In my mind I was protecting the family. From what? I didn’t know. And that was the scary part. You DIDN’T know whats next. It’s easy to look back, and say I was safe. However the news reported that san fransisco, seattle, and miami were also hit…and then later retracted those reports as false. You didn’t know WHAT was next. Or WHERE.
So I sat on the couch, knife in hand, no gun in the house, protecting the family.
The next day I worked my McDonalds shift. People were zombies. We all just shuffled from one place to the next in erie silence. Northeast Ohio is a friendly place. I often get slightly annoyed at how friendly we are. You can’t walk 15 feet without some stranger saying hello. Yet the day after…nothing.
I worked the counter at McDonalds, and I was going through the motions just like everybody else. It was the most grim feeling of nobody knowing how to socialize. Instead of my cheerful chipper self, I just said “Welcome to mcdonalds. I’ll take your order”. And every person saying the least amount of words possible.
“A big mac meal”
“Large?”
“Yeah.”
“Coke?”
“Thats fine.”
“5.87”
“Here. Keep the change”
And NOBODY was offended by others speaking like that. Everybody knew we were all just trying to exist. And thats all it was. Just existing in a public space. Nothing more.
Our manager came in slightly late, and said “Anyone that wants a flag pin, give them a flag pin. Would you like a flag pin?” And NOBODY turned down a flag pin on Sept 12th. I still have mine.
At one point our line was several people deep, which was the norm in the days before uber eats. And as this woman is 2nd in line, she snspped. Fell to her knees crying. 4 lines wide, maybe 6 people deep in each line, and she falls to her knees crying.
All 4 lines check on her, almost in a football huddle formation. Helping her up. Eventually, the 4 lines formed one massive hug. I couldn’t get to join in, because I was behind the counter. Then I notice the 2 people on grill passing behind me. All other 3 register workers, and our manager were hugging, and now our 2 grill guys. I was completely wrapped up in the moment that I didn’t notice the employee hug. But once I did, I joined in. Eventually someone started a U-S-A chant, and now the whole food court was chanting it. All 8 fast food resteraunts, and their customers, joined in INSTANTLY.
It goes down in my mind as one of the most surreal moments of my life.
If you weren’t there, I don’t know how else to describe the feeling of helplessness and unity, and total loss that everyone was feeling at the time. Right now may be the most divided this country has been since the civil war, but Sept 12th in my mind is the most unified we’ve EVER been.
And then you were born 2 years later. Long after that feeling had passed. And I share this story with you, with the knowledge that every Boomer knows where they were when JFK was killed. Every millennial knows where they were on 9/11. And I HOPE there is never a “Every Gen Z knows where they were when _____ happened”.
That’s why age is so strange to me. The idea of knowing first hand how events played out, and you reading about it in text books. The same way I read about JFK in text books. Then the scope of it changes when I think of my grandmother. My hero in life. Born in 1920, died in 2023. She was 103 years old. She was there to grow up in the great depression. She saw firsthznd the destruction of WWII. My grandfather left to go fight hitler…and he came back. She saw the moon landing, and the civil rights movement of the 60s, and the JFK assasination, and watergate, and vietnam, and the cold war, and the iran hostage situation, and the iraq war, and 9/11, and the second iraq/middle east war, and the first black president, and covid, and finally at 103 she died.
And through all that, her message was only love. She loved you if even if she never met you. She didn’t care your race, religion, gender, background. None of that mattered. All she cared about when you were in her kitchen was that you sit with her, and tell her how you’re doing. She wanted you to do well. She just cared that you weren’t racist. You weren’t homophobic. You weren’t hateful of any people. All people were welcome, except for those filled with hate in their heart. She had no tolerance for hate. She literally raised a whole city and family better than that.
And I may have lost track of my original point, but I stand by my retelling of my story, and telling of the good Gram did for the world. One more person blessed, and hopefully inspired by tales of Gram, I say. So I’ll leave you with that, and zero regrets.
This made me cry! Thank you for sharing your story. I was 19 when 9/11 happened. I was driving to work, it was a gloriously beautiful morning, and I threw on the radio. I wanted to hear some happy oldies music. Oldies 98.1 had on a news report. The words didn’t even penetrate into my mind, I just tried another station. Then another. All news.
And here’s what a naive young idiot I was: it did not even occur to me that something was really wrong. I didn’t listen to one word of the news reports to find out what the big deal was - I just figured it was some boring government stuff like a new trade agreement or whatever, so I gave up on the radio and played a CD instead.
I didn’t know what was happening until I got to work and a coworker told me “dude, a plane just hit the World Trade Center!” And the first thing out of my idiot mouth was “did the pilot eject?” because 1) clearly I’ve watched too many movies and 2) I was picturing some little prop plane, not a passenger jet. So fucking naive.
So we all just turned on Stern and listened to his show. It was mostly stream of consciousness live coverage of what was happening in New York. And my asshole boss wasn’t having it. The company I worked for was a little retailer that sold used VHS on ebay, and our boss said “ebay’s still up, so we’re still working!” (And here I’d like to say a very belated FUCK YOU, Mike!) But nobody could concentrate.
My boyfriend at the time was a student at Temple University. Back then, Temple never canceled classes for anything. So he called to tell me he was headed to the train station to go down to campus. And I’d just heard that the plane came down in Pennsylvania, and I’m scared to death that Philly is next. Because you’re right, nobody knew how big this was going to get. So I’m crying, asking him to please skip class (luckily they did eventually cancel classes!), and I don’t know. Everything felt helpless and chaotic. I just wanted to gather everyone I loved close and not let go.
Eventually most of us just went home. Our boss was angry but we just started filling out to the parking lot. And it was so surreal - that numb, but also on-the-verge-of-tears, bleak, almost dreamlike headspace. Your post expressed that so clearly.
I hugged my boyfriend so hard when I got home. I knew he was fine but I was so glad to actually touch him and know he was OK. That something was normal.
Well this turned into a novel… but I guess it’s almost that time of year when we all recount our 9/11 story!
I knew he was fine but I was so glad to actually touch him and know he was OK.
Theres something different between knowing logically someone is ok in a time of crisis, and KNOWING someone is ok in a time of crisis because you’re there with them to experience their presence. Its that little extra bit of confirmation that drives the human experience, and irrationally drives emotion.
Logically, you could be talking to them on the phone, and know they aren’t near the attacks. But humans aren’t logical. Emotions aren’t logical, but emotions are human. So I totally get what you’re saying.
Man, I have no words after that. Thanks for sharing your story. Definitely not what I was expecting on a post about CD drives haha
It does feel surreal to watch videos of news reports from the attacks. At school we get taught a lot about WWII, but there is very little video from that time, compared to 2001. The outside reporting near the twin towers makes me emotional, even though I was born in 2004 on another continent. It just gives such a strong feeling of connection for some reason. Something which we do not really have in the NL.
Times are trying currently, with multiple wars close to NATO borders. I’m somewhat anxious about a World War 3 starting in the near future. I hope it doesn’t come that far, but at least we would all probably feel a sense of not national, but international connection to each other. Which is the only comforting thing around the idea of WWIII I have.
Dang. Wasn’t expecting that many feels this morning. I was a sophomore in college on 9/11 not far from where you were. Actually, we might have listened to the same radio station. I was a fan of 107.9 The End! Maybe this is what they call a mid life crisis, but I’ve been thinking a lot about generations lately too. Thanks for the tale, it really hit home.
I’m 27 and regularly atttlend concerts in the 80s goth/postpunk/arkwave/synthpop scene. Every band has a CD and I always get one, though if they have MCs, which they sometimes have, I preffer those. As a profesional poser, listening to MCs on a walkman just has this unique feel CDs can’t replicate, while also helping with my attnention span since I can’t just easily skip songs midway and stick to the few ones I like, instead forcing me to enjoy the whole album which eventually grows on me.
However, I’m probably not a good reference, since I also regularly host parties, DJ and help the local scene promoter with events, so music is pretty big part of my life.
Also, I don’t really listen to them much. I have my own NAS with music, and instead of paying for spotify I download what I need from a private torrent tracker (which I need mostly for DJing, which I never get paid for and always volunteer, just like we do the events with free entry, yo no income from that). That’s why I make sure to buy the CDs, while also having a budget that’s in the same range as I’d spend on Spotify, that I make sure to use every month to buy an album I liked on Bandcamp, slowly replacing everything I’ve pirated with either CDs or bought digital albums. I feel like that way a lot more of my money end up at the hands of the artists, than if I just payed for a streaming service I don’t want to support, while also not limiting me just to the few albums I can afford (and also giving me offline backup if they ever pull the songs from spotify). Pirating is not ideal and I generaly don’t endorse it, but I feel like my approach is kind of morally ok-ish in the long run. Still not excusable, but I’d say better than just paying for Spotify.
What are MCs? Do you mean cassettes? No body ever really called them micro-cassettes, (those were the thing you used to record messages on an answering machine or dictation) so that doesn’t really fit. Certainly not mini discs?
I though that MC means magnetic cassete, every time I shopped for them on our local version of ebay, they had MC in the name. Might be local thing, though.
That makes sense, but it’s going to confuse anyone that grew up with the many varieties of magnetic tape available. Look on YouTube for Techmoan if you want to go on a charming deep dive into archaic and niche media formats.
I always thought that MC stood for music cassette (as opposed to the videocassette tapes back in the day), but I never looked it up and you make a very good point…
I’m 27 and regularly atttlend concerts in the 80s
does the math
Holy shit! A time traveler!!!
Please take me back to the 90s!!! PLEASE!!! I don’t want to be HERE anymore!!!
I call the goth scene/genre 80s goth mostly because in the last decade, saying you listen to goth music would for most people mean Nightwish and gothic metal, which has exactly zero things in common with the 80s goth bands like The Cure or Sisters of Mercy. Calling it a trad goth may have been less confusing, though.
I know some people who will buy vinyls but that’s as far as it goes for physical media in music. Music CDs are pretty much foreign objects in 2024 and people just stream instead.
A CD would be cool, but where am I ever going to use it? I don’t have a CD player at all…but I do have an Apple Music subscription. A vinyl at least is large and works better as a decoration. Don’t really see the point in using a CD.
If I want to support the artist I’m seeing, I just buy clothing instead.
P.S. we don’t know what a skibidi toilet is either. Ask gen alpha.
A CD would be cool, but where am I ever going to use it?
I’m still mad at the lack of available disk drives to the average individual these days, and now they’re taking my fucking 3.5mm jacks!
I just turned 40. For my birthday I went to go see a small disco funk band. They run their own merch table, tour around the country in a van, have day jobs, etc. I wanted to support them so I was gonna buy a T-shirt, but it was $25, I only had $20 on me, and they didn’t take card. So I got a $15 CD. They also didn’t have any change, so I had to wait 5 minutes for them to go to the bar and get them to break a 20.
Then I got home and realized I didn’t even have a CD player. So I dug out an old DVD drive and installed in my desktop, ripped the CD to FLAC, pulled the drive out, and threw the CD into my old box of CDs I haven’t opened in 10+ years…
I was gonna say “only $25 for a concert t-shirt?” because they wanted like $50 for one at a Pantera concert about 6 months ago…then I saw this was over a decade ago.
Yeah, but that’s Pantera. Any time you go to an old head concert they’re going to charge you fuck you prices. My wife went to see Motley Crue a few years ago, and they were charging about the same, and a bit less for Jett’s merch. As she so eloquently put it, “the main reason old bands go on tour is they need money”.
Going to smaller/newer bands’ shows has much more reasonably priced merch. But for those old heads, you’re paying for the well known name and so they can supplement their social security payment while trying not to break a hip on stage.
The tickets were only like $100 a piece for second level seats and that was mostly because of the ticket pricing bullshit. It was like $60 for the ticket and $40 of “fuck you, pay me” money and then the taxes on top of that. I saw Metallica back in 2018 and it was $100 for pit tickets. I was like 30 feet from James.
No, this was 2 months ago
Its an independent band that runs their own merch table after the show. Its not a band with 3+ decades of content that can charge $50 for a shirt.
Ah, I misread the last part. Of course if it’s a small Indie band they’re not going to charge out of the ass for stuff, that’d be dumb on their part.
Am a data hoarder with a shitton of flac yet I still buy cds. (And blue ray/dvds). It’s really about owning things and not losing acess on the whim of some random contracts between copyright holders.
Younger person in my 20s. Most of my friends use Spotify. I grew up buying music on iTunes and will continue to do that. I also have little interest in discovering new music and a preference for straight-up owning instead of streaming something I do not own. (Yes, I am aware I should probably go reread the TOS to see if I actually own or if Apple can remotely take my “ownership” away and back up the files like mad.) But I know my approach is uncommon amongst my social group.
I do not have CDs and will not buy one. I know of their use for backing things up. I keep external hard drives but otherwise do not really like physical media and want to keep the count of physical things I have down. Another thing to collect dust, to have to try to keep nice because I like things to look nice, and to be heartbroken about when I inevitably spill something on it/scratch it/otherwise break or damage it, whether in a “it will lose functionality” way or just a superficial way. I’ll avoid the pain and just go digital.
I am also just not much of a merch person. I might donate money to support musicians but please don’t give me a T-shirt I’ll never want to wear (they are not my style, I might buy clothing if it actually fits my style but merch clothing almost always doesn’t) or a poster I’ll never hang up. If I like your music I might buy sheet music to play it myself. Better be accurate though, not a simplification, or I’ll turn up my nose and transcribe it myself. Can’t guarantee I’ll have perfect results, but I will be closer to the original than the simplified piano/vocal/maybe guitar scores that are often put out.
I also don’t know what skibidi toilet is, besides a meme that really belongs to people a decade younger than me. I don’t care to find out but I am happy to let them have their fun.
Younger person in my 20s. Most of my friends use Spotify. I grew up buying music on iTunes and will continue to do that.
Allow me to introduce you to iTunes father…Napster.
Buckle up, because it’s about to be a bumpy ride!
Is that still good? I heard about some old music piracy sites now being flooded with viruses and the like. I don’t feel like having to be careful with what I download so I’ll probably resort to a YouTube to mp3 downloader since most of what I have is probably posted on YouTube, and I am not one of those people who can detect a difference in audio quality with different file types. I appreciate the help!
I’m pretty sure the virus thing is music industry propaganda. I never had any problems like that.
STILL good? Uhhhh…no. Napster got shut down in 2001, but it’s existence is what led to the creation of iTunes.
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I went to a small concert while on a road trip a couple months ago and the artists had CDs for sale. I figured cool, I’ll have some music to listen to if I hit no cell service areas. But it turned out that my CD changer in my car hadn’t been used in so long that the motor wasn’t strong enough to ingest the CD. I was sad.
Nah, CDs don’t make sense for me anymore. Nowadays I stream from Apple Music.
You buy stuff at a concert to support the band.
People go to the concert to support and see the band. Not everyone is able to double down when prices are the way they are.
Okay, I’m sorry. Please allow me to rephrase.
When one buys stuff at a concert, the intention is to support the band.
jfc
I’m not trying to be obtuse and I’m not against supporting artists. I’m just pointing out that a lot of people don’t want stuff they won’t use even if it does offer support. That’s why everyone will typically offer wearable merch. If you bought it based on how it looks chances are you’ll wear it. The reality is cds don’t get much use anymore, vinyls don’t travel and most people can’t tell the difference in quality or haven’t taken the time to notice it and will never unless taught.
I am literally importing them from japan and other countries on discogs because I prefer that over downloading from soulseek.
Last resort if either physical costs 100% more than MSRP or not as much sentimental value I will just pirate the flac or sometimes I buy digitally.After I aquired the media I rip it and put it on my Jellyfin server.
Age: 25 y/o
No, because I wouldn’t go to a concert. Too much people.
For me it’s not about the crowd it’s about the parking situation. F that.
I went to a small concert and you could buy their music on a flash drive. That was awesome. I like that option
At a anime convention there was a table with various CDs of the band playing that night. I couldn’t go to concert, but bought a CD to support them even though it was going to be a slight inconvenience to rip it. I still have all my old CDs (I don’t really have that much so haven’t gotten rid of them. I keep them in a plastic container) so just put it with the rest.
If I had a CD player, sure. Can a PS5 play CDs? 🤔
Yes.
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i wouldn’t even go to a concert but if i did probably not. i mean there’s no cd players left in my life so what can you even do with it? play frisbee?
