I buy CDs because I want to own my music, instead of renting low-quality versions from a company that can unilaterally block my access on a whim, degrades quality with watermarks, includes DRM so I can't listen where I want, and forces me to use their shitty software that only works on half my devices. CDs are often cheaper than renting the vendor-locked versions, and it only takes a couple minutes to rip a high-quality version.

That said, I'll pay even more if they offer high-quality downloads on Bandcamp.

There are services that let you buy music as uncompressed, DRM-free downloads. Qobuz comes to mind.

There isnt much reason to buy a physical disc unless you want the disc itself.

And why wouldn't you want the disc? Not only is it (as noted) often cheaper, it's also a durable read-only archival-quality backup. Come to think of it, a pressed CD is probably the best ever consumer technology for that so far. What other medium has safely borne nearly a gigabyte across nearly 40 years, and can still be read in the average office?

Right! I try though to buy the CDs directly from the artists - when I catch them live even better - in the hope more of that money goes in their pockets like that.

> and it only takes a couple minutes to rip a high-quality version.

Which drive do you use? My specially-selected-for-the-task drive (selected 10 year ago, to be honest, and I don't know what I will do when it dies, all modern drives looks to be crap) with firmware tuned for audio grabbing takes ~1.1x to grab CD, so 45 minutes CD will be grabbed in 1h20m (because you need check pass, of course, to have high-quality version!).

On a well-made, new-out-of-the-box CD, a modern cheap drive should have no problems ripping at 48x with full CDparanoia checking.

It is much more likely that you will be getting a loudness-war mastering problem than a bad copy of the data. That you can only fix with better source data.

It is completely opposite to my experience, Exact Audio Copy with Secure (not Paranoid) mode, with enabled "defeat audio cache" feature grabs modern new CD on proven SATA LiteOn drive slightly faster than realtime, and slim USB attached drive could spent 3-4x time (0.25x) and fail at the end!

And, yes, old Audio CD (new old stock, 10-15 years old) can be grabbed at 6-8x speed. Looks like new Audio CD pressed much worse than old ones.

I don't believe in 48x exact extraction, sorry.

But you can buy more than one pair of Wolverine meat shredder claws despite the fact that you only have two hands.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N5U14FA

And then allows you to lose access to your entire collection of Wolverine meat shredders the day you cancel your subscription (or the service goes out of business). Or silently and suddenly lose access to some of them because of some contract issue between the right holder of these shredders and the service provider.

Or prevents you from using your shredders if you lose your internet connection.

> on any device

I still have a table that won't accept DRM-encumbered Wolverine meat shredders and I would rather not put anything DRM-encumbered on those which could anyway. I also have some tables that are not so widespread but accept standard stuff, but the services won't use the standards.

That's why I go out of my way avoiding any subscription-based Wolverine meat shredder providers.

What a waste of plastic and resources.

> I also have some tables that are not so widespread but accept standard stuff, but the services won't use the standards.

A chromecast audio is cheap, and so are one of the AirPlay equivalent adapters.

Well, I was more arguing against subscription-based services than for CDs.

As a matter of fact, I don't really like CDs and I don't have anything reading them at home. I like my local playlist that I can play offline and randomly. CDs are per album, and I often get bored really fast when listening to the same kind of music for more than a few minutes in a row. I also don't like CDs for the physical place they take and yes, the plastic they require.

I just plug in a jack and here you go. That seems far less wasteful than buying a Chromecast or an AirPlay adapter and streaming all day (from the Internet and/or to the adapter).

A Chromecast. Talk about a waste of plastic and resources. Hundreds of CDs probably don't come even close.

Chromecast with Google TV is the best streaming device I've ever used, and I've tried a whole landfill worth of alternatives.

Streaming services can delete music from your library, but if you have the CD in your house, the only thing you need to worry about is fire and theft — and if you have remote backups, you needn't worry about that either.

Plus FLAC is audibly better than streaming formats, and disk space is cheap enough these days to store an entire library in FLAC.

Maybe you want to buy someone a gift, maybe you never buy books but know someone that loves books and for their birthday you want to gift them a book series, same with CDs, even if that person does not have a CD player I think they can appreciate a CD/DVD with all artwork and stuff that comes with that.

I do. I buy CD of the albums I like to collect them.

There are lots of people who still purchase CDs. At least four a week is my normal haul from charity shops!