[Don_S]

Is it me or are others noticing the same thing. Too often I see a recommendation for a CD only to find it is not available anymore. Sometimes I find an artist new to me and want to check their catalog only to find nothing available except used. Or maybe only their most recent releases are available.

This was just recommended on a separate thread. I went to check it out and could not find the CD. 

Sara Bareilles: Brave Enough: Live at the Variety Playhouse

[richidoo]

Yeah. CD consumption has fallen quickly with advent of streaming, and even more with lossless streaming so they dont always get reprinted after the first batch sells out. Most albums with any historic sales are avaliable to stream losslessly now. But thats not everything ever released on CD. Ironically, vinyl consumption is still growing at triple digit percent every year, but for different reasons.

I checked Qobuz and that album is the first one listed for her. It is streaming at 24/96 resolution.
Sounds nice! Thanks!! 

[newzooreview]

That is available to buy from Qobuz in 96/24 and to stream.

Amazon shows it as a video. "Unofficial" sources online show an MP3.

Discogs shows a few CD/DVD bundles for sale second hand. https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=1759157&ev=mb

Yes, some recent music is hard to track down, but on the other hand there is a much greater variety at hand than in the past. Finding it and buying a good recording sometimes is a snipe hunt.

Listening to this now (thanks for the recommendation). Sounds ok and a fun performance.

[adminRH]

copies available on ebay

[I.Greyhound Fan]

That Sara B. album is awesome.   I heard it at Axpona about 4 years ago in the Bricasti room and went out and downloaded it.

[Don_S]

Also available here:

https://www.hdtracks.com/#/album/5e2351daa6bb3077371bfbac

I listened to the samples there and decided to pass. I do not care how good a recording is if I do not like the music.

[WGH]

Not disturbing at all. I stopped buying CDs when Columbia Record House went out of business in the early 2000's, now all my music is 100% downloads. Natural selection is a slow process with a few CD dinosaurs still stomping around. I listen to Brave Enough from the 24/96 HDTracks download and upsampled to DSD256 using HQPlayer. You really should hear DSD256 before thinking upsampling is a bad idea.

And not the DSD upsampling button on your DAC or JRiver. Running the HQPlayer algorithms on a FPGA chip would need Xilinx's biggest Virtex FPGA's. Such big FPGA's cost way more than the CD player's CPU/GPU and not usually found in DACs either. I use an Intel i7-9700 music server running HQPlayer to stream DSD to a HoloAudio May KTE DAC.

Bandcamp is a great source for cheap CDs and under $10 16bit/44.1kHz downloads, unfortunately they don't have Brave Enough. If you find music you love check out Bandcamp first, the albums may be available for much less than Amazon or anywhere else. And the artist gets a bigger percentage of the price.
https://bandcamp.com/

[Saturn94]

Is it me or are others noticing the same thing. Too often I see a recommendation for a CD only to find it is not available anymore. Sometimes I find an artist new to me and want to check their catalog only to find nothing available except used. Or maybe only their most recent releases are available.

This was just recommended on a separate thread. I went to check it out and could not find the CD. 

Sara Bareilles: Brave Enough: Live at the Variety Playhouse

I’m also finding it increasingly difficult to find CDs I want. ☹️  Personally, I still prefer to have the CD even though I rip them to my music streamer for playback via Roon.

Btw @WGH, dinosaurs are cool! 

[WGH]

Actually I listened to CDs every day at my wood shop and would still be today but a developer made an offer on my building I couldn't refuse. My shop was an internet free zone by design, less distractions encouraged me to work more.

I burned downloaded music to a CD-R and rocked out using a $35 Sony DVD player as a transport to a Van Alstine Insight DAC. The fine wood dust killed CD players in a couple of years so the cheapest Sonys worked great.

Sara Bareilles Brave Enough: Live at the Variety Playhouse has a maximum dynamic range of 13.
https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/1/dr-max/desc?artist=Sara%20Bareilles

If looking for a used CD try the New Record Day search to see if a local dealer has it
https://recordstoreday.com/Item/9005327446

[mitch stl]

The present poison for CDs is streaming, but the decline in CD sales started two decades ago when iTunes made downloads available and other online services quickly followed.

However, besides that, two other issues have always been with us.  One is that record companies, just like book publishers, have always let items with a low sales volume go out-of-print.  The second factor concerns copyright disputes, where the rights owner wants more than a record label is willing to pay at that point in time.

Sometimes those issues get resolved -- an artist has a resurgence in popularity, or the record company deciedes to "remaster" an album to try to get a round of new sales from previous customers looking for better sound or reliving their past, or a copyright dispute gets settled.  And, while it also doesn't have the same sales volume as it did in the past, there is still an active market for used CDs and LPs, both online and at local independent specialty retailers, so you can usually find what you're looking for, though some out-of-print items may be expensive.

[doorman]

I’m definitely a cd-dinosaur, I really value the liner notes &c. that accompany them, but then I also love LP sleeves for the same reasons, and the artwork/graphics.
- gotta go and clean my collection of buggy whips ——

[Don_S]

I find this confusing. Why is someone selling bootleg CDs on Amazon when according to Amazon it is not out of print? Emphasis added. Buyer ends up with what may be an inferior copy with possibly no artwork. Is the artist paid?  To top it off, the CD-R can't be copied to add to a server. I do not listen to CDs anymore but I do buy them and load my server.

Please, gently, explain if I am misunderstanding the situation.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002JUVYY/?coliid=IENUKE9E4I59A&colid=9CTL8D1E1EWE&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Charlotte Martin
On Your Shore
CD-R
Copy Protected CD


Ships from
Stuff in Tom's Garage
Sold by
Stuff in Tom's Garage



    Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
    Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.62 x 4.92 x 0.33 inches; 3.84 Ounces
    Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Sony Legacy
    Item model number ‏ : ‎ 828766067620
    Original Release Date ‏ : ‎ 2004
    Run time ‏ : ‎ 56 minutes
    Date First Available ‏ : ‎ January 30, 2007
    Label ‏ : ‎ Sony Legacy
    ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0002JUVYY
    Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1

[WGH]

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazon-counterfeit-fake-products/

"Most people don’t realize this, but the majority of listings on Amazon aren’t actually for items sold by Amazon—they’re run by third-party sellers."

[BobM]

I buy a bunch more off of BandCamp. Digital downloads at about $10, but so much more of the $ goes to the artist, not the label. And you can find so many good artists and music there that just don;t get any label support, but are great.

[mjosef]

Also available here:

https://www.hdtracks.com/#/album/5e2351daa6bb3077371bfbac

I listened to the samples there and decided to pass. I do not care how good a recording is if I do not like the music.

ditto.
Cold sounding voice, unbearable after two tracks.

[Don_S]

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazon-counterfeit-fake-products/

"Most people don’t realize this, but the majority of listings on Amazon aren’t actually for items sold by Amazon—they’re run by third-party sellers."

Third-party seller was no the main point. It seemed like the CD-R would be a bootleg. Shades of eBay. Definitely not as valuable as a CD that could be copied onto a server.

[mitch stl]

Third-party seller was no the main point. It seemed like the CD-R would be a bootleg. Shades of eBay. Definitely not as valuable as a CD that could be copied onto a server.

A CDR or DVDR is not always an indicator of a bootlegged product. I found this out some years ago when I bought a DVD on Amazon and received a DVDR disk. I questioned the legitimacy of the item and found out that it was the real thing. It turned out that some items are very low volume sellers.  The normal commercial CDs and DVDs are typically done in larger production runs, so no record label or studio wants to manufacture a large quanity of disks that may not sell and just sit in the warehouse for ages.  Making them as "R" disks allows them to be made one at a time as orders come in.

One sees the same thing in the publishing industry these days. I wrote a business related book in 2011 that I knew would have a relatively low sales volume. The PDF file is printed at a publishing house only when ordered. It's taken a decade to sell about 500 some odd copies, so this model is a very cost effective way to keep low volume items in-print.

Now, that is not to say there aren't some cheats out there that are selling CDRs and DVDRs without copyright permission from who-knows-what source.  You may need to do some checking to find out which is the case in your situation.