Many different portable CD players under $20 including shipping are on Ebay. Demand must be low for such prices.

Insanitizers! http://www.insanitizers.com

Last edited: Jun 15, 2021 16:29:21

Jeff, I got a nice cable, wrapped in woven cloth maybe, with a pattern, I forget the brand. anyway, much nicer in my truck than a plain black plastic covered cable I think. old walkman has been doing fine since 2015. a few battery changes a year and that's it.

bigtikidude wrote:

I spent 66, I wanted something that lasted a few years, not a couple months,

Sure, a product with established durability is worth plenty extra.

I've been using an Audiophase portable CD player since year 2000. It still works well. I see their portable CD players priced from $10 to $79. Mine has only basic features. I'm just mentioning, not selling.

Insanitizers! http://www.insanitizers.com

LHR wrote:

Disclaimer: I did not read all five pages of this thread.

The CD is not a viable mass-market product for the music industry. That said, there are advantages for a non-label band to actually make a physical, glass-mastered product with a genuine barcode, and sold via some major channel. Strangely, these advantages have to do with SEO and not people actually listening to music on the thing.

Surf music people are strange and they will always want CDs. The overwhelming majority of music consumers do not, to the point where it is a useful generalization to assert that practically nobody wants them. That is pretty much the situation in a nutshell. I, personally, listen to Tidal and Apple Music. Or YouTube. Or podcasts. I would not dream of popping an audio CD into my Blu-Ray player these days, even though I am lucky enough to have fantastic, high-end monitoring capability both in my home theater and mixing desk. Well, unless it was a surround mix (which I sincerely wish there were more of.)

I am not sure what the debate is, honestly. It is a pretty dead format.

What he said!

Well I can say that while sales of CDs have steadily dropped over the years, at Double Crown we're still selling enough to be doing pretty well. It's largely due to the fact that CDs cost much less to manufacture than vinyl - we can still release a CD and if it sells 100 copies it breaks even. With vinyl - you have to sell many more than that to hit the break even point. Also, with a CD you have a physical disc that you can rip to your computer and stream indefinitely, not tied to a subscription. I could go on and on with the advantages, but for Double Crown as long as we can break even, and ideally make a little with each release, we'll keep focusing on CD releases. A big thanks go out to our dedicated customers who support the label by buying our releases, as well as the discs we stock from other labels. I also have to say the Continental Magazine is more popular than ever, thanks largely to the CD that comes inside every issue.

Sean
Double Crown Records
www.doublecrownrecords.com

Surf CD's / Vinyl / Fanzines / DVD's
Frankie & The Pool Boys - Endless Drummer LP / CD
Aloha Screwdriver - Lunar Wobble CD
Continental Magazine - Issue #39 With Compilation CD

Surf music people are strange and they will always want CDs. The overwhelming majority of music consumers do not, to the point where it is a useful generalization to assert that practically nobody wants them.

Trying not to be too dismissive, but these days, I think the majority of music consumers don't really listen to music. It's just blah blah background junk.

The whole issue is scale. If you [editorial 'you'] insist that the only thing worth anything is the mass mainstream dreck market, then physical media are not viable. But if the market is the smaller (but still significant, number-wise) market of people who actually care about music enough to actively listen to it, go to shows, care about bands, and so on, then I think physical media are pretty important.

It is not necessary to sell millions of records to make enough money to justify the cost. If you're a corporate suit trying to figure out how to maximize profitability with as little investment as possible and with zero interest in the music itself, well that's another paradigm. And part of this is generational. But even among college-age millenials, I see a commercially viable component of them who give a damn enough about music to support specialty music and buy CDs and records. I taught at a major university most of my career and still live in a university town, and college students are still a significant chunk of my audience.

My opinions, of course.

The Delverados - surf, punk, trash, twang - Facebook
Chicken Tractor Deluxe - hardcore Americana - Facebook and Website
The Telegrassers - semi-electric bluegrass/Americana - Facebook

One of the remaining reasons for buying cds are at concerts with merchandise stand. For smaller events artists often appear at the end of a performance to sell and autograph a cd and take a picture. Can't sell downloads easily at a show. Always nice to head home with music you just enjoyed live.

Happy Sunsets!

Oddly cd players are still in production by the usual brands like Sony, Marantz and Denon. For some of us with really big bucks Yamaha makes a very nice player for $6,000 player. And the old boom box is still sitting on the shelf of a retail shop somewhere. Aloha.

Happy Sunsets!

What has been really frustrating is the "forced obsolescence" of the format - stuff like laptops being made without CD/DVD drives (or many desktop computers for that matter), car stereos, etc. They take up little-to-no space, cost very little to include and make playing CDs and DVDs an option. I'm a Mac guy, and had to buy an external drive when I got my most recent computer. Other formats I understand why they've been phased out - cassettes and 8-tracks take up so much more space, but with my latest iMac, it's thinner I guess because it doesn't have a DVD drive on the side of the screen, but who really cares about a few millimeters of extra thickness - I never look at my computer from the side. And I have to have a clunky external drive connected to the computer... Okay, I'll go back to shooing the pesky kids off my lawn!

Sean
Double Crown Records
www.doublecrownrecords.com

Surf CD's / Vinyl / Fanzines / DVD's
Frankie & The Pool Boys - Endless Drummer LP / CD
Aloha Screwdriver - Lunar Wobble CD
Continental Magazine - Issue #39 With Compilation CD

CDs are the most affordable physical format to release music nowadays. Getting a vinyl album mailed from the US or Europe to Canada is really expensive. Often the same price of the album, or more. CDs are generally cheaper to mail out. Most of my “ foreign” music purchases are either CD or download.

Rev

Canadian Surf

http://www.urbansurfkings.com/