Technology

CD is still the only way to buy a digital popular music in most countries.

vinyl is cool, but cd is the digital recording, mastered in a known manner, to a high degree. It's the most consistent form of product you will get from music. Plus it's a physically collectable thing. And it's cheap.

I'm not made of money over here.

Vinyls break easily and sound kinda meh, even with decent equipment. CDs have fairly good quality and are easy to store and handle. Honestly I get why people like vinyl, big discs are fun and tinkering with analog stuff is its own hobby, but when it comes to collecting I prefer CDs.

No one can take the music on your CD's from you. I bought loads if sings and albums from Google Music and they are all gone now

I'm glad I saved my CDs, as I was able to rerip them to FLAC and undo the mistake my juvenile self made of ripping to WMA. I still keep the CDs to play in my car from time to time

CDs are digital files plus ownership.

While I agree with you, I still want to be able to buy CDs.

Technically CD quality digital is superior, but the recording and mixing can have a lot to do with it. For example, it could be that an decades old Dark Side Of The Moon on vinyl (played on proper equipment) could sound better than a modern remastered CD with maximized loudness (See the "loudness wars").

Higher audio quality than CD? No, that is demonstrably false.

More pleasant to listen to than CD or other digital formats? Yes, that I agree with. It's entirely subjective, but I'm definitely not alone in the feeling. The fact it is hard to quantify is why lots of people don't "get" vinyl until they've sat and heard it on a decent system. Something about it is pleasing. As another commenter mentioned, it might just be the imperfections.

So I guess it's a bit of a philosophical question. If CDs technically sound better, but vinyl sounds more pleasing: does the vinyl then sound better? People tend to chase pleasure, and in the time it takes someone to explain how much lower the noise floor is on CD or how we can only perceive so many samples, etc, etc -- you could have been chilling with multiple records and had a great listening experience.

I know it's not highest quality.

For me, the imperfect sound is what makes a nicer experience. Slight hum, little pop once in a while, teensy skip, etc.

Not to mention that I'm far more inclined to listen to an entire album because of the need to interact with the vinyl to set the needle and flip sides.

Vinyl has a slow progression in quality degradation due to friction that creates a certain kind of sound warmth that is pleasing to our ears. This can also be relicated digitally, but the imperfections and feelings associated with the physical ritual actions of loading a record can't.

Vinyl just has more engagement going on despite the sound quality being lower. Kind of like how some people have fondness for fireplaces despite central heating being technically better at maintaining a warm temperature.

Some people confuse the extra engagement with sound quality because a lot of people just don't think things through.

The best explanation I've seen is that music is mixed differently for CD/streaming and vinyl.

For mass market, the move has been to mix for louder bass and similar things. The idea being that it makes the music more popular. But it also makes it difficult to appreciate anything but the bass.

On vinyl, you can't max out bass like that, it won't work on the format. So they have to give it a normal mix instead, making it sound better. In theory CDs should sound better than vinyl, but because of the music production trends, it doesn't currently.

I dug into the RIAA Source PDF the article references for what "other" means:

"Includes CD Singles, Cassettes, Vinyl Singles, DVD Audio, SACD"

Well, you could always just download the music, art and lyrics from the internet, since it is the year of our lord 2024

CD's are real objects and not digital goods.