![]() She now has 62 CDs spanning punk, metal, screamo, pop, and Christian music. ![]() Andrea Cacho, a 20-year-old sophomore at New York University, tells me that she and her friends are “on the CD wave.” Cacho, a WNYU DJ from Puerto Rico, says she bought her first CD-a used copy of New York City indie-rock band New Wet Kojak’s 1995 debut-a year ago, after arriving at school. ![]() Cole, and Silk Sonic to push out their CD releases ahead of vinyl backlogs.Īlthough millennials may have soured on CDs during the 2000s, the format has devotees among Gen Z. But it really hasn’t played out that way.” Also keeping the format commercially relevant is the decision by artists like Olivia Rodrigo, J. “We expected less interest than ever coming out of the pandemic quarantine period, where streaming and vinyl sales spiked. “At Amoeba we never saw a stark drop-off in interest in CDs, just some lighter years as the spotlight shifted to LPs,” Henderson says. Jim Henderson, co-owner of California independent chain Amoeba Music, points out that a plunge in used CD prices means that some classic albums are available in the format for as little as $4 to $5. So as the pandemic continues to hit artists’ touring income and the dominant streamer sides with a shock jock, any pronouncement of a CD revival seems understandably contentious. Total spending on CDs is still less than half that of vinyl-let alone streaming, which accounted for 84 percent of recording industry revenue in the first half of 2021. By comparison, vinyl sales have risen 15 straight years. Up until then, CD sales had fallen for 20 straight years, from an inflation-adjusted $19.9 billion in 2000 to $483.3 million in 2020, according to the RIAA. Adele’s new album alone accounted for the entire uptick-two times over. Setting off this online brouhaha was a small but remarkable statistic: According to industry tracker MRC Data, CD sales rose last year for the first time since 2004. In mid-January, Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield wrote an endearing love letter to compact discs, provocatively headlined “ Jewel-Box Heroes: Why the CD Revival Is Finally Here.” Less than a week later, musician and writer Damon Krukowski offered a thoughtful counterpoint with a catchy title of its own: “ There Is No CD Revival.” For music lovers trying to keep up, it might not only be the shiny plastic circles that are spinning. It's foolish to assume that people think something is better just because they didn't have it at first.For a 40-year-old format that peaked in Y2K, the CD has sparked an awful lot of debate lately. Therefore I make the claim that the popularity of the JP soundtrack among English speaking audiences says a great deal about its quality. If anything, people playing the Whitehead version after Gems Collection or a US Mega CD copy would likely be put off the JP soundtrack by their own nostalgia. ![]() I would assume that the US version does too. While I can't speak for the Japanese version, I can confirm that the EU version of Gems Collection uses the US soundtrack. This was where people like me who didn't own a Mega CD, or newer fans, would likely have played the game for the first time. The second method would arrive over a decade later in the form of the Sonic Gems Collection. I never owned a Mega CD personally, and if I did I would have had the EU/JP soundtrack anyway, but I think it's fair to assume that a lot of people who did were children who would likely not even know about the alternate soundtrack. For the longest time the ONLY way would be on a Mega CD. Until the Whitehead remaster, you would have played CD one of the two ways. If anything, American fans as well as younger Europeans are more likely to be biased towards the US soundtrack. ![]()
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