Best Portable CD Player 2018

From Music Instrument Center:

Between the late 90’s and early 2000’s, almost everyone had the best portable CD player, cassette player. It is kind of strange to see one nowadays when we have the mobile phone, Bluetooth speaker …, but owning and using one of these guys is more common than most people think.

Whether it is for listening to audiobooks or those original CDs you are so proud to have, a portable CD player can offer a higher sound quality than most MP3/4 nano players (and even better, they have a longer battery life!).

In this article, we will take you through the benefits of owning a portable CD player, and we will tell you how to know if you are facing a really good device. Then, we will run down 10 best portable CD player available on the market.

Next to newer technologies, a portable CD player might look like a big thing to carry around, but they do have a series of features that make them a better choice depending on your situation.

Old music is outselling new music for the first time in history

Despite the massive success of Adele's album 25, which sold a whopping 7.4 million copies in only six weeks, 2015 marked the first time in U.S. history that new releases were outsold by catalogue albums. Seems like everyone's been feeling extra nostalgic lately.

The term "catalogue" refers to albums released more than 18 months ago. According to Nielsen's annual year end music report, catalogue albums outsold current releases by 4.3 million copies, something never before seen in the industry. Just 10 years ago, current music sales outpaced catalogue music by over 150 million albums. Keep in mind that these stats don't include album streams, but regardless, it's a significant turning point.

More from Chart Attack

Using music in political campaigns: what you should know

From Daily Kos:

The union of politics and music has a long history. It works on a multiple levels too. Associating a campaign with a popular song is the equivalent of having a good jingle for a product, and it helps to get the crowds going.

From RIAA

Can a candidate use a song at a campaign event in front of the crowd before the candidate arrives?

• When music is played in public, such as at a campaign event, it is typically necessary to obtain a license for the musical composition (words and music). It is not necessary to obtain a license from the owner of the sound recording (usually a record label).
• The musical composition license is usually issued by a performing rights organization (“PRO” – such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC).
• The license can be obtained by either the campaign or the venue (e.g., hotel, restaurant, stadium).

From Future of Music

Cases get less clear cut when political campaigns use songs in a context that could be interpreted as an endorsement of particular ideas or candidates on the part of the artist. ASCAP offers this guide for music use by political campaigns [PDF], which outlines the process of clearing a song, and also explains how licensing a song may not protect a campaign from being sued by an artist who does not want them to use their music.

Explore the History of Jazz

Jazz is a unique form of music that originated in African American communities and spread rapidly in the 1920s. Jazz is now heard and performed around the world. Explore this interactive timeline to learn about its earliest influences and how this music genre continues to evolve.

Frequency Of Words In Songs

These fascinating graphs are the work of one Nickolay Lamm, and are part of a project that he’s calling Money, Love and Sex. The project charts the frequency with which various words appear in the top 100 singles on the Billboard chart over the years, essentially providing a portrait of how the vocabulary of music has evolved since the 1960s.

As Lamm explains, “Each cell represents a song. The more red a song is, the more often that particular word appears appears in the song. For example, if a song has five ‘love’ words and a total of 100 words in the entire song, that song is assigned five percent and a particular shade of color.” There are some really interesting facts to be gleaned; it’s no surprise that “love” has been fairly constant, or that the use of curse words has increased dramatically from the early 1990s onward, but who knew that the trajectory of the word “hate” has been pretty much inversely proportional to “happy,” or that “sad” and “lonely” have been on the decline since the 1960s?

More from FlavorWire

Find the #1 Song on the Day You Were Born

From Billboard

Find the song for any date since 1900


The #1 song on Friday, March 7th 1902 was Tell Me Pretty Maiden by Byron G Harlan, Joe Belmont and the Florodora Girls

Most decade-specific words in Billboard popular song titles 1890-2014

From prooffreader.com

The inspiration for this post came from my being too lazy to set my iPod to shuffle, and then noticing it played a bunch of songs in a row from the 1930s and '40s that started with the letters "in" ("In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning," "In the Still of the Night", etc.) Naturally, being a data nerd, my first thought was to quantify the phenomenon.

The data comes not from Billboard itself, but from www.bullfrogspond.com; I don't know much about the data source, but it certainly looks thorough and painstaking, and up to date.

Why Classic Rock Isn’t What It Used To Be

Led Zeppelin is classic rock. So are Mötley Crüe and Ozzy Osbourne. But what about U2 or Nirvana?
...
What precisely is classic rock? As it turns out, a massive amount of data collection and analysis, and some algorithms, go into figuring out the answer to that very question.

No one starts a band with the intention of becoming classic rock. It’s just sort of something that happens. Figuring out which genre a band fits into... has always been a tricky part of the music business. Identifying what’s classic rock is particularly challenging because it’s a constantly moving target, with very different kinds of music lumped together under the same banner. How the people who choose what music you hear — whether on the radio or an Internet streaming service — go about solving this problem reveals a deep connection between data and music.

More from fivethirtyeight.com

Thanks to Dustbury for the tip.

Music statistics

Looking for statistics on current music? Start with ASCAP's annual report and RIAA's Year-End U.S. Music Shipment and Revenue Statistics.

Music From Across America

From USA.gov:

Music isn’t just a combination of notes and sounds from instruments. It is a reflection of the people who create it. Because of the many ethnic groups in America, we find rich diversity in music in our country. Music reflects community, culture and history. Using the Music Across America website , students will learn about musical instruments and the geographic and cultural context of music. The site’s activities encourage students to think about and express their own personal responses to music.

THE NEARLY COMPLETE LEIBER & STOLLER DISCOGRAPHY

"This discography focuses on officially released studio recordings; live recordings are included only where there is no studio version by that artist. Exceptions are noted as such."

Jerry Leiber of the songwriting team of Leiber & Stoller has died at the age of 78. The two men gave us a lot of hits, for the Coasters, the Drifters, Elvis Presley and a lot of other folks. I actually bought a book with many, though by no means, all of their songs. You will say "Gee, they wrote that, too?"

National Jukebox

Exceedingly cool!

Historical Recordings from the Library of Congress



The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives. Recordings in the Jukebox were issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which has granted the Library of Congress a gratis license to stream acoustical recordings.

At launch, the Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. Jukebox content will be increased regularly, with additional Victor recordings and acoustically recorded titles made by other Sony-owned U.S. labels, including Columbia, OKeh, and others.

Generations and their gadgets

Many devices have become popular across generations, with a majority now owning cell phones, laptops and desktop computers. Younger adults are leading the way in increased mobility, preferring laptops to desktops and using their cell phones for a variety of functions, including internet, email, music, games, and video.

Cell phones are by far the most popular device among American adults. Some 85% of adults own cell phones, and 90% of all adults—including 62% of those age 75 and older—live in a household with at least one working cell phone.
Desktop computers are most popular with adults ages 35-65, and Millennials are the only generation that is more likely to own a laptop computer or netbook than a desktop: 70% own a laptop, compared with 57% who own a desktop.
Almost half of all adults own an iPod or other mp3 player, but these are still most popular with Millennials—74% of adults ages 18-34 own an mp3 player, compared with only 56% of the next oldest generation, Gen X (ages 35-46).
Overall, 5% of adults own an e-book reader, and 4% own an iPad or other tablet computer.

More from Pew Internet HERE.

Music Key to Raising Kids' IQ by Sharon Burch

In past generations, singing and playing instruments was an integral part of family life. A great way to express and entertain yourself and others. We did not realize it, but we were also exercising our brain while we played, causing us to be creative, more vibrant, smarter, etc. In our current generation, we tend to be passive listeners and consumers as a society, and as a result, shorting our mental development and our children the opportunity to reach their mental potential.

Humans are "wired" for music. Until recently, scientists did not know how music affected the brain. The advancement in technology allows scientists to actually "see" brain activity via PET scans and MRI imaging scanning the blood flow in the brain. Our brains are "wired" with neural pathways. Most activities only cause a portion of the brain to "light up" with activity; thus, the saying, right brain/left brain, etc. But there are actually four parts to the brain and music makes ALL of the areas "light up" and create new neural pathways as a person is learning and playing an instrument. Those neural pathways remain in tact and can be used for other things besides music.


Norman Doidge, in his book, The Brain That Changes Itself, shares case after case of people forcing their brain to change and adapt either voluntarily with discipline, or involuntarily due to odd incidences. Studies confirm that our brain has plasticity. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" is proven to be a case of "can't want to," rather than too old to change.

Daniel Levitin passionately explores the connection between Music and the Brain in his book of the same name. Google his name, watch video clips on YouTube, or go to his website. It's an exciting time of discovering how little we know and how much there is to learn. There is definitely enough evidence to recognize it is not in a music teacher's imagination. Music has a huge impact on activity in the brain. You can physically/visually see the growth and changes that happen inside the brain. The possibilities are endless. The implications for music therapy and music education are profound. Just check out PBS video "The Music Instinct." Neurologist and author, Oliver Sacks relays a true story from his book, Musicophilia, where a man was indirectly struck by lightning through a telephone and three weeks later composing and playing the piano for the first time. Sacks believes the man was "re-wired" through that experience. The list goes on and on.

But even if you are still skeptical about music making kids smarter, let's look at the other benefits. Socially, music is an ageless hobby creating interaction with great people. Take a look at any school band or orchestra or top-ranking choir and you will find a huge percentage of the members are in the top 10 percent of their class and college bound. Striving for excellence is a given in a musical group. Everyone has to perfect their part for the group to perform at their best--NObody "sits on the bench." Everyone has to pull their weight or the whole group suffers. Creativity, especially in jazz groups is developed, honed and embraced. Who couldn't use more creativity in their workforce? Creativity is what makes the difference and gives any company the cutting edge.

There are many benefits of being involved in making music, but the neural pathways drives home the point and gets our attention. Scientists are reluctant to state that playing a musical instrument makes you smarter, but all the indicators are there, so let's look at it from the opposite angle. Instead of trying to prove that music makes you smarter or good for you and your child, try to prove that it is not. I can't think of a single reason how learning a musical instrument is detrimental, can you?

Give your child every opportunity and advantage you can. Enroll them in music lessons and watch them grow and mentally develop as they play, create, express, and struggle through the rigors of the discipline mastering an instrument. You will discover a more creative, brighter and mature person in the making.

~~~
Nationally regarded music education teacher and advocate Sharon Burch is the author of Freddie the Frog® - a fantastical 4-book with companion CD series that helps young children learn musical concepts while they are duly immersed in Freddie's colorfully illustrated adventures. She may be reached online at www.FreddieTheFrogBooks.com

2010 Census Song

I was told about a hiphop song that has been written to promote the 2010 Census. You can listen to the song and watch the accompanying video here. It's the "draft" copy, but it's interesting.