It may come as a surprise to you, dear follower of this blog which gives away music on the internet, but for the longest time I didn't take any music from the internet. Even deep into the 2010's I didn't download or otherwise. I finally gave up on principles when I realized that as a CD buyer I was quickly becoming as obsolete as the medium itself, and just as easily abandoned. I remember looking for the new album by Jason Isbell, then realized that the only version I could find seemed to be an import Cd, offered for a price not seen in about 40 years or so. What is this, I thought, 1985? To add insukt to injury, the freakin' vinyl was a couple of Euros cheaper than the Cd version. Seriously, are you kidding me?
Even the vinyl hipsters, the easiest of victims for a rip-off, were getting off cheaper than I was. Some of the younger folks buy vinyl only as a means of adding virtual signifiers: of their fandom, of the cultural caché that vinyl records have. Some of these folks don't even have players to play these vinyls on! And me, a guy who has subsidized the music and CD industry with my money for more than 30 years, I now get treated like a fuckin' pariah? That's when I said 'fuck it' and went on the internet to get my music there like everybody else.
But in my heart, I am, and will always be a child of the CD era. They might not be cool anymore, they definitely aren't sexy, they're unlikely to inspire nostalgia, but still, they were my way of listening to music, and always will. That's why my compilations never crack the 80 minute limit. That's why I still burn some of the stuff here on discs. And that's why I regret that nowadays you can't buy a car with a CD player in it, unless you are some poor person and can't afford better. The CD player is the new casette tape. As a medium it's of course also dead as Dillinger. CD racks have almost entirely disappeared from big-box tech and entertainment stores, together with the DVD racks. For a fan of psysical media like yours truly it is a truly sad sight.
That's why I'm happy that, according to the tradition taken up in my adopted homeland I went out for les soldes, the special clearance sales that arrive twice a year, and came back with two CDs for a buck each (the One Buck Guy lives!). Tha tradition has also become quite sad, as in the heydays of the CD (or rather, the slowly approaching autumn of it), you could regularly come away with a bag of CDs at tiny prices. But for one more year, the tradition holds. So, will Demi Lovato's Holy Fuck become my new favorite record and be in heavy rotation? I don't like its chances. But it was still a pleasure to undo the shrink wrap, put the disc on, see what it is (I have absolutely no previous knowledge of Mrs. Lovato) and flip through the booklet. The small pleasures of life with a dying medium.
But I am not alone. There might be few of us, but we defy you, streaming services and vinyl hipsters! And, with a little help from the Jonderman, I brought reenforcements. Behold, my man Steven Hyden and his defense of the CD as a medium, together with a list of 'most CD' Cd akbums, all written in the man's fantastically entertaining, often hilarious style. Hyden was for years one of my favorite music writers, but when he left the A.V. Club in the great exodus of the mid-2010's. I didn't keep tabs on him. He also was a part of Grantland, a site greatly missed, even if successor The Ringer has a pretty good roster of writers. So, yeah, I hadn't kept up with Hyden and his work on Uproxx, but have caught up with it in the last days, and would invite you to do the same. But his CD album list also got me to write this long-winded ode to the little plastic platter that ruled the world until it didn't.
Steven Hyden describes the problem of a CD (which before was the problem of vinyls) of buying an album and then only liking one or two tracks. We have all been there, we have all done that. Some (most?) of you threw these discs out a while ago, but I don't. Other than the truly atrocious - both in music and sound - Toronto bootleg of the Alice Cooper band and a Nick Carter maxi-single given to me as a joke, I never threw out a CD. That's right, even the worst discs are still on a spindle somewhere, having lost their jewel cases a long time ago to better (burned) discs and now also their bootlegs. Yet the little silver platters are still there. Can't bring myself to it. Every CD has a story, and a reason to be there, even if I can't recall what it is.
Speaking of: is there a point to this write-up, other than plugging Hyden's list (and many others like it, just search for Hyden lists over there)? If there is, I might not recall what it is. The reason is maybe as obsolete as the CD. Hell, as if that would ever freakin' stop me...
No music with this one , folks, (do'n't worry, new music is coming up as usual...), just a question:
ReplyDeleteWhat was the last CD that you bought? (Not album, CD!)
I still buy CDs, as they're cheaper than vinyl. For upwards of $30 I don't want to risk ruining a record. Yet I still seek out used vinyl at reasonable prices.
ReplyDeleteMost of my CD purchases tend to be upgrades and/or expansions of older titles; I'm still waiting to have enough to afford the recent Lennon, Dylan, and Who packages. But Robyn Hitchcock's remastered Globe Of Frogs CD is supposedly en route.
I had 4 CD's arrive today and one yesterday and have probably bought over 500 in the last year. I will be buying some more next week when my credit card ticks over into a new billing month.. As for what I bought? One was a Gene Pitney compilation, another was the Persuasions second album from 1970 and the other 3 were Various Artists compilations.
ReplyDeleteTrue most are second hand but I usually buy 5-10 new releases each month as well. Whilst downloading is convenient it comes with a host of issues not least the unreliability and lack of shelf life of internet related technology.
Furthermore, having lost tens of terrabytes of music downloads through hardware failure and software corruption over the years I've come to the conclusion that the best form of back up for music I definitely want to keep is on the original CD. So I buy up whatever I can afford.
It seems younger generations are coming to similar conclusions as well. See this article from last year
https://magneticmag.com/2025/05/cd-sales-show-modest-growth-amidst-streaming-dominance-in-2025/
That article sums it up just as well as I ever could. Perhaps OBG, your epitaph to the CD is a tad premature?
I received 2 CD's this Christmas (one was The Fall, the other was the new Flock Of Dimes). I probably own a thousand CD's or more. Still driving my 2014 car with in dash CD player.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing is that my son (age 30) recently started buying CD's. He follows someone online who advocates buying old iPods and Sandisk players, and filling them with FLAC file rips from HDCD's. This son of mine grew up listening to low bitrate mp3's on cheap earbuds, so it has been a REVELATION for him to hear something like MBV's Loveless in lossless digital fidelity.
I bought my first CD (the then-current Lifes Rich Pageant) for my brother, as the Beatles hadn't gone digital yet, and I wasn't going to take a chance on a technology that wouldn't even offer the catalog of the greatest band in the world. Once it was clear it'd be here to stay, I went all-in, tho I kept (and still have) my hundreds-strong record album collection. I divested myself of much of my CD collection in 2006, after systematically going through the thousands I owned and dumping anything with less than four keepers on it (after digitizing those keepers, of course). I still have thousands, including homemade comps of stuff I downloaded once I crossed THAT line (going online only when I moved in with my soon-to-be wife, who was tech-forward). So I never gave up on records or CDs; I digitized the few cassettes I had, and those records (45s and LPs) I couldn't replace on CD, back when I gleaned my CDs for keepers.
ReplyDeleteI also still get books and read magazines and newspapers, and have burned the movies I love the most and want to have. I'm into having the real deal rather than the digital deal, and especially if I'm expected to rely on a third party (streamers) to access what I want. Some of it is the palpable pleasure of holding the things, some of it is an aversion to tech (I still use checks and cash, don't buy online, have a flip phone [I didn't own a phone til 2014!], have never owned a TV. I'll be bummed when/if I have to replace my 2006 Subie with the CD player in it, but, then again, at 64 I've owned only three cars (two of which I still have, and, yes, I saved up and bought them outright), so I may keep it awhile.
C in California