Falling Out of Love With Compact Discs
There's a good article in the Onion AV Club today about one writer's love affair and break-up with compact discs.
Alot of it hit home. Like the writer, I used to LOVE my CDs. I sometimes nostalgiac-ly miss actually going to stores and buying CDs, and particularly midnight sales. I remember a record store in Champaign where there was ALWAYS a line of obsessed fans at midnight, every Tuesday, where people would stand in line to buy the latest releases from their favorite bands. I would go to the store whenever, say, a new They Might Be Giants or Tori Amos CD came out.
The end of my love affair with CDs came, essentially, in about 2000. When I discovered MP3s and, in particular, Napster. Yes, I was a criminal, but, in my defense, if iTunes existed a few years earlier, I probably would have used it instead.
The next tipping point was when I moved from Wisconsin to DC in 2001. I could only take whatever fit in my car, so I decided to get rid of all my jewel cases and keep my CDs in folders. Once I realized I cared about the actual music more than the container, it was all downhill. At that point, the goal was to make my music as compact as possible.
Not much later, I got my first MP3 player. I've posted about my history with MP3 players before, so I won't go into detail. I will add though, that I've since gotten an car stereo with flash drive capability. My car was really my last refuge for CDs. I still listen to CDs once in a while, but more often, I convert the CDs to MP3 to listen to on the fly.
Do I miss CDs? Sure, in a nostalgiac way, sort of like the way I miss Max Headroom.
posted by Justin S. @ 10/02/2007 05:51:00 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Ha, when I read this I thought of you.
I still love my CDs -- and the jewel boxes. I love the feeling of ownership, as if each one is a piece of art. But yeah, at some point, it gets ridiculous. I'm slowly reaching that point, which is why I digitized everything.
Speaking of which, you still have my crappy old flash drive.
I like cds. I like the linear notes. I like having a physical item. I won't pay for an mp3. There's just something about paying for something when there's no scarcity involved.
That said, I don't have any cds with me in California. I ripped and encoded my entire cd collection years ago, and I brought it out with me on an external hard drive.
The article is right though. I like cds, but part of me kind of thinks having 400+ cds on a wall strikes me as kind of lame. Not in the "cds are lame per se" sense, but rather the idea of conspicuous consumption. Thus the spiffo custom cabinet I made to hide my cds.
The idea of media becoming invisible and infinitely portable appeals to me, but at the same time I have to ask: what will we stare at when we visit someone's house for the first time if there aren't books and cd collections on the shelves?
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