As I plan out more writing about my relationship to physical media, I've been thinking about CDs a lot (hence this essay). Soon after I got my iPod (which I loved), I saw CDs as the way to obtain music, but not the way to play it. I never got into buying mp3s (quality concerns, DRM), so I would buy a CD to own it and rip it. Because of this, CDs and mp3s were concurrent for my prime years of music obsession. I don't have any CDs or a way to play them here, but I very often listen to the rips of CDs I owned.
I also think about CDs a lot :) and also did the same thing with ripping (flac has been my preferred format for a decade or so). These days I almost exclusively buy flacs digitally, although on occasion I do still buy a CD (mostly when I can't find a suitable place to buy a digital copy). Much to my own surprise, I still have about 300 CDs, although I think I had 2-3 times as many at my peak. What I still have left are my favorites, the ones with the best artwork. I rarely play them, but they're some of my only artifacts that I've kept for so long, and I still value them. For some reason.
Moving cross country and trying to decide whether or not to keep the thousands of CDs… wallet or not. Seems so hard to believe I’ll use them enough to justify the schlep but also .. everything you wrote here. Dear Abby (Gabe), what should I do?
Keep them! I debated moving our records across an ocean and now I'm so glad I brought them. When I was at my parents' house looking at my old CDs, I wished I'd had a way to move them. Even though I'm not listening to physical media every day, I find that when I do, it's more rewarding than streaming over Bluetooth—browsing through the shelves, choosing something, loading it up. It's a nice little routine.
Thank you for this! Thinking about my kid, too - I’d like her to have a physical and not purely digital relationship to music. Gonna keep em. Thanks G(Abb)e!
I loved this post! I had all of my cds in a wallet, too, until someone broke into my CR-V in Brooklyn and stole the whole thing. My entire collection, starting with MC Hammer. Two things came of it, though: 1) I always chuckled to think of those thieves, so newly rich in Indigo Girls CDs; and 2) 3 years later, my (then new) husband and I were going through files and I came upon the insurance claim from the theft. Something on one of those documents prompted me to call the insurance agent, who up the claim and practically shouted: “this case is 3 years old and will close TOMORROW. You know you have the right to replace all of the CDs, right? But you have to do it in the next 24 hours. It’s $3,000. Get going!” Omg!!! So we literally flew to Tower records, each got a shopping cart, and were running through the store, grabbing handfuls of CDs. $3k was not easy to spend! Everyone in the store was like wtf are you guys doing!? It was like a game show. People got really invested in it. And that’s not all—we finally got to the register, pretty sure we’d spent it all, and then the clerk told us that we got 10% off for every $1000 spent! Back to the racks! Can you imagine!? It was epic. :)
I still have CD shelves in my apartment! Where else would I put the CDs?
As I plan out more writing about my relationship to physical media, I've been thinking about CDs a lot (hence this essay). Soon after I got my iPod (which I loved), I saw CDs as the way to obtain music, but not the way to play it. I never got into buying mp3s (quality concerns, DRM), so I would buy a CD to own it and rip it. Because of this, CDs and mp3s were concurrent for my prime years of music obsession. I don't have any CDs or a way to play them here, but I very often listen to the rips of CDs I owned.
I also think about CDs a lot :) and also did the same thing with ripping (flac has been my preferred format for a decade or so). These days I almost exclusively buy flacs digitally, although on occasion I do still buy a CD (mostly when I can't find a suitable place to buy a digital copy). Much to my own surprise, I still have about 300 CDs, although I think I had 2-3 times as many at my peak. What I still have left are my favorites, the ones with the best artwork. I rarely play them, but they're some of my only artifacts that I've kept for so long, and I still value them. For some reason.
Moving cross country and trying to decide whether or not to keep the thousands of CDs… wallet or not. Seems so hard to believe I’ll use them enough to justify the schlep but also .. everything you wrote here. Dear Abby (Gabe), what should I do?
Keep them! I debated moving our records across an ocean and now I'm so glad I brought them. When I was at my parents' house looking at my old CDs, I wished I'd had a way to move them. Even though I'm not listening to physical media every day, I find that when I do, it's more rewarding than streaming over Bluetooth—browsing through the shelves, choosing something, loading it up. It's a nice little routine.
Thank you for this! Thinking about my kid, too - I’d like her to have a physical and not purely digital relationship to music. Gonna keep em. Thanks G(Abb)e!
I loved this post! I had all of my cds in a wallet, too, until someone broke into my CR-V in Brooklyn and stole the whole thing. My entire collection, starting with MC Hammer. Two things came of it, though: 1) I always chuckled to think of those thieves, so newly rich in Indigo Girls CDs; and 2) 3 years later, my (then new) husband and I were going through files and I came upon the insurance claim from the theft. Something on one of those documents prompted me to call the insurance agent, who up the claim and practically shouted: “this case is 3 years old and will close TOMORROW. You know you have the right to replace all of the CDs, right? But you have to do it in the next 24 hours. It’s $3,000. Get going!” Omg!!! So we literally flew to Tower records, each got a shopping cart, and were running through the store, grabbing handfuls of CDs. $3k was not easy to spend! Everyone in the store was like wtf are you guys doing!? It was like a game show. People got really invested in it. And that’s not all—we finally got to the register, pretty sure we’d spent it all, and then the clerk told us that we got 10% off for every $1000 spent! Back to the racks! Can you imagine!? It was epic. :)