I'm old...I kept all my vinyl when CDs came out and I've got all my CDs (over 700) ready and waiting :) Music is more than audio. The CD booklet, like the album cover, the cassette j-card are just as important to the overall musical experience. With streaming, you are missing at least half of the total musical experience. This said from an old man who shouts at the wind and clouds :)
I feel bad for my daughter and her friends. They have never known what it's like to hunker by an FM radio with a finger on the record button of a tape deck just so they can get a static-filled copy of the new Duran Duran single. They don't go to record stores because every song they have ever wanted is at the end of a Google search. They don't understand the thrill of flipping through mountains of used CDs and finding a gem in the pile. Physical media is more than music--it's memory. It's moments. It's a record of who you are and were.
I have moved towards streaming (it’s the main way I listen to music at home) but never away from owning physical copies. I have CDs, cassettes and vinyl at home and the means to play all three formats. For me it is a way of categorising the music I love as separate from that I have merely listened to. If I like something enough, I buy it for all the reasons already expressed here but also to show my gratitude to the artist: “I like what you made enough to want to own a piece of it.” I don’t really agree with the idea that we should be trying to shed the amount of things we own. We should just make sure that they bring us pleasure. In her recent collection of essays, “All Things Are Too Small,” Becca Rothfeld writes “We often need what we want more than we need what we need” and for me that is never more true than in the case of music.
Great read: “Having your music in a format you can physically hold and own has never been more crucial. It’s a sense of cosmic security.” Amen.
I have kids. They most likely won’t access my streaming listening habits, but they may get to know me through my shelves of music, just as I got to know my parents.
Writing this series has put me back in touch with some of the amazing music of my younger days, music that I just otherwise wouldn’t be listening to. Back when I had 60-80 linear feet of CDs I could stand there next to the shelving and just scan. Something, or a few things, would pop out to me and set up my listening agenda for the rest of the day (or the week). I really miss that.
While I’m not sure I would have wanted to lug 2,000 CDs around with me on the house moves we’ve made since I digitized everything, I do miss them. The tactile nature, the active listening it inspired. Thankfully I’m revisiting that collection much more than I ever have, whether streaming the albums on Spotify, or from Dropbox using CloudBeats and I’m regularly finding incredible joy in experiencing that music again for the first time in years or decades.
A good pairing, K-Al and Katie W! I keep trying to convince her to write more often, type through the hesitation and resistance. She made me Paramore-adjacent. I'm still a CD partisan, mostly because I have so many, and long ago built shelves to actually have them alphabetized, so most of the time, I can find what I'm looking for. I also had to buy a new CD player...you have no idea how hard they are to find now, even in the one-time big box stores that now sell mattresses along with TVs. But they sound really good now, to me. But you can still have my Haircut 100s, if I have any!
I have kept all of my CDs, tapes, and vinyl! I tell my students all the time to keep their physical media. One never knows when the "cloud" will burst or a site will decide to no longer maintain the rights to a piece of music, film, TV series, etc.
Yeah. You would not believe how people laugh at my collections of CDs and...wait for it...DVDs. I have boxes and BOXES of movies on DVD that people laugh at. They roll on the floor...if they can find space on the floor to roll.
Vinyl LPs were great because of the cover art and liner notes and inserts. All readable. You could use the cover to separate the seeds and stems from your weed. However, the quality of the vinyl was always suspect. My copy of Bleach was warped WHEN I UNWRAPPED THE NEW COPY. So many scratches, glitches, pops, crackles...
CDs were great for not having sound imperfections. The 64 minutes of music was nice for adding outtakes and such. However, the album art suffered. I couldn't read the liner notes or inserts because I can't read 7 point fonts.
Digital is where it's at. Art and notes can be any size. 24/96 is broadcast and archive quality. FLAC is lossless. And I can store 60,000 songs on a terabyte drive. It's eternal. No degradation of physical material. CD rot is real. Heat destroys vinyl making it unplayable. Age deteriorates magnetic tape.
Streaming? Crappy lossy low-bitrate streams. Pay extra for "premium" with high-bitrate streams. Pay pay pay. Sorry. I've already paid for the vinyl, tape, CD, digital versions of these songs. I'm not paying anymore.
50% of the vinyl I own belonged to my parents before me. I love knowing that my music taste was shaped by these physical discs that also blew my mom's teenage mind. It's a generational connection that's hard to replicate.
I still buy a lot of CDs but I dont keep most of them. I buy "in bulk" lol from my local joint for $5-$7 apiece, rip them, and sell most of them back for $1-$2 apiece. Very low net cost for a lossless digital copy that I can listen to anytime even if the wifi is down. Record Store Guy calls me 'Sir' when I come in with a full size grocery bag.
I'm old...I kept all my vinyl when CDs came out and I've got all my CDs (over 700) ready and waiting :) Music is more than audio. The CD booklet, like the album cover, the cassette j-card are just as important to the overall musical experience. With streaming, you are missing at least half of the total musical experience. This said from an old man who shouts at the wind and clouds :)
Songs for Silverman is one of my favourite albums.
I was a CD early adopter, but I much prefer the artefact of a vinyl.
Thanks Katie. I'm a bit tempted by 'Songs for Silverman' now.
I feel bad for my daughter and her friends. They have never known what it's like to hunker by an FM radio with a finger on the record button of a tape deck just so they can get a static-filled copy of the new Duran Duran single. They don't go to record stores because every song they have ever wanted is at the end of a Google search. They don't understand the thrill of flipping through mountains of used CDs and finding a gem in the pile. Physical media is more than music--it's memory. It's moments. It's a record of who you are and were.
I have moved towards streaming (it’s the main way I listen to music at home) but never away from owning physical copies. I have CDs, cassettes and vinyl at home and the means to play all three formats. For me it is a way of categorising the music I love as separate from that I have merely listened to. If I like something enough, I buy it for all the reasons already expressed here but also to show my gratitude to the artist: “I like what you made enough to want to own a piece of it.” I don’t really agree with the idea that we should be trying to shed the amount of things we own. We should just make sure that they bring us pleasure. In her recent collection of essays, “All Things Are Too Small,” Becca Rothfeld writes “We often need what we want more than we need what we need” and for me that is never more true than in the case of music.
Great read: “Having your music in a format you can physically hold and own has never been more crucial. It’s a sense of cosmic security.” Amen.
I have kids. They most likely won’t access my streaming listening habits, but they may get to know me through my shelves of music, just as I got to know my parents.
I loved this piece, thanks Katie and Kevin!
Coincidentally I wrote about formats on this week’s installment of Alphabet Soup (https://open.substack.com/pub/joyinthejourney/p/alphabet-soup-week-16-the-h-tracks), the playlist series comprising selections of songs that used to be in my physical CD collection before I digitized everything.
Writing this series has put me back in touch with some of the amazing music of my younger days, music that I just otherwise wouldn’t be listening to. Back when I had 60-80 linear feet of CDs I could stand there next to the shelving and just scan. Something, or a few things, would pop out to me and set up my listening agenda for the rest of the day (or the week). I really miss that.
While I’m not sure I would have wanted to lug 2,000 CDs around with me on the house moves we’ve made since I digitized everything, I do miss them. The tactile nature, the active listening it inspired. Thankfully I’m revisiting that collection much more than I ever have, whether streaming the albums on Spotify, or from Dropbox using CloudBeats and I’m regularly finding incredible joy in experiencing that music again for the first time in years or decades.
A good pairing, K-Al and Katie W! I keep trying to convince her to write more often, type through the hesitation and resistance. She made me Paramore-adjacent. I'm still a CD partisan, mostly because I have so many, and long ago built shelves to actually have them alphabetized, so most of the time, I can find what I'm looking for. I also had to buy a new CD player...you have no idea how hard they are to find now, even in the one-time big box stores that now sell mattresses along with TVs. But they sound really good now, to me. But you can still have my Haircut 100s, if I have any!
I have kept all of my CDs, tapes, and vinyl! I tell my students all the time to keep their physical media. One never knows when the "cloud" will burst or a site will decide to no longer maintain the rights to a piece of music, film, TV series, etc.
Yeah. You would not believe how people laugh at my collections of CDs and...wait for it...DVDs. I have boxes and BOXES of movies on DVD that people laugh at. They roll on the floor...if they can find space on the floor to roll.
Vinyl LPs were great because of the cover art and liner notes and inserts. All readable. You could use the cover to separate the seeds and stems from your weed. However, the quality of the vinyl was always suspect. My copy of Bleach was warped WHEN I UNWRAPPED THE NEW COPY. So many scratches, glitches, pops, crackles...
CDs were great for not having sound imperfections. The 64 minutes of music was nice for adding outtakes and such. However, the album art suffered. I couldn't read the liner notes or inserts because I can't read 7 point fonts.
Digital is where it's at. Art and notes can be any size. 24/96 is broadcast and archive quality. FLAC is lossless. And I can store 60,000 songs on a terabyte drive. It's eternal. No degradation of physical material. CD rot is real. Heat destroys vinyl making it unplayable. Age deteriorates magnetic tape.
Streaming? Crappy lossy low-bitrate streams. Pay extra for "premium" with high-bitrate streams. Pay pay pay. Sorry. I've already paid for the vinyl, tape, CD, digital versions of these songs. I'm not paying anymore.
50% of the vinyl I own belonged to my parents before me. I love knowing that my music taste was shaped by these physical discs that also blew my mom's teenage mind. It's a generational connection that's hard to replicate.
Streaming services could also move other goalposts such as costs and plans …
This was great! Thank you!!!
Boxes of CDs taking up room in the garage, proudly! Trying to clear some cabinet space to bring them all inside.
Sometimes I miss the days when you didn’t have everything at your fingertips.
I still buy a lot of CDs but I dont keep most of them. I buy "in bulk" lol from my local joint for $5-$7 apiece, rip them, and sell most of them back for $1-$2 apiece. Very low net cost for a lossless digital copy that I can listen to anytime even if the wifi is down. Record Store Guy calls me 'Sir' when I come in with a full size grocery bag.
One more thing
* lights match *
CDs sound better than vinyl and always have
* throws match on pile of oily rags*
*turns and walks away, whistling*