Last weekend, I bought a CD player for half the price of a new LP. A real-deal, four-kilo chunk of metal from a revered Japanese brand, most of the cost came from shipping. And after browsing through the long-forgotten CD section at a local record store, I rediscovered the voracious grab-everything fun that kickstarted my obsession with collecting records and came home with a literal armful of music for the first time in years.
I am first and foremost a music lover, and collecting records is an extension of this love. While it's nowadays almost cliche to describe the intentionality inherent to vinyl listening, it's undeniable that searching for, finding, and saving physical releases establishes a deeper relationship between you and the albums you enjoy. When you own albums on vinyl, you can browse your collection and compare spines; you can physically pick a single album out; you can pull the record from its sleeve and place it on the turntable platter before swinging the tonearm around and dropping the needle. All these small acts are subtle primers that add weight and depth to the listening session that follows. This deliberateness lies at the heart of something that has disappeared in the era of instant-on digital streaming: getting to know an album. Gazing at a record sleeve while the music plays, you learn about an artist's style, background, and purpose, gaining a deeper appreciation of the content and its author. You can even read the lyrics without having to Google them (yuck). What's more, the LP as a tangible object grounds you in a shared material world, connecting you not only to its creators, but also to its previous owners and all the places it's been. Dog-ears and address stickers remind you that someone else loved this thing, too. Physical music objects restore the human touch from which weightless, contextless corporate streaming has alienated us.
And now, more people than ever are learning, or relearning, to appreciate the richness of this kind of experience. The vinyl market, like many other hobby markets in recent years, has seen a flood of newcomers fighting for an increasingly limited supply of affordable stock, as well as cynical companies pumping out mediocre wares at unheard-of prices. I'm truly glad that more people than ever are deciding to establish new, more concrete, relationships with music. It's awesome seeing record shops packed to the brim on weekday afternoons and watching teens pick up and laugh at weird covers before deciding, 'What the hell, I'll buy it.' It's heartening to see music fans collectively agree that the physical edition of an album is the most desirable. But it's impossible to deny that this explosion of interest has led to serious price shock. Fifty bucks for a new record? Thirty for a banged-up Dylan LP of which a billion were pressed? Vinyl is king again, and it's commanding kingly prices. But even worse is that record stacks are thoroughly picked over, meaning that, more often than not, a trip to the record store ends with leaving empty-handed. The good news is that none of these problems exist with CDs.
But first: there's no denying that a CD is a wonky, plasticky disc in a wonky, plasticky case, and a music object that sounds the same no matter where you play it, stripping some of the historical connection inherent to older formats. But, crucially, it's a format you can actually get hold of. And it's a format with full liner notes, cover art, band pictures, catalog numbers and intent. It is a format that nearly matches vinyl for deliberateness. You still pick it from the shelf, open the sleeve and touch the music, and then sit back waiting with anticipation for the recording to start. You can flip through the booklet and feel connection to the music you're hearing. You can trade and share and bring them with you and stage listening parties (probably the supreme expression of music appreciation you can find outside of a concert) around them. Vinyl makes shared listening possible. CDs make shared listening possible. Streaming turns shared listening into a ”lemme just queue something real quick” kerfuffle. And even considering my $20 CD player from the '90s vs. my designer turntable with a too-expensive cartridge, the average album comes out sounding way cleaner and more dynamic on CD, plus I don't have to baby and micromanage the physical elements of the setup. I just run an RCA cable and let it rip.
All this to say that the compact disc's time has come again. When unlimited, mindless streaming has stripped all meaning from listening to music and vinyl records are out of reach, the CD is a fantastic stand-in, and one that I'm excited to get to know on its own terms. After all, it's music. And music is meant to be fun, not stressful, or aimless, or brutally expensive. They may be plasticky, but they're a real, physical expression of art. So, for me, it's CD time.
Published April 7, 2022