So, I bought myself a CD player.
At some point in the last year or so, I started to feel that streaming wasn’t giving me everything I wanted from music. Don’t get me wrong; there’s a lot to be said for the availability of having the world at your fingertips, especially and particularly new music that you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to find, and I’m continuing to build out my playlist of such things as I have done for the last few years. But there’s also something… lacking from that, as well.
I’m not just talking about the instability of streaming media, where you own nothing and favorite songs can disappear off a service without any notice, although that’s not a great thing. And I’m not specifically talking about a physical media vs. streaming/cloud media thing, either, although that too plays into it. It’s something that’s harder to put into words.
It’s the fact that so much isn’t available to stream, for any number of reasons — the band was too small and too old to matter to the platforms today; there are rights issues or fights between labels; songs were b-sides and utterly forgotten by anyone besides fans like me, whatever. It’s the fact that, because you can skip around so much and make your own playlists, I’d stopped listening to things as proper albums anymore for the most part. (I don’t know why that makes me sad, but it does; I feel like I’ve accidentally started ignoring the intent of the artists, maybe?) It’s the fact that it makes the act of listening somehow more passive, and less intentional and important, somehow…?
These thoughts were wandering around my head one morning as I was waking up, and then joined by this odd nostalgia that can only be described as I used to listen to music on these big machines that combined record players and tape players and radios and CD players and now I listen on a phone and how can I honestly say that’s progress? And so I decided to buy a CD player again, my first for… realistically two decades, if not longer…?
It’s tiny and surprisingly cheap — it was less expensive to buy this tiny box than it would have been to re-buy just one of the albums on vinyl, to give you an idea of how cheap — and maybe it’s not going to last that long, either in terms of the actual technology or my desire to revisit the bulging folder of CDs I’ve carried with me since I moved to the U.S back in 2002, but right now, I don’t really care. It simply feels nice, and more than that, feels right, to be listening to CDs on a CD player again.
Nostalgia, but make it tangible, perhaps.