I was in Publix the other day when this really eccentric wizard looking lady approached me and had a story about how she needed a few bucks. She said she had music for sale that she made herself. I said well how do I purchase it? She reached into her bag and said “ I’ve got cds “ I gave her a few bucks and was on my way feeling good. Got into my fucking car and realized oh shit I’m not a teenager anymore in my old car with a cd player like I thought I was for a solid 10 minutes after buying the damn thing. Got home and had to dig out a cd player for my laptop. Music was weird as fuck which I enjoyed. She bought a jug of cough syrup with the money lmfao
What no love for the mixtape? We have to go straight to CD?
Ok clearly it’s not literally about making CDs and people saying “just make your own streaming service” are both missing the point and vastly over estimating the capacity of the average person.
The important part that’s largely missing from today’s music environment is the personal touch and investment. Many people, as the author says, just comfortably coast through an algorithmic smoothie of familiar music. That is inferior to a friend saying “I made you this mix” and then you actually listen to it, attentively, more than once.
It doesn’t have to be a CD. It can be a zip file. But the intention and focus was important.
I’m an outlier in that I never let “the algorithm” choose what plays. Sometimes I still make mixes for friends, though lately they’ve just been a collection of links. That process of choosing is meaningful. My friend still listens to the mix I made for them when their job laid them off, sometimes.
It can be a zip file.
Or just a playlist you made on one of those streaming services. Ain’t no difference.
I generally agree, but it was special to have a physical tape or CD that you got to keep around. Felt more like an actual gift.
Memory sucks. Having a physical token as a reminder is very helpful.
Bring back that whole timeframe. We weren’t all so stuck up our phone’s ass.
Posted in r/teachers yesterday:
I took my own children to a park, there were about 8-10 kids running around between the ages of 1 and 6. The children were feral. The parents were on their phones the entire time. None of the bad behavior was noticed, let alone corrected. A three year old boy sat in a tunnel and screamed and pushed anyone who came near. Mom was oblivious. She wasn’t watching her kid, she was on her phone. Another girl (about 5) was being extremely rough around some of the toddlers (kicking towards them, jumping over a one year old at one point). Her dad didn’t correct the behavior. He didn’t see it. He was on his phone. I could go on. Besides the occasional glance, parents were completely disengaged from their children.
Yeah, growing up as a teen it was the opposite. I was burning CDs and had this phone stuck up my ass
CDs and had this phone stuck up my ass
Kids will think you’re joking, but the vibration on those things was a proper… well, vibrator.
Nothing like getting a text from your crush with your phone in your crotch for her/him having indirectly caused you sexual pleasure.
(Also we did actually have contests on who’d throw their phone the highest without failing to catch it. And the throw were easily 5-15 meters high. And lots of misses. But not a single disabled phone. Small scratches on the covers maybe, but you could also buy new covers so it was no problem.)
No, we need transferable digital licenses. I want to both own my software and download it on the go
Bring Back the Clay Tablet— They’re a love language. And a reminder of the hope we once had.
Sing me a song about shitty copper.
Fuck … Erm…Shite
There once was a man named Ea-Nasir His business practices were very unclear He got so many complaints Some real, some ain’t But one lasted for thousands of years
There was a certain intentionality to burning a CD that a Spotify link just can’t replicate. Spending an hour picking the perfect songs to fit exactly 80 minutes, and then handwriting the tracklist… it was a real labor of love. It’s a shame that convenience has replaced that personal touch.
Once you break up, fantastic tree ornaments also.
I never stopped. How else am I going to burn PS1, Dreamcast, and 360 games?
PS2 for DVD-R
I think all of these have sdcard mods now (and the 360 had long had HDD mods from memory).
Oh yeah, they do. I’m just weird lol
360 wasn’t DVD?
It was.
And, their temporary nature fits the fleeting nature of infatuation.
And why is burning an audio file onto a CD better than having the same file on flash storage?
Being old does that to people
Why do some people like vinyl? Why did the iPod’s scroll wheel evoke joy when used? Why is the OG PSP’s UMD drive clicking open and closed enjoyable?
If you’re looking to abstractly optimize consumption and sharing efficiency, it’s worse. But if you’re looking to optimize personal connection to the art and to other people, having some tactile interaction and giving a physical object that embodies the music arguably does that better.
I’d even bet that if you scanned brain activity of someone opening an MP3 versus someone putting in a disc and hitting a play button, the disc’s physical interaction very likely creates stronger neural pathways that trigger more chemical rewards.
That authors’ view is explained in the article.
Unlike a burned CD from a friend, there’s no social contract that compels me to sit with something new, and take the time to better understand it. There’s very little on Spotify that will compel me to dive into the catalogue of a new-to-me artist, then seek them out when they go on tour.
It’s usually not. I have one old car with a CD player and a less-old car with a USB stick loaded with media. The flash storage is better.
But if you have nice speakers and listening space, the quality of the DAC matters, and a real CD player would probably have a better DAC and sound better than compressed audio on a flash drive sticking out of your receiver. Unless you have a fancy audio server/DAC setup, in which case it’s moot.
Its not inherently better than sending someone a playlist by any other means but on the other hand I just think its neat to have a physical thing that you have to intentionally plug into something and listen to in a specific order and way. That and the way that tech/streaming is changing the ways we interact with music on a personal and cultural level is overwhelming to me, makes me nostalgic for the limitations of older mediums. When you had to be intentional about what and how you listened, it (at least to me) made a deeper connection between me and the music as a listener. Fortunately we can still be intentional in many ways, its just easier to not do that with streaming and algorithmically recommended stuff.
I do wish that my friends would still send each other playlists in any format.
Elitism
It seems to me like the world has had 3 phases:
- Phase 1: People own media on records, tapes, etc. because that’s the only way to listen to what you want whenever you want. The only alternative is radio, where you listen to what the DJ thinks you should hear. If you buy something once, you can listen to it whenever you want forever. (Or at least as long as the medium holds up)
- Phase 2: It was relatively easy to get the media you wanted on demand, but it wasn’t always legal, because the copyright cartels were used to a certain way of doing business and didn’t like disruption. During this phase people still bought read-only media in stores. But, they also sometimes bought blank media and filled it up from their computers at home.
- Phase 3: Everything is now online, and you no longer own media. In this phase you can listen to / watch whatever you want, but you don’t get to own anything, and you have to pay monthly if you don’t want your media viewing / listening to be interrupted by ads. In this phase, media you love can just disappear if someone loses the license to stream it, or the copyright owner decides to pull it or modify it. In this version someone like George Lucas can decide that the version of Star Wars you grew up on should change, and you now have to accept his new version.
Unfortunately, long-term storage hasn’t kept pace with short-term storage and bandwidth. You can make someone a “mix tape” that’s a USB stick, but if someone puts it on a shelf it might not be readable in 5 years. You could save the original version of Star Wars to a NAS. But, if your friend wants to borrow it, it’s not as easy as grabbing a case off the bookshelf and handing it over.
I keep hoping that one of these “crystal storage” mechanisms takes off. Then we can much more easily be data hoarders, keeping everything, and not relying on a continued subscription to a streaming service for our favourite media.
Mix tapes were better
They each have their place. Tapes fit in your pocket though, which was great for casual carry. I always had a mix tape in my pocket.
I have lots of playlist cds, same thing. Better skipping function.
Not the same thing
what’s a CD?
A Certificate of Deposit. A kind of simple interest bank account adjacent in form factor to bonds. In simple terms, you give the bank an amount of money for a set amount of time, say a year, during which you can’t withdraw the money without paying a penalty. When the term is finished the bank returns the money plus an amount of simple interest. They often bear higher interest rates than savings or money market accounts and are FDIC insured.
CDs nuts!
Goteem
CD is just an acronym for the Compact Disc media format.
You can get one at a bank. It is short for certificate of deposit. It’s basically a high interest savings account that is difficult to access until it matures. They are at or above 4% now at some banks, so it is a relatively safe investment that is slightly higher than inflation.
I think people undervalue cd/dvd/bluray. Up to this day it’s best format for giving away data like family photos.
With any usb device there’s much larger security risk. Also people want to get storage back.
