What Happened To My CD Collection?

I might be dating myself a bit here, but looking back now on the days where I had to wait for a local music shop to open up before I could fully listen to an album, it seems that back then I was given the space and time to regard music a little differently.

The new wave of listeners are jumping on the “vinyl-train” and shouting from the mountain tops the glory of the warmth in the sound, and the pleasure of listening to an album start to finish. I know this isn’t news to us old-school listeners, because this is exactly what we hoped this digital, and fiercely paced, world would eventually come to see; that music is meant to be a warmer, more inviting experience for the listener, and it always benefits from being given enough room to breathe.

About now I realize how much of a sap I sound like, but hear me out.

There was a time when you didn’t have the choice of downloading one single song from the creative vision of an artist, and then leaving the rest of the album undiscovered and wasted in obscurity. You had to manually skip a track if you wanted to move ahead or back, you had to physically make the effort to say “yeah, not this song”. Still, skipping one track didn’t destroy the albums intention; it merely diluted it a bit, but to download one song only, for it to currently feel like more of an effort to download an album that just one song, it’s tragic.

I used to cart around over six-hundred albums with me everywhere I moved. Boxes of these heavy and beautifully illustrated pieces of musical gems, and I enjoyed looking at them when I finally settled in to my new place and un-boxed them all. It was always an adventure to decide which old friend I would hang out with again? Well, the arrival of the IPOD changed everything about that for me.

Forget Napster, I didn’t like that service from the start. I knew it was a tragic idea, and one that needed to be regulated far more than it was, but APPLE, APPLE brought something to the table that changed the entire game for me. I spent days importing my old friends into the computer and closing them up one final time, and after filling up my ITUNES list with a plethora of imported songs, I unceremoniously found the closest pawn shop that I could, and I sent all that inspiring art into the great unknown for a terribly specific price; the price of an IPOD to be exact.

It was a magical type of alchemy, this transformation of my physical collection to this item that fit in the palm of my hand, and that was when it all started changing for me. I started skipping songs out of convenience, I ended up buying single songs in an effort to keep it all streamline, and after years of this something else happened; my IPOD became outdated as well.

I never embraced vinyl to be honest. I knew it existed, but my musical life was tapes to CD’s to IPOD’s; and now it has travelled to streaming services like SPOTIFY.

Sure I see the resurgence of Vinyl, and there are still a few IPODS kicking around, but I know that music is always destined to change, in the way it is made to the way it is marketed to the way it is delivered. I remember the weight of that CD collection, the magic that a world of music in my jacket pocket held, and now it has gone a step even further, the most exciting step of all in my opinion; now we have this immediate community of listeners sharing their music and categorizing it in a away where the discovery of new music is an everyday experience! Now the world is sharing the magic of its own musical world, and it is one of the greatest achievements of all in my opinion.

Yes this all comes with a price, and an argument can be made for why this brave new digital world is nothing more than a voracious devouring monster eating up real artists left, right, and center, but I stand firm that embracing this influx of new music is a great feeling, and a great idea; as long as you respect the artist enough to give their album one listen through from start to finish first.

If you are unaccustomed to pressing play and letting an album play its story out, then I highly suggest you find someone with a vinyl player and some incredible speakers, and you listen to something great with your full attention.

The industry changed, and there are arguments for every side, but one thing I remember about that pile of albums I used to own was the attention I gave every album in it, and that is where the industry had it right, and where the industry now has it wrong. Bands like TOOL remain adamant about not breaking their music up into bite sized pieces for the impatient listeners, and for that reason I still own every TOOL album I have ever purchased.

So I think I know what happened to my CD collection, it sacrificed itself for the greater good. It knew it was too heavy, too much of a burden, and that it wasn’t convenient enough; but what happened to the old school listener that I once was? Trying to get my friends together for a listening party of the new best album we were ever going to hear? What happened to the youthful me that agreed that this new style of music service would kill an already floundering music industry? Well, I learned a valuable lesson in music, and that is that music was never endangered at all, it was merely transforming itself.

After a moment longer in silent respect for the collection I once carried with me through my life, after a moment longer of appreciation for the resurgence of vinyl, I am off to do one thing more; go back to creating my streaming playlist.

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