By Laurie Niles: Recently I was talking via Zoom with fellow violinist Renée-Paule Gauthier (who runs the excellent Mind Over Finger podcast) and I noticed something behind her -- a wall of CDs. Tons of them.![pile of CDs]()
"Ahhh, I see you have a CD collection," I said. I, too, have such a wall, with hundreds of CDs. For a while, though, I didn't even have a functional CD player to play my CDs. Then once I upgraded to a computer with no disc drive, I could no longer play any CDs! My husband came to the rescue with a very nice gift - a Bose speaker that will both play a CD and connect to my phone via bluetooth, so I can stream music as well. (It's not a smart speaker -- so far we have resisted allowing that nosey, all-knowing Alexa into our home!)
Do I listen to my many wonderful CDs? I confess, not very often. Whenever I do, I think about how nice it is to listen to music on that lovely speaker, to read program notes, to hold something in my hands. But much of the time I listen to Spotify in the car, or to Youtube on my computer. It's not exactly an audiophile experience!
I hold on to my CDs, though, and I also enjoy getting new ones. I love the little booklets in the CDs, and I also enjoy being able to have an artist sign a CD at a concert. You can't exactly sign an mp3 (or can you now?) Having a library of physical media just feels different than having a playlist on Spotify. To me it's somehow more comforting.
I do know that this is probably generational - I am from the 20th century! I occasionally slip and ask a student, "Have you listened to the CD?" and sometimes they look at me a little quizzically. Many do not have a CD player in the home!
Do you have a collection of CDs or other physical media like LPs, or do you mostly use streaming services? If you have CDs or LPs, do you have a large or small collection? Do you have any of the ones in the picture? :) Do you listen to your CDs, or do they just sit there while you listen to music via other media? How do you feel about CDs, do you want to keep them or do they just take up room? Do you think it's necessary for artists to continue to release physical CDs when they make recordings? Please participate in the vote and then share your thoughts and experiences.
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