My CD player isn’t really supposed to be a CD player. It’s a Sony SLV-D370P, a CD/DVD/VCR combo platter from the mid-2000s. Back then, it must have been a versatile, exciting piece of machinery. But in 2022, I found it in my parents’ garage, pretty dirty but fully functional. Mom and Dad are firmly on the streaming train now—they don’t listen to CDs, watch DVDs, or even own VHS tapes anymore. Lucky me, because I was using a discount plastic boombox and an aux cord for my CDs until I found it. I actually think there’s something kinda poetic about me reclaiming my folks’ discarded media tech—but if it weren’t for my healthy sense of irony, I’d probably have been struck dead by divinely hurled lightning by now.

So yeah, I collect CDs. Get your eye-rolls outta the way early. I’ve owned CDs since about third grade, and I’ve been seriously collecting since high school. Right now, I have 504 albums (with about ten duplicates, some compilations, and not counting stray discs without cases). Up until recently, when I packed a bunch of them into boxes (long story), they were alphabetized by artist name on the shelves in my living room. I’m proud of my collection because it’s eclectic—I’ve worked hard to represent as many genres and decades as possible. Admittedly, I’m also proud of the fact that it fucking baffles everyone who sees it. Half the fun in collecting physical media is showing off your collection, after all. I’m like a dragon sitting on a pile of hoarded disc-shaped treasures. To a lot of people though, it just looks like a pile of junk.

I started listening to CDs because that’s what was around when I was a kid. We had a portable CD player for me to listen to kids’ music on long car rides between Redding and the Bay. At some point in the late 90s, my dad bought an arsenal of contemporary country-pop–rock and classic rock CD reissues. It amounted to a lot of “Greatest Hits” and “Best Of” compilations, and a strange devotion to early Vince Gill—but that’s how I heard essentially every major classic rock single of the late 60s and early 70s by third grade. My first interaction with the Beatles was through a two-disc iteration of the White Album. The first music I owned personally was two CDs that my dad bought me: Billy Idol’s Greatest Hits and Beat This! The Best of the English Beat. I think the Billy Idol was a response to my being into Green Day, somehow. I have no idea where he got the idea to hand me the Beat. Great choices, in retrospect. But that was it, basically—I knew what cassettes and records were, but I just honestly thought that CDs were normal. I even ordered a few CDs through the mail—yeah, even in 2006. The greatest hits of the Who, and Aerosmith’s atrocious Big Ones compilation. The closest music store to my parents’ house was the Mountain View Rasputin, which no longer exists. This place sold no records—only CDs. So that’s where I went, and that’s what I bought when I wanted music: White Stripes and Weezer reissues, the Builders and the Butchers, Chuck Ragan, Gift of Gab, Blue Sky Black Death/Jean Grae instrumentals, Madlib, and Teenage Bottlerocket. It was my gateway to this whole tune-plundering shtick. I didn’t own a fucking record player, and neither did anybody I knew.

I’m not a CD elitist—although those people exist, and predictably, they can be assholes. They tend to have an inferiority complex about vinyl’s popularity. Meanwhile, I’m definitely a prolific Spotify streamer—just check out my plethora of playlists—and I have a halfway decent record collection too. But as a listening format, CDs have their own benefits. They’re arguably more forgiving than vinyl—pretty durable if you take even moderately good care of them, whereas the vinyl police tend to conduct no-knocks if they suspect someone isn’t replacing their needle regularly. Like records, CDs look nice on a shelf—but they take up less space, and playing them is only as complicated as putting a disc in a tray. There are no delicate tone arms to finagle with, no carbon fiber brushes, no weird cleaning solutions, no slip mats, no belts. 

Granted, it doesn’t beat streaming for on-the-fly convenience. Nothing does. For example, I think CDs’ biggest weakness is their unsuitability for road trips. Obviously, your smartphone’s got ‘em beat there. It’s a pain in the ass to switch a disc out while driving. I’ve done it many times, although I definitely should not. They’re also undeniably bad for playlisting, unless you want to unironically get back into making mix CDs—which I’m willing to do, but hey—I’m a nerd, and burning new mix CDs is cumbersome.

Still, if you’re like me, it’s hard to put a price on the nostalgic appeal of CDs. I know that’s kind of a ridiculous reason to get into any hobby, but at least this one’s cost-effective. Fortunately, unlike records, most CDs are still cheap. I regularly purchase entire collections—sometimes hundreds of albums—for pennies each. Every semi-respectable record store in America has dollar discs. I rarely see CDs by new artists that cost more than ten bucks. And if all you want is the high-quality rips, and don’t really care about keeping them, your local library probably has a CD gold mine. Just make sure you’re cool with the librarians. I’ve been given a stern talking-to about “stealing” while surreptitiously exiting the library with 50-60 discs—which I legitimately checked out, by the way. I respect librarians, but they can be narcs from time to time. So much for free access to information, right?

Over the next however long (at least until I get bored and quit), I’ll be reviewing one CD in my collection every day. Stay tuned.