All Hail The CD!: The Compact Disc Is The Best

Originally posted in September 2020; updated May 2021

 

It is 2020 and a quick gander through music and tech blogs shows an utter disdain for the Compact Disc, now widely dismissed as an obsolete technology made wholly redundant by music streaming services.  On the side, vinyl has seen a proportionally impressive resurgence, but it remains niche and nerdy compared to the all-you-can-eat streaming services of Spotify, Google Play, and others.   People have abandoned their CD collections in droves, attracted by the convenience and wide selection of streaming options. The twenty-somethings of the world barely understand what a CD is.  CD rack units are hard to come by, and ironically expensive.  CD-ROM drives have been removed from the average laptop.

Aside from a few mavericks that are defending CDs and predicting a resurgence, online discussions otherwise show a persistent incredulity that people still buy CDs.  Take this annoying article, for example, which impetuously belittles CD consumers as old and out of touch luddites and chumps.  Some apologists weakly counter that CDs survive because it is sometimes more convenient to listen to CDs in their cars or that bands need cheap merch to peddle at their shows.

So for a band, a CD is a cheap way to get your music out there to fans who come to shows and want to buy band merchandise, and who are happy to cough up the dough. For fans, Zarillo [an industry person] said CDs still have an appeal to older folks who may not want to use iTunes, and to people who still like to listen to music in the car. The appeal of CDs as being easily played in the car seems to be a popular response as to why people are still buying them.

Shit, really?  30-plus percent of the entire music industry pie is because people are technophobes with CD decks in their cars?

Regardless of a significant market share in raw terms, the trends show a gasping decline of the CD medium.  It seemed that as soon as streaming services reached a critical mass of cataloged artists, it was game over, at least in perception.  Why ever buy a CD when the world of music is at your virtual fingertips, any time and any place? 

I am one of these old CD buyers, and I resent the notion that I am uselessly and sadly clinging to an outdated technology.  Equally bothersome to me is the routine defense by my generation that buying CDs is a nostalgic link to the past.  People may assume that my resistance to the (presumed) death of the CD is purely a panicked rationalization, given my sizable investment in the medium .  No, no, I love my CD collection (and my vinyl LP collection, and 7 inch collection.  I even like my cassette collection, especially the small run items by new bands that do not have any other physical formats available).  My reasons why have little to do with nostalgia or driving in my car (don’t we all have bluetooth or USB inputs in our vehicles now?).  My reasons are, I think, really good ones having to do with the audio fidelity, the psychology of listening to music, and the general importance of music appreciation and engagement.  I think that many young people’s experience of music is stunted and limited by the digital world.  This is counterintutive, but probably true.  Things lose value when they’re essentially free and ubiquitous. Meanwhile, the new vinyl afficiandos will have you believe that vinyl “sounds better”. 

There is much argument about all this on the interwebs. There is a long list of opinions and contentions held by champions and detractors of all media in question.  The net result, I am determined to show, is that the CD should reign supreme.  This is by no means to suggest that people shouldn’t listen to vinyl or any medium for that matter.  People should in fact listen to whatever makes sense to them. In many cases, the differences between vinyl and digital are tiny and inconsequential.  But its hard to tolerate the off-the-rails groupthink suggesting vinyl is inherently superior.  And it’s equally hard to tolerate the opinion that CDs are irrelevant in the age of on-demand streaming. 

The biggest argument online is about vinyl (a particular analog form) versus digital.  The assertion, which is often equal parts rabid and snooty, is that vinyl sounds better than digital.  This is stated factually much of the time, rather than preferentially.  Vinyl is “warmer”, more authentic, and, most amazingly to me, the most faithful reproduction of the analog source that is possible.  Let’s make something clear first for the purposes of argument.  The comparator, digitally rendered music, refers to the highest fidelities of digital reproduction – CD, SACD, lossless digital files, or high bitrate compressed files that yield a resolution that is perceptually identical to their lossless digital counterparts (I’m looking at you, 320 kbps mp3).  

The Hardware Barrier

Many (most? all?) of the aural nuances people argue about are completely moot, because there is far greater variance in sound quality attributable to listening hardware than there is to the audio source itself.  People have different quality turntables, CD players, digital-to-analog converters, amplifiers, equalizers, speakers, and headphones.  Valid comparisons between listeners and their systems cannot be readily made.  Yet legions of people who listen to vinyl on Crosley portables or to 126 kbps mp3s on shitty earbuds have strong opinions about this.

What about within listeners?  You get closer to fair comparisons if you funnel all your audio hardware through the same amp system and out the same speakers, so long as your digital to analogue conversion is on the high end.  It is unfair to compare a beat up vinyl LP played on a budget turntable to the audio coming from a higher end CD deck.  But once these things reach a level of parity, you can reach some degree of certainty that you are doing justice to the media.  Speaking of which, controlled research studies have shown that listeners significantly prefer digital over analog playback.

The Big Myth of Vinyl

To paraphrase common online opinions, it is often stated that vinyl is a “pure analog reproduction”.  The sound wave itself is carved into medium.  Ergo, it must be the best!   The “best”, in this sense, should mean the most authentic and true to the source recording.  But this is simply untrue, independent of whatever subjective assertions people might make. 

Consider what is actually meant by “analog” and “medium”.  An analog, by definition, is a necessarily imperfect, but a consistent and predictable, physical representation of another object, process, or bundle of sense data, etc.  In contrast, digital representation is not comprised of “physical variance” that can be proportionately traced back to its source – it’s just code.  A medium is an intervening substance through which perceptual impressions can be conveyed.  Vinyl, an analog medium, delivers the sound of the source recording to our ears, literally through vibrations of a needle on a physical waveform. But it is of course imperfect.  It has to be.  There are range of transformations, compromises, and mutations inherent to this transmission. 

The “truest” representation of the music you love is the primary source, which is, at least in the pre-digital era, the lovingly mixed and mastered analog tapes that were intended by the artist to be delivered to the listener.  Italics added because personally I want to hear what the artists meant me to hear.  I want to hear what was played back by their engineer, to which the artists proclaimed, “Yes, that’s the mix!  Stamp it!”.  That’s why I rarely use EQ in my sound systems and why I use studio headphones that don’t colour the sound.  The band already EQ’d it, so why should I mess with it? 

So what happens during the transformation from 1/4” tape to vinyl?  Quite a bit, evidently.  Vinyl does not handle low frequencies very well, as deep bass troughs can kick the needle out of the groove.  Engineers have to reduce bass frequencies in the source recording to prevent this problem, and quite conservatively so – record companies have always needed to accommodate the legions of teenage record buyers who play their products on cheap and crappy players with poorly weighted tone arms.  Vinyl also doesn’t handle very high frequency sounds either, as needles often have a hard time tracking the rapidly undulating waveform.  Things can get pretty hissy and “ssss-y” in these upper ranges.  This is also true of songs closer to centre of the vinyl, in which more information needs to be crammed into a smaller distance of vinyl, creating tracking problems.  Longer vinyl records may sound inferior to shorter ones for this reason. This is also apparently why 45 RPM can sound better than 33 RPM, as a fast spin transduces more information in a given time period.  Always catering to audiophile sensibilities, the industry is putting out deluxe special editions of albums on muliple 45 RPM vinyl discs.  How suspicious this is to the argument “vinyl sounds best” – apparently the billions of 33 RPM records could have sounded “better than the best” if they were mastered to 45.

Mastering to vinyl requires truncating the dynamic range of the recording (using the mysterious RIAA curve).  Engineers in some cases fiddle with the track order to avoid ending with a song that has a wide dynamic range that cannot be reliably reproduced on the inner groove.   No doubt, many engineers got really good at this and released wonderfully sounding records on vinyl in its heyday.  It was also, of course, their only option.   But a number of startling observations should give anyone pause about the superiority of the vinyl medium in terms of sound quality.

• Vinyl versions are poor representations (not poor sounding, necessarily) of analog source tapes.  They depart too significantly from the recording intended by the artist and the engineer.  Engineers will tell you how demoralizing it is to hear the variance of vinyl masters after all that careful and meticulous mixing and mastering on tape.  Personally, I want to hear what the artist envisioned.
  
• Vinyl sound quality varies based on RPMs, how long the record is, and where songs live on the disc. 
• Vinyl degrades with each play, with the wave form literally being ground down by the needle. Conversely, a turntable’s stylus also wears down with each play.  I’ve never had to get a new CD laser.
• Vinyl pressings, audiophiles will tell you, vary in quality.  Earlier presses (within a run) are apparently better.  Different reissues will vary due to the press quality.  I’m not talking about the variations in mastering between issues, but literally the physical quality of vinyl.  Note that digital copies are exact duplicates.  There is no such thing as a bad “CD press” (although there is some atrociously bad CD mastering).
• Even the composition of the vinyl apparently matters, to the point that vinyl is not “one medium” and certainly exposes the fallacious notion that vinyl represents true analog fidelity to the recorded sound.  Virgin vinyl, recycled vinyl, superior vinyl compounds from Japan, all with varying performance.  Seriously, WTF do people mean when they say “vinyl sounds better”? 
• Vinyl is fragile, easily scratched and fingerprinted, and appears specifically designed to attract dust – all of this leads to greater hiss, pops, crackles, and, unforgivably, skips.  Some people find this nostalgia inducing.  More on that later, but I would argue that no artist would willfully include, want, or expect to hear this noise accompanying their craft.
• The hardware imperfections of most turntables produce “wow and flutter”, audiospeak for changes in belt/drive speed and therefore pitch.  Many vinyl enthusiasts find this pleasing, but again, I think this detracts from artists' intentions.

·         I do not have statistics, but it is safe to assume that the majority of contemporary music is digitally recorded in the first place, which means digital releases are exact copies of the source masters.  Mastering digital files to vinyl seems ludicrous to me, yet vinyl apologists still proclaim that it sounds better (subjectively speaking, that’s defensible, if that’s what you hear, but I find it very strange) or, ridiculously, that vinyl IS better in some objective sense that only true audiophiles can understand.

These facts are not really debatable, although hotly debated.  High end digital recordings, on any objective measure, out-perform analog and are the closest representation of artistic intentions.  CDs are a near perfect physical vehicle for digital data.  There is no physical contact with the disc to play it, with only an optical laser extracting (magically, really) the information.  CDs are hardy and resistant to scratches, if you take moderately good care of them, and damage is often reparable.  The playback is the same every single time and they cannot be accidentally erased.  There has been some discussion of the shelf-life of CDs, with recent reports that some old CDs are degrading, and the speed of degradation depends on environmental conditions and disc quality.  Others suggest that CDs might last for centuries.  In my personal experience, no CD of mine has shown any deterioration and I have digital back ups anyway.  Meanwhile, many of my vinyl albums I bought as a teenager are a mess, and I wasn’t particularly hard on them.

But vinyl sounds warmer...

As I noted a few times, I am not debating subjective tastes associated with hearing music.  People should listen to what “sounds good” to their ears, period.  But what does it mean, exactly, when people say vinyl sounds “warmer” and more pleasurable than the apparently cold realm of digital?  To my ears, this “warmth” is the perception of the muddy middle of mid-range equalization, in which the low and high ends of the spectrum have been lopped off by necessity on vinyl renderings.  Some people like this frequency range (and, presumably, wouldn’t call it “muddy”).  For some records, the vinyl-digital difference is not all that perceptible, and a little bit of EQ’ing on the output can align different renderings to taste fairly easily.  In other cases the vinyl simply sounds quieter, which some fans like as response to the (quite overstated) “loudness wars” of the digital age.  And in other cases, I can hear a sizable difference in quality. 

There was a time, however, when vinyl WAS often better than CD.  When the CD format gained prominence and began growing its market share it showed some serious limitations.  In the early days, people were rightly blown away by the fidelity of several flagship releases (Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms comes to mind, which was exclusively released on CD and sounded amazing).  As players became more affordable, record companies rushed to transfer old analog master tapes to the digital medium.  The technology was young, the process was rushed, and, in many cases, it was unclear if any remastering was done at all.  This might mean that vinyl masters (not the analog source tapes) would be digitized, which represents a big failure to take advantage of digital’s dynamic range.  Worse still, source analog masters may have been transferred without remastering to CD, which could reintroduce high end hiss that an original vinyl master eliminated.  Hence the common early disclaimer about the “limitations of the source material” slapped on CD cases, which was a way of deflecting blame elsewhere and away from lazy or perhaps naive remastering efforts.  In other cases, the digital remastering (or mastering of new titles) just sucked – it did not improve (or even equal) the vinyl release, nor was it apparent that it was faithful to the source tapes.  Case in point, for example, is U2's Unforgettable Fire, released on both formats together in 1984 when vinyl mastering had reached peak quality and CD was just a babe in the woods.  My vinyl copy is far superior to the CD, which sounds tepid and poor.  Slot in my 2009 remastered version, when CD mastering was advanced and refined, and it takes over the vinyl quite easily to my ears. 

And now…wow!  State of the art digital capturing is readily accessible to everyone and boasts analog conversion methods that provide true fidelity and faithfulness to original masters.  Engineers know what there are doing now and very often get the remastering right.  Digital remastering these days is rarely bad, and at worst it doesn’t add much that is new, except maybe volume.  At best, you get absolutely sublime, moving, mind-blowing reissues, like The Beatles 2009 box set reissue, and reissues by Queen, Neil Young, R.E.M., etc.       

So, in sum, I’ve been pretty hard on vinyl.  Which is odd given that I have 1000 or so in my collection and continually buy it (more on that later).  In fact, I will concede that, across all the recorded music I listen to, the vinyl/digital gap in audio quality is fairly small in size and largely inconsequential.  Perhaps this is because I mostly listen to digital copies of both vinyl and CDs, and the problems known to vinyl are not pronounced in my listening life.  So why the hell am I harping on about all this?  Because I definitely prefer CDs (for reasons stated and more reasons to come) and they are quite possibly under threat.  When they are routinely dismissed as obsolete and inferior in the face of piles of evidence, well, it’s frustrating.  I worry about a future world of digital streaming and $38 vinyl records, with, ahem, “no happy medium”. 

Why Not Go Exclusively Digital Via Streaming?

I stream music, quite a bit in fact.  I like the convenience of calling up an album on Spotify wherever I am and sending it to a range of bluetooth receivers all over the house, in the car, etc., despite the degraded audio quality. It is a tremendous resource for checking out new bands.  I’m also an avid user of the Bandcamp stream.  Add YouTube into the mix, and you have a massive library to choose from.  So what’s the point of purchasing CDs?  Why not dispense with the clutter?  Or, if you want a true “library” of songs, why not download mp3s?  Going exclusively digital is a  decision that seems even more attractive, one would think, with the availability of lossless (or at least very high resolution) digital audio options.   I have my reasons to keep the CD in my life, and so should you.

Audio Fidelity

The "bits are bits" argument -- that a digital audio information is immutable and cannot be affected by external factors -- breaks down when one play tests multiple CD players through the same DAC.  There are noticeable differences between CD players.  Sometimes these differences are remarkable.  I recently bought the 6000CDT from Audiolab and the sound is unbelievable.  This is just a transport - it does not convert the digital information to analog sound and has no analog outs -- that sends the digital information to an external DAC.  I don't fully understand the audio science, but there a number of physical and technical specifications that reduce "jitter", which is variance in the timing of the digital information.  The ones and zeroes and their ordering will never change, but their timing during delivery can vary, and there are audible effects. I thought this was snake oil at first.  I thought digital error correction takes care of this.  But it is absolutely clear that my new transport completely out-performs other CD players plugged into the same DAC.  I'm not talking about audiophile nuance here.  It's superiority is obvious and unmistakable.  

Jitter has been a known issue for a long time (it applies to all digital transmissions) but it's impact on digital audio -- and corresponding engineering -- is relatively new to most people (I count myself here, and still learning, if only superficially).  Here is an older article that explores the issue.  https://www.stereophile.com/content/cd-jitter-errors-magic/ 

The revelation that CD players THEMSELVES matter (independent of DAC uses) is important to me for a couple reasons.  The first is, holy shit, CD audio already sounded great and now it sounds better.  It means CD hardware had and has room to improve!  Second, it's already clear that CD audio is superior to vinyl in a technical sense (and superior to these ears in a subjective sense).  But I didn't really think that CD was superior to hi res digital files, whether streamed or on your hard drive.  But the difference I am hearing between CD and 320 kbps mp3 is striking (again, same DAC).  The truth of the matter is that CD is now a mature technology with the medium, players, and converters improving with every year.  Digital files is pretty young.  It will catch up, no doubt.  But in 2021, CD is the best sounding medium, and isn't that the best reason to choose them?  But...there are others...

Cost

If you want to stream high resolution audio, say at 320 kbps or lossless, you are going to eat up your home data plan.  This normally wouldn’t matter, as high bitrate audio will still only use about 115 MB of data per hour, which would be accommodated easily by decent home plans.  However, my household is also streaming hours and hours of video and we used to be consistently at the edge of our monthly plan.   

Plans have gotten better, with affordable unlimited options.  Just remember that you are in fact paying for music, albeit in a way that is buried within your internet data package.  Streaming service subscriptions are the other cost.  They are pretty cheap but if want to ensure you get most everything, you will need more than one service, and this adds up. 

Do all these streaming costs add up to more than buying stacks of CDs on a regular basis?  No, definitely not.  Streaming will still be cheaper than buying physical products if you listen to a lot of music.  But this is but one dimension to the debate.  CDs. of course, are getting cheaper and cheaper, especially from the used market.  Because of eBay and Discogs, the market competition is massive, driving down the price, at least for popular titles.  Very often I can pick up a CD for the same or less as the mp3 download fee.  But I’d rather buy brand new, directly from the artist if possible.  CDs are cheaper and faster for artists to make than vinyl (perhaps a third of the cost). Postage is the only issue now, really, which has become positively larcenous in my home country of Canada.  

Selection and Integrated Listening

People are rightly blown away by the selection of music boasted by streaming services (Spotify in particular) and adding them up seems to cover all bases.  Right?  I think it IS a rare record indeed that can’t be located on a streaming service of some sort (with YouTube being extraordinarily good for finding rare gems).  However, what a giant pain in the ass this is!  What kind of “library” is this if you have to jump from service to service to hear a song or album you want to hear?  How do you organize it? You of course have to remember who carries which music.  You have to manage all your subscriptions, passwords, updates, and junk email.  This is untenable to me, and I assume this is true for most people.  I suspect most people pick a service and stick with it. 

In my case, the go-to choice is Spotify.  Just how comprehensive is it?  For starters, it houses 50+ million songs and growing by about 40k a day.  In recent years a number of big names, after some principled resistance, relented and allowed their music to be added to the catalog (The Beatles, Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Prince, etc.).  Others have allowed streaming of some sort, but just not on Spotify (e.g., Neil Young, Garth Brooks).  A few stalwarts have no streaming presence at the time of this writing, such as De La Soul, King Crimson, Suede, and Tool.  If I dispensed with my physical collection and stuck to Spotify, I’d have to do without Neil Young?  Unconscionable! 

However, there are thousands and thousands of songs that are unavailable and it is unclear why – probably this sometimes has to do with the absence of digital rights agreements of smaller bands and their labels, especially when agreements have lapsed.  Other times the artist is not playing ball.  Inaccessible to me are albums by artists such as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Joanna Newsom, The Housemartins, Spacemen 3, and Flying Saucer Attack, just to provide some quick examples.  And so many little obscure gems, safely housed in my physical library, are now lost in the mists of the new streaming reality – Tales of Adventure, by Breeding Ground, an early 80s post-punk Toronto band, is absent; Globe of Frogs, an all-time favorite from mystical/weird folkie Robyn Hitchcock, is missing from the catalog, although many of his other releases are present; The sublime Falls EP, the only release by Sparrow House, a side project of Voxtrot’s Jared Van Fleet demonstrates how a favorite song (“Foxes”, #36 on my Top 500) may not be streamable.  There are tons of localized, self-released records that have not and may never show up on Spotify.

Compare this to the physical library.  At my fingertips I have all my CDs (and vinyl) accessible by getting out of my chair, walking 3 feet, pulling out disc and popping it into my deck.  I am just as likely to queue up the high quality mp3 version of the album, which I have ripped myself from the CD.  And physical releases may also have tracks that are not otherwise available.   This is often true of 7” short-run issues that are unlikely to show up on mainstream streaming services, unless the band becomes accomplished enough to issue a b-side comp. 

Longevity

Is streaming forever? Financial reporting shows that Spotify has yet to make a profit.  The biggest music streaming service in the world is not profitable, due to the unending quest to establish licensing agreements and the payment of royalties.  What if the service collapses?  So does your “library” and all the memories made by the music you listened to.  You don’t own a thing.  Mp3s located on your hard drive are a much safer bet.  Even the reliance on hard drives to store mp3s makes me nervous, although I think I’ve learned my lesson about securing back ups after losing piles of digital music at different stages of my life.  CDs are my ultimate mp3 back up, and although I’d probably shoot myself in the face if I lost hours upon hours of ripping, I will have not lost the music. 

Streaming is Shitty for Artists

Because of the wafer thin profit margins of streaming, and despite billions of dollars changing hands between consumers, services, and record labels, the great majority of artists receive a pittance from streaming.  Most artists have to play ball, since their labels have, and because they will recede from view in the online environment without a streaming presence.  But it sucks for them and is a completely unsustainable source of revenue.  It’s only through the tough slog of touring, merch sales, and record sales that bands can survive.  I will happily fork over 10 to 20 bucks to receive a physical copy if it means the artist benefits. 

How many times do people listen to the average album, by the way, assuming they buy them in the first place?  There’s a few that I’ve surely listened to hundreds of times.  There are many others that I honestly LOVE, but that I’ve probably listened to under 5 times.  A song or two might make it to a playlist, but the whole album? There are so many hours in the day.  Yet, I still feel that the price of the CD is worth it (as is the future option to listen to it).  In streaming terms, which pays about $0.007 per play, this means that a great album of 10 songs heard top to bottom 3 times will net the artist…35 cents!  For some bizarre and unrealistic reason, the streaming industry appears to assume that if person actually buys a record, they will have it on repeat for two months straight.  I’d need to listen to a 10-song album 140 times all the way through for the artist to get 10 bucks out of me!   Streaming companies will argue that this is all a matter of scale, as the exposure to potential listeners is expansive – but so are downloads, which still sit at about a buck a song.   If you love an album, I think you should buy it straight up, at the very least in the mp3 format.

The Allure of the Physical Product

I have been a collector as long as I remember.  From childhood collecting of stamps, coins, pennants, and hockey cards to present-day collecting of comics, video games, guitar pedals, and, yes, recorded music, I have had an obsessive, completist nature that wills me to acquire and admire.  It’s a rewarding condition bordering on dysfunction at times.  So it is not my intent to suggest that everyone should have massive record collections.  But there is something compelling about the physical release of a record that I believe many people recognize. 

[Side bar:  The term “record” and “album” is used by many as synonymous with vinyl LP.  I’ve always thought of “record” as synonymous with “recording”, which encompasses CDs in my mind.  “Have you heard the new Sloan record?” means to me their new long-playing album, not the medium.]

A new record, be it on vinyl or CD, is something you can hold in your hand and look at when listening to the music.  Artists make highly intentional statements via their cover art, and communicate much about their music in accompanying liner notes.  A new coloured vinyl disc is like a magical gem.  One imagines the artist pouring over these decisions: the images to construct/deconstruct, the message to parley, the degree of ambiguity or controversy with which to challenge the viewer/listener, and so on.  Lyrics and credits are very often provided, which is a nice extra and preferable to searching and reading online.  The visual and tactile dimensions enhance the audio experience.

I love so many of these artistic efforts.  When bands/labels go the extra mile to create something unique and customized, I am appreciative and pleased to file the item into my collection.   Just recently the Soda Lilies released a short-run of 50 cassettes that were each “hand warbled” during dubbing to produce 50 subtly unique recordings.  That’s super cool.   My limited edition 7” of Courtney Barnett’s “Boxing Day Blues”, is signed.  You can’t sign a stream.  Torche graced us with a 10” coloured “flower vinyl” and CD release of the EP In Return in a beautiful double gatefold sleeve, one of my all time favorite releases in aesthetic terms.  My Superfantastics 7” comes with 3D glasses to view their stereoscopic cover art.  I love this shit.

Is there a vinyl versus CD argument here?  Vinyl wins hands down in terms of cover art – it’s bigger which makes it nicer.  And I am a bit of a sucker for coloured vinyl or picture discs.  I routinely post my new pretty vinyl acquisitions on Instagram.  But I also also post my CDs. 

I like CD packages a little more overall.  I am definitely in the minority here.  In a recent article that echoes most of my points made here, the writer nonetheless deems the aesthetic value of CDs as “ghastly”.  This seems quite harsh to me and also out of touch with the amazing things that have been done with CD packaging, which is arguably more versatile than the 12x12 format.  Of course standard jewel case CDs with a single page insert are boring and crappy, but I also have a number of vinyl LPs packaged in flimsy cardboard with no insert at all, which is equally lame.  The general reason I like CDs better is their (true to their name) compact nature, which may seem counterintuitive at first.  I can store more of them more easily, I can hold a stack of 10 in one hand, and flip through them like a deck of cards.  I can read the spines much easier.  Why should small be inferior?  People love collecting trading cards, for example, and it would be weird and cumbersome if they were bigger.  There are many creative things artists have done with CD packaging. The inserts can be extensive and actually more convenient to peruse than a 12” x 12” booklet.  And the CD labels are larger and often more interesting and artful compared to their vinyl counterparts.  Quick examples:  The cover of my CD copy of Tamara Williamson’s album, In the Arms of Ed was hand painted by the artist herself.  Gord Downie’s CD release of Coke Machine Glow comes with a book of poetry.  Menomena’s M is a flip-book of still photos of the band, which animates into a performance.  So many lovely little packages – the plastic jewel case should not not represent the CD!

The consistent outrage about all the wasted plastic of CD cases is a bit overstated anyway.  The plastic is recyclable; vinyl is not.  The gazillion CD cases showing up in landfills is a scourge and turns my stomach as they could have been recycled or - !!! – kept!   I just did a random sample of three of my shelves and over one-third of my CDs are housed in cardboard digipaks or sleeves. 

With vinyl I have become paranoid handling it, an annoying feeling I can’t seem to shake off and a by-product of the new vinyl obsession.  Long gone are the days where I have 10 records haphazardly strewn on my floor.  Now  I worry about bending a corner, or slicing through the slipcover with the vinyl’s edge.  The concern about scratching the surface is ever present.  It’s stupid.  CDs, however, give me no such grief.  They’re hardy and easy to handle and I get no less enjoyment popping them into a CD receptacle than I do lowering a tonearm onto a vinyl record (a ritual that vinyl enthusiasts somehow find essential to the experience).

The desire to collect, acquire, and simply “have” can be characterized as a form of artistic engagement and pursuit.  It can be just as easily denounced as vacuous materialism.  Do people really need all these shiny discs lining their walls and cluttering their space to enjoy music? No, probably not.  Many people do not need piles of records to be a music fan. 

But neither do I think that collecting habits represent mere materialism.  I  strongly believe there is an important, foundational element of purchasing the physical product that drives how one engages with music.  I believe the process of acquiring records produces qualitatively different psychological paths to musical appreciation that is badly stunted by the current environment of online digital streaming. 

The Psychology of Record Buying and Listening

It is tremendously difficult to argue to a cash poor 15 year old who piggybacks on the family Spotify account that they start buying physical recordings (even if many do).  If Spotify was around when I was a teenager, I would have been all in.  Of course I had no choice except to buy records from a store if I loved a band (aside from radio and home taping, the first form of widespread piracy).  At $6.99 to $8.99 an LP, this was a good chunk of money in 1984.  People now don’t have to make this choice.  It’s easy to paint this observation as curmudgeonly (he shakes his fist: “these damn kids today”!) but there is simply no denying the vast changes to music consumption.  Kids aren’t any different, the environment of music is.

There is the oft-cited quote by author Nick Hornby that exhorts people to go to record stores instead of downloading, which makes us hard copy lovers feel smug, nodding our heads:  “Go ahead and save yourself a couple of quid. The savings will cost you a career, a set of cool friends, musical taste and, eventually, your soul. Record stores can't save your life. But they can give you a better one."  This quote was pre-streaming and one can only imagine that this cultural change would make Hornby dig his heels in even more.  In a later interview, he stated that all access streaming…

 “… enabled me to pay less attention to the music itself. I skip tracks all the time, I listen to things for twenty seconds before deciding whether I like them, I don’t pay enough for the music I do appreciate. So I decided that whenever I fell in love with an artist or an album, I would do them the courtesy of spending some decent money on their work, sitting in a room and listening to it properly, over the course of twenty minutes or so. It’s stopped my endless skid over the surface of things.”

He echoes my thoughts precisely.  Buying physical music (CD, vinyl, cassettes, or any other format that you can put into your hands), in the fullness of time, brings all sorts of social, psychological, and emotional rewards.  I think I started to feel this truth as soon as CDs arrived, enjoying the automated programming and easy track skipping but also feeling vaguely bothered by it – like I was cheating and being unduly capricious.  Like I was doing a disservice to the record, the band, and music in general.  If I didn’t articulate this feeling then, it certainly emerged with the onset of mp3s and their corresponding software players (remember WinAmp?  Musicmatch Jukebox?).  My use of Limewire and Kazaa was principled and utilitarian – I’d use it to explore new music for later purchase or acquire single songs that were not yet available on CD – but it still felt like stealing (because it was).

What do you get, in the near and far term, when you buy physical recordings? 

First, purchasing the physical medium forces some attention on your part.  Because you paid for it (directly and specifically) you are going to give it a chance cover to cover – which is what all artists hope for, at least.  You will listen to every song at least once.  The fact that vinyl records and cassettes are inconvenient is another consideration, and exactly the point.  You are lazy – we are all lazy – and you will let that mediocre song #4 play through because you know #5 is great and you don't feel like getting up to advance the track.  In time, perhaps #4 will reveal itself as great. I bought a used CD player that missing its remote and I’m glad, because yes, I’m too lazy to go up and hit that track forward button.  And mixed tapes!  The beauty of a mixed tape assembled from vinyl, especially as a gift, is that it is a labour of love – it requires thought, time, and attention that is completely lacking when you go surfing to a Spotify mix by some stranger.  You’ll listen to it all the way through many times over, if the person knows you well.  Making a Spotify mix for someone?  Feels like barely a gesture.  (Wow, to think that young people don't really have the option anymore to "give music", personally curated, a form of interpersonal communication...it boggles the mind what has been lost).

Engaging with physical music leads to a deeper understanding and appreciation of an album, and music in general.  This process will create favorites out of songs you would have certainly dismissed and skipped.  And if enough people do this, it preserves the sacred status of “an album” – a coherent document of songs that are meant to hang together, in a suggested order.  A document that you can anchor more meaningfully than a single song (or a sporadic array of unrelated songs) to a time.  Which brings us to point two.

Point two is that attention and repetition solidifies and strengthens memories.  Music is a strange and unique pathway to memory building.  A note on a piano or a drum strike does not encode for longevity.  But if it’s the first note of a particular timbre, it can easily trigger your memory of a particular song.  Add in layers of instruments and some vocals and you have the sonic/linguistic ingredients that, repeated 15-20 times, will stay with you your entire life!  But the magic of music is not merely that it is specifically memorable; it’s that songs, albums, years, eras, and entire genres attach themselves to autobiographical memories.  And the attachment, if not evocative of a particular scene, is keyed to the emotions of the time.  Musically evoked memories can be both ephemeral and strongly focused, sometimes in the same moment. 

So, buying physical music compels you to engage with music more deeply, and depth of listening translates into deep personal memories.  My third point may sound exaggerated, that I am overreaching with the presumed power of music.  But it is this: the totality of listening to records your whole life is nothing short of building your identity as a person.  There is a reason film makers use music to strategically convey meaning, a parallel supplement to the scene – it makes cinema more memorable.  Or why pretty much all religious observances use song, music, and rhythm to unify and empower the faith.  Or why social and community life forms around and is anchored by music – it’s a common touchstone of being human.  

Think of song that evokes a strong, personal memory.  Why do you have it?  For some songs it’s because something momentous happened in direct relation to that song.  For others it's because it was “always playing”.  Can you describe the memory?  Not really, not adequately.  The description is lacking because it is very difficult to materially capture the emotional context/content.  It’s like describing a dream to a friend – it may have been a profound experience; meanwhile your patient friend will respond with “neat” or “freaky!”. But it is nonetheless powerful.

These are the core reasons I have always felt the benefit of holding a record in my hands.  It sets up a commitment to listen with attention and mindfulness.  And over decades this process, repeated and repeated, has given me an autobiographical frame, completely independent from the straightforward remembering of an event or scene.  Certain smells can do this, as can visiting a place you have not been to in years, or looking at old pictures.  But these sensory paths are less reliable somehow.  Songs and whole albums can be truly transportative and they are the varied signposts of your personal history.  Making as many of them as possible seems tremendously important to me.  I think it’s what Hornby meant when he said (to paraphrase) that not shopping at record stores will cost you your soul.

The Collector Mind and Attraction to Vinyl

The vinyl resurgence, and the subsequent victimization of the compact disc, is a giant, glorious sham.  It is the outcome of a brilliant countermeasure of bricks and mortar stores who sell physical products, primarily associated with the runaway success of Record Store Day.  The wool has been pulled over the eyes of music consumers, producing an elitist, ostensibly non-conformist, retro-cool identity to which countless people, young and old, have assumed.  The “superiority of vinyl” argument has been been propped up by this highly effective marketing tsunami and worn as a badge of honor by vociferous, sniffing hipsters.

I would like to be absolutely clear on my opinion here --- THANK FUCKING GOODNESS for Record Store Day and the remarkably successful initiative of independent record shops.  Their efforts have preserved and fortified the existence of physical music.  I am sad that CDs have been a casualty, but it was necessary.  Here’s why:  despite the many reasons CDs are great, in the minds of consumers they were never different enough from mp3s and then, the greatest threat, unlimited streaming.  The record store movement HAD to get behind vinyl, because a much better narrative could be woven to set it apart from digital. 

Regarding this narrative, first, was the claim that vinyl has superior audio fidelity, which is complete bunk.  I need not repeat myself on this.  The second reason gets at the heart of the collector’s mind, and diminishes the credibility of the first reason:  that different pressings of the same record have different levels of quality, and that the condition of vinyl – especially original pressings – matters immensely.  CDs, bless them, play the same even if smudged and scratched.  Different copies of the same record house identical digital files.  If vinyl is scratched, it’s permanently marred, and lesser.  This is what collectors want – a way to distinguish their collection, and their “pressings” from those of others.  You don’t hunt for “a superior sounding copy” of Rubber Soul on CD, because it is a copy and not superior sounding.  This is why CD remastered reissues, with bonus tracks, are more valuable.  They are different. And thus explains the love of vinyl, the psychological need of collectors to improve upon their collection and out-collect others.

I think if you asked any record store owner, they would tell you that they have absolutely NO problem selling CDs if that is what the market wants.  CDs are beginning to come back a little bit now, as more people experience (or re-experience) the inherent value of the physical product through buying vinyl, but simply can’t afford the inflated vinyl prices.  It’s become a real scam, this “collector” market, with huge similarities to sports cards.  Create exclusivity, create rarity, and jack up the prices.  I fall into this trap myself, when an album is vinyl only.  Streaming a record I really like just seems wrong.    

In Summary:  All Hail The Compact Disc

• Vinyl is not superior sounding to digital in any objective sense and there is plenty of evidence to back this up that cuts through the omnipresent, mysterious “vinyl is warmer” rhetoric.
  
• Most CDs sound better than most vinyl counterparts, if by better we mean “as close as possible to the source recording that was endorsed and intended by the artist".  In some cases the reverse is true, but this is due to mastering failures, rather than a consequence of the two media.
• These days, most of the time, the practical sonic differences between digital and vinyl are pretty minor.  I love listening to both.
• However…CDs are better for many many other reasons beyond superior fidelity – cost, durability, longevity, storage, ease of digitization.  Packaging and art comes down to aesthetic preference, but I would say a strong case can be made for many CD releases.  
• Support CDs!  Why wouldn’t you, at least in part?  I’ve given heaps of reasons!  Do it! 
• Keep your Spotify account (it’s a great thing) but buy more records!  Be it on CD, vinyl, or cassette, invest in the artist, and commit to the recordings.  Your life sort of depends on it.