Refusing to let go of compact discs for the sake of technology

Is that terrible, awful thing going to happen to CDs? Are they going to become obsolete? I… Is that terrible, awful thing going to happen to CDs? Are they going to become obsolete? I guess I know the answer to that question, but I ask it anyway in hopes that someone will tell me I’m wrong.

Obviously, I don’t own an mp3 player. I’m the kind of person who’d need to take a crash instructional course for a few weeks before I’d even know how to work one. Someone would have to show me what downloading program to get and how to use it, and then walk me through it a couple of times. Then I’d need a tutorial on those little, miniature devices themselves; how the buttons work and how to find the songs I want; how to take songs off and put them on.

For those of you with mp3 players: I can hear you laughing and scoffing. That’s OK. I’ve embraced my technological incompetence. But really, that’s beside the point.

I happen to like my CDs.

I realize that I could rip all the songs off them and put the songs I like onto my theoretical mp3player (however that works), but it just wouldn’t be the same. Losing the physical object of a disc that comes with a little booklet telling me about the artist and listing songs and lyrics is a foreign idea to me. There’s something satisfying in opening your CD case and flipping the pages until you find the title you’re searching for, pulling it out, and carefully placing it in your stereo or portable CD player.

While you’re searching through the case, you pass all the old albums you bought as a teen-ager — early ’90s music to which you’ll always have a special attachment. If you’re a good case-keeper, you can pull the booklet out from behind the CD and find out exactly what year that CD was released and read all about the band, which probably hasn’t recorded a song since then.

For me, when I pass strange 6th-grade purchases like the self-titled album by Marcy Playground, a band I haven’t listened to in about seven years, and remember that it has the song “Sex and Candy” on it, I can’t help but laugh. Whenever I see that album, it reminds me of the specific time in my life when I purchased it — the pre-car years when I’d watch MTV with my friends (after my mom drove me to their houses) and decide which CD or two I wanted for Christmas. At that age, what else do you ask for?

With an mp3 format, you lose some of that magic. Sure, the song might always remind you of a specific time period, but gone is the actual artifact of your past. Gone is the physical object, proof of your commitment to and interest in that band, no matter how fleeting it may have been. What are we left with? Invisible files on little plastic devices — songs that don’t necessarily represent your favorite musical taste anymore, as they did when you couldn’t get mp3 files and had to buy the CDs you really wanted.

Maybe I’m being a little melodramatic, but I hate to think of the day when I have to separate my old music from my new by its format — CDs in one place and mp3 player in another.

Is this what it was like for our folks to switch from vinyl? For the generation before me to have to give up their cassette tapes and figure out the world of CDs? Were they wary and a little sad, too? Were they upset at having invested money in that huge pile of records or cassette tapes, only to realize that in a few years they’d have to go to specialty or second-hand stores to buy music to fit their audio system?

I imagine my children, years from now, saying, “That is what you used for music? It’s huge!” It reminds me of me when I was a kid, wearing a confused look on my face as my dad tried to explain what 45s were.

I suppose those comments are inevitable for any generation, but I was expecting such a change to happen when I was 30 or 40, not now. It happened with tapes when we were kids — all of a sudden the tapes were only on the side wall in the music store, and then one day they were gone. Don’t we get at least a few more years of an uninterrupted music format?

No?

Call me crazy, but I’m just not ready to upgrade.

Erin Lawley is the assistant A’E editor, and she isn’t ready to say good-bye to the wonderful world of CDs. She invites you to live in the past with her. Send her an e-mail at enl1@pitt.edu.