A moment of appreciation for the much-maligned compact disc

In today’s music market, listeners are often presented with a false dichotomy between two formats. On one hand, there is streaming. The now-ever-present product of the Internet that, despite the questions surrounding its ethics, has quickly succeeded both MP3 downloads and physical purchases as the most popular source of music for casual and serious listeners alike. On the other hand, there’s the analog counter-revolution, whose most observable result has been a Crosley turntable in every college student’s dorm. I find myself attempting to identify either as a forward-looking music fan in a digital world or as a purist still intent on building my record collection in the face of an industry that has left its values behind.

Lost amid these two extremes is the compact disc, the consummate hybrid of the digital and the physical. We’re at a point in history where the CD’s favor is at its lowest. It has outlived its utility, but not by long enough to become cool, the way vinyls and cassettes have, leaving it in an awkward stage. Not many, in 2017, would rise to the defense of the CD.

Today, I present a case for the humble, forgotten medium.

My personal connection to the compact disc dates back to the days of family road trips, where the only distraction for my impatient eight-year-old brain was a Walkman and a bootlegged copy of The Shins’ “Chutes Too Narrow.” I credit that album—along with the various greatest hits compilations and Broadway musical soundtracks that littered my home’s shelves—with launching a transfixion with music that continues to this day. Listening to CDs taught me the power of sequencing, each track on an album its own unit within a larger whole. Nothing was more satisfying than clicking through the tracks on that primitive digital display, watching the seconds tick down on each song and feeling the hum and the heat from the disc that all the while spun furiously inside.

Later in life, CDs once more proved their worth when I started driving. I amassed binders-full of discs either bought or burnt, relishing the process of putting together mixes. Because the CD maintains the long-playing nature of vinyl while introducing the discrete skip-ability of the MP3, it makes the perfect vehicle for the playlist. The process of choosing and ordering a set of songs, burning it to disc and pulling out a Sharpie to personalize it requires a level of manual effort not replicated by a shuffle-ready Spotify playlist, no matter how well-curated the latter may be. (Hipster courtship died the day cars stopped manufacturing CD players.)

Laptops likewise began phasing out CD players recently, making the opportunities for CD listening few and far between. The two-headed monster of streaming services and wireless sound systems is rapidly becoming the norm for music listening. While the newer medium increases music’s ease of access and opens the door to endless libraries at the touch of a screen, the integrity of sound quality (not to mention the proper compensation of artists) has taken a back seat. Say what you will about those brittle jewel cases and those absurdly fragile glass surfaces, but no one can deny the CD’s commitment to affordable, quality sound.

The CD, despite the odds, has stubbornly refused to die a swift death. Many independent radio stations still play the bulk of their music on CD. Retail stores like Target still carry the newest releases on disc—and they still sell out. Upstart and seasoned bands alike continue to peddle CDs at their shows alongside cassette tapes and T-shirts. Independent bookshops and record stores like the ones I used to scour in high school often feature shelves upon shelves of used CDs, an endless repository of discovery for any music fan.

Even if it isn’t quite “cool,” the compact disc is far from obsolete. And if the twenty-year wheel of nostalgia continues to turn, we’re due for a CD renaissance soon. The vinyl reawakening peaked years ago. (Once they started appearing at Barnes and Noble, the end was nigh.) The cassette is having its moment now. Give it five years or so, and the time may be ripe for the CD to make a comeback.