The Neil Young row hinted at the precariousness of relying on Spotify et al. Could the casual CD become cool again?
At some point half a decade ago I did the sensible thing: I packed away into boxes the dust-caked piles of CDs (largely unplayed for quite a while) that had followed me through various houseshares. In the following years I lugged those boxes to another rented home and on into storage as I moved to a different country. But I couldn’t truly let the CDs go, even though Spotify had been my main music source for at least 10 years. I no longer even own a fully functioning CD player.
I sometimes half-joke that CDs are due a revival, largely to justify the above state of affairs. But it doesn’t seem to be beyond the realms of possibility, given 20-year nostalgia cycles and rolling waves of revivals for things from the 1990s and early 2000s; perhaps the CD could now be carried along in the flotsam.
Larry Ryan is a freelance writer and editor
