CDs
Discs capable of storing more than an hour of digital music-which, once, seemed like an eternity.
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So long, CDs-we hardly knew how to open ye.
But we tried. Really, we did. We used our teeth, our nails, our steak knives. We sometimes broke off your jewel cases' covers in frustration, and then slipped you into a Case Logic sleeve. We eventually invested in a contraption made specifically to slice open the force fields which kept you shielded from a world that would scratch you, mark you with Sharpies, copy you, and ultimately place you facedown on the window-sill to keep the pigeons away (hey, it worked).
When compact discs were first introduced in 1982, they resembled shiny artifacts from the future-the kind of thing a robot would eat for breakfast. They were impressive little objects: hefty double albums like the Clash's London Calling could be distilled down to one twelve-centimeter, eighty-minute disc that gave the listener the ability to skip the least-preferred tracks. Yet the coasterlike devices also somehow made music seem… smaller. Once they were shrunk down to fit inside a five-inch plastic square, album covers were no longer so effective. But with all those Columbia House offers to buy ten discs for one penny-and no commitment to buy more!-did it really matter what the cover art looked like?
Even if many music buffs never quite took the form seriously (record stores never billed themselves as "CD shops," no matter how many jewel cases they stocked), it was hard not to like the way the uniform cases had bindings that stacked so nicely, displaying titles that were far easier to read than the ones on LP spines. But extract one CD from the bottom of that little ziggurat of discs in the corner and it suddenly seemed that it was on a mission to divorce itself from its case. This problem was especially prevalent in cars-somehow, the trip between the front seat and the six-CD changer in the trunk always resulted in some errant Madonna album taking up residence in the Reality Bites soundtrack case. Under the seat, the tabs on the plastic floret that stuck in the hole of the Pearl Jam disc had cracked off and were rattling around in the cup holder. Then there was the Prince CD that had been so lovingly placed in a sleeve in the visor, but nevertheless was now playing like was it was 1999-nine, nine, nine. There were a couple of remedies you might employ to fix the scratches, but you should probably test them out on that Ace of Base disc first.
In the end, MP3s are a more forgiving format, even if they're harder to wrap up and put under the Hanukkah bush. They don't scratch or collect dust or require that you pull over if you want to hear a new artist. They don't have great cover art, but CDs already brought down any expectations we had that great music should be paired with interesting images.
There's still a market for blank CDs-they are one method of transporting digital media from one computer to another, for example. But music CDs are not long for this world. In 2007, when their sales plunged by more than 20 percent, many music stores stopped selling CD singles, and America's Consumer Electronics Association reported that devices for linking MP3 players to car stereos were swiftly outselling CD players.
But those who are getting ready to whimper about yet another nail in the record store coffin can go ahead and put those hankies away. Steady increases in music downloads might indeed mean that there are fewer brick-and-mortar places for music geeks to congregate and browse, but many of these old stores are finding ballast in a music format that predates even the CD: LPs. While CD sales are diminishing every year, music lovers who are nostalgic for a form of music that they can hold and cherish are going back to vinyl. In 2008, 1.8 million vinyl records left store shelves-more than in any other year since Nielsen began tracking their sales in 1991. That might amount to little more than the number of LPs that Michael Jackson's Thriller sold in one week the year it came out, but still…