compact discs as coasters

as far as listening to music goes, cd's are the worst. any cd ever created in all of history was doomed to become scratched up eventually. and there's not much that's more annoying than the skipping of a scratched cd while you're trying to enjoy some tunes. it would've been way cooler if we could've gone from cassette tapes to mp3's. the whole cd phase was useless and all that's left behind is stacks of old cd's with scratches on them that people try to play in cars that don't have any sort of mp3 technology in them.

beyond that, cd's ruined our attention span. cd's made it too easy to skip songs. if you wanted to skip to the next song on a tape, you had to really want it. you had to press down on the fast forward button and wait a bunch of seconds. then you had to press play, realize you went too far, and rewind it, and end up in the previous song again. it was a mess and most of the time it was better to just let the damn thing play. and to me that's a good thing.

i prefer to listen to music by the album. i like to play entire albums from beginning to end without skipping any tracks. albums have a feel to them. it's like the album is greater than the sum of its songs. when i was younger i used to like to listen to whole albums. but i got lost somewhere along the way. cd's had me skipping ahead to the songs i liked better. i was so trained in that mindset, that by the time mp3 players came around, i was consuming music on shuffle mode almost all the time. it took me a few years to get back to a place where i was listening to whole albums again. and now that i do, it's enhanced listening to music in general for me. i'm not gonna say there's anything scientific or factual to back me up here... it's just the feel of the whole thing. plus, artists work so hard to put an album together, it just seems like the way it's supposed to be. like skipping through an album or just picking one or two songs out is some kinda injustice that negates their artistry and hard work.

another advantage tapes had over cd's was portability. portable cd players sucked. they always skipped. it took them years to invent "skip proof" cd players and even then those weren't perfect. walkmen for cassette tapes however were fucking awesome. you didn't lose anything in the experience. you pressed play and it played with no issues.

also, blank tapes are better than blank cd's. sure, blank cd's were easier to mess with once we were able to throw mp3's on them, but making a blank tape was an experience. you had to spend time with it and really think out your game plan. was your tape going to have a theme? were you gonna give it to someone, like a friend or a crush? were you gonna try and record songs straight off the radio or borrow tapes from a friend's collection? you had to time things out so you didn't end side a in the middle of a song cuz that was a bummer. it took work and when you were done you had a sense of pride. blank cd's never could give you quite the same joy.

now we're knee deep into the digital stuff. and i'm happy with it. i like mp3's. i like being able to carry around a boatload of music on a handheld device. long gone are the days of cassette tapes and they're probably never coming back. but i'll always look back on the days of rocking cassettes as an awesome time. cd's on the other hand... i'll probably always remember trying to entertain people at a party with my awesome music selection only to be foiled by a cd that skips so much, it ends up annoying everyone in the room. or how i was really bummed out that one day and all i needed to hear was that one song to lift my spirits and i'd have to put up with a bunch of skipping to get through it. not every song on every cd skipped, but it happened frequently enough to qualify as a legitimate pain in the ass.

so long cd's. i'm glad you're no longer the most accepted form of music listening format. besides inadvertently tarnishing our attention spans by allowing us the convenience to skip through tracks, your only good purpose these days are as a coaster for beverages i drink while listening to music i downloaded off the internet at home.