Why CDs?

I may have covered some of this ground in the past, but I've had this particular post on my mind ever since I started my two "decade" coutdowns in December ... well, actually quite a bit earlier than that ... so here goes. (Besides, this has been a slow month here anyway.) Why do I buy CDs? And no, I'm not questioning my own choice to buy them, rather I'm answering anyone who might be asking the question.

I've noticed a whole lot of attention being paid lately to the single, and less of an emphasis on the album. In "Rolling Stone" magazine, the singles reviews are now occupying almost as much space as album reviews. Also, most every other blog I've seen out there has had a "top singles of the year" list, while such a list is noticeably absent from my blog. And then there's the ubiquitous presence of iTunes where, I've been led to believe, individual track sales are far more numerous than full album sales. So, the question persists: Why do I buy albums? Don't I know that there are usually just one or two good songs on an album, and all the rest is filler, not to mention that I can cherry-pick my favorite songs digitally on iTunes?

Well, yes I do know all that. But there's a method to my madness. First of all, the reason I buy albums as opposed to singles is because I like to invest more time in an artist than three or four minutes. Not only do I feel like I'd be dismissive and curt to said artist -- who's probably taken a lot of time and hard work to put together a whole set of ten or eleven songs -- by only giving them one song's worth of my time, but the truth is that I quite often end up liking well over half the album after I've listened to it a good few times. I frankly have never understood how so many listeners dismiss an album as having "only one good song" ... it must just be a symptom of the ever-diminishing attention span of the average American. I kind-of pity those people, in a way, 'cause I know they're missing out on some dandy album tracks.

Besides, I never listen to the radio (no particular reason, I just don't), so I never pay attention to what singles are popular and what aren't ... I guess I just prefer to explore on my own.

And now for the other half of my answer: why I buy CDs instead of digital albums. Of course I have bought one or two digital albums, but only when they're available in no physical format. When I spend my money, I like to get an actual, tangible object in exchange for it ... not some ethereal blip of data that could potentially be gone in one catastrophic hard-drive crash. Not to mention that I love to be able to flip through the liner notes, reading the text and enjoying the pictures ... plus (not that I necessarily have it on my mind when I buy the disc) I've got something to sell to the local independent store for trade credit if I should happen to not like the album or grow tired of it in the future. And I have to admit, there's something fun about hunting down a hard-to-find title, that feeling of triumph when I find it, the rush when I receive it in the mail (or bring it home from the store), and the anticipation of popping it in my player for the first time.

As I've said before, the convenience and immediacy of digital downloading (and I mean legal digital downloading, you cyber-hooligans out there) is way cool, no doubt ... but nothing can compare to holding an actual CD case in your hands, gazing at the front and back cover art while it spins in your CD drive and pours through your headphones, and finding that special spot on your CD shelf to tuck it into, amongst the rows (and, for me, rows and rows!) of its brethren. I tell you, if I didn't have those two bookcases full of CDs in my room, it just wouldn't feel like home.