Technology

Nothing's stopping you from burning a CD right now. But ultimately, these kinds of nostalgic memories are less about the tech itself and more about remembering the happy times of youth. Bringing back the burned CD won't bring those back I'm afraid.

Cassettes would like to have a word.

Bring back that whole timeframe. We weren’t all so stuck up our phone’s ass.

Bring Back the Clay Tablet— They’re a love language. And a reminder of the hope we once had.

Surely the what the world needs right now is more plastic.

What a dumbass article. It's way too easy right now to burn a CD, we need another 25 years before were nostalgic about this one.

Sure you can burn a CD, but I think I have nothing to play them anymore. My car (2020) does not have a CD player anymore. Nor my PC nor my laptop have one. I may have in my drawer an old BD reader DVD burner/reader with a SATA plug or something, I remember I plugged it on my laptop with a USB adapter yearsssss ago to rip my LOTR BD. It has been used 1 time in like 10 years.

There was a certain intentionality to burning a CD that a Spotify link just can't replicate. Spending an hour picking the perfect songs to fit exactly 80 minutes, and then handwriting the tracklist... it was a real labor of love. It’s a shame that convenience has replaced that personal touch.

Ok clearly it's not literally about making CDs and people saying "just make your own streaming service" are both missing the point and vastly over estimating the capacity of the average person.

The important part that's largely missing from today's music environment is the personal touch and investment. Many people, as the author says, just comfortably coast through an algorithmic smoothie of familiar music. That is inferior to a friend saying "I made you this mix" and then you actually listen to it, attentively, more than once.

It doesn't have to be a CD. It can be a zip file. But the intention and focus was important.

I'm an outlier in that I never let "the algorithm" choose what plays. Sometimes I still make mixes for friends, though lately they've just been a collection of links. That process of choosing is meaningful. My friend still listens to the mix I made for them when their job laid them off, sometimes.

In audio circles stamped cd’s have been making a comeback. It’s much like the last decades vinyl revival.

It’s not the older generations getting nostalgia, it’s the younger generations looking for ‘experience’ over content. Buying a physical thing, storing on the shelf, having a visible collection of disks to show off.

Additionally it is a revenue stream for artists, where despite the costs of mastering and pressing a cd, they can get more money from a cd release than from streaming. So artists have been incentivized do make releases a big deal since they money goes straight to them. It’s a bit like a ‘buy me a coffee’ but with a physical item.

You can buy brand new cd players, not just blueray players or vintage units that need service.

It’s a thing.

And why is burning an audio file onto a CD better than having the same file on flash storage?

No, we need transferable digital licenses. I want to both own my software and download it on the go

It seems to me like the world has had 3 phases:

• Phase 1: People own media on records, tapes, etc. because that's the only way to listen to what you want whenever you want. The only alternative is radio, where you listen to what the DJ thinks you should hear. If you buy something once, you can listen to it whenever you want forever. (Or at least as long as the medium holds up)
• Phase 2: It was relatively easy to get the media you wanted on demand, but it wasn't always legal, because the copyright cartels were used to a certain way of doing business and didn't like disruption. During this phase people still bought read-only media in stores. But, they also sometimes bought blank media and filled it up from their computers at home.
• Phase 3: Everything is now online, and you no longer own media. In this phase you can listen to / watch whatever you want, but you don't get to own anything, and you have to pay monthly if you don't want your media viewing / listening to be interrupted by ads. In this phase, media you love can just disappear if someone loses the license to stream it, or the copyright owner decides to pull it or modify it. In this version someone like George Lucas can decide that the version of Star Wars you grew up on should change, and you now have to accept his new version.

Unfortunately, long-term storage hasn't kept pace with short-term storage and bandwidth. You can make someone a "mix tape" that's a USB stick, but if someone puts it on a shelf it might not be readable in 5 years. You could save the original version of Star Wars to a NAS. But, if your friend wants to borrow it, it's not as easy as grabbing a case off the bookshelf and handing it over.

I keep hoping that one of these "crystal storage" mechanisms takes off. Then we can much more easily be data hoarders, keeping everything, and not relying on a continued subscription to a streaming service for our favourite media.

I never stopped. How else am I going to burn PS1, Dreamcast, and 360 games?

I'm not sure if they've degraded, but I've got one of those CD-R spindles with a few disks left on it somewhere

I could burn a mix CD this afternoon if I felt like it?

Thing is if I gave half of the people I know a mix CD I'm pretty sure they wouldn't actually have a means of listening to it

Mix tapes were better

what's a CD?

I think people undervalue cd/dvd/bluray. Up to this day it's best format for giving away data like family photos.

With any usb device there's much larger security risk. Also people want to get storage back.