CDs...they were great

I very rarely buy a CD anymore. If I do, it's always a disappointing experience. Not because the content is different, not because the packaging is not funny and pretty and something else. It's that: I can't listen to it! I have to go home and put it on my computer and then transfer it to my iPod. This can take hours, sometimes days! When you buy a book, you can just open it and start reading (standing in line, holding things up, spending too long in the bookshop's Starbucks so you feel like a leech). Admittedly, you cannot do this when you purchase a film. But I do not walk around the cities watching movies anyhow, so no great loss.

I remember sitting in the McGill Daily office in first year (what was I doing there?) and listening to the new Blond Redhead album. When it was over, we liked it so much we started it over again. On the way home I stopped at HMV, purchased a copy, and stood on St. Catherine's unwrapping it. I took out the CD, put whatever was in my plastic discman in the case (probably Broken Social Scene, this was 2003) and PRESSED PLAY. And there it was! Mine! To be listened to daily!

Buying a CD and listening to music have so little in common anymore. I have almost always already illegally downloaded the whole album when I buy it (out of some half-assed "supporting the artist" idea that doesn't make any sense because I buy Kylie albums but just download Timber Timbre). I open it up and look at the artwork (yawn, are people really as into album artwork as they claim to be?), and then it just sits on a shelf. They're mostly a waste of space.

RIP CDs.