Zoomer Buys CDs in 2025 (Why??????)

I am a control freak when it comes to any hobby or activity I care about. I use Linux and BSDs on my computers so I have complete control over them. I mill my own whole grain flour to bake bread. I prefer to own things I care about rather than just rent them. Because if you don't own it you don't control it.

It has happened to me many times where Apple Music has changed the release of an album I frequently listen to on their platform. Maybe a remaster comes out so they'll remove whatever release was on their previously and add the new remaster instead. Probably not the end of the world for most people but it annoys the shit out of me. It also reminds me that I do not have any control over any of this music I love so much and it can be taken away from me at any time. And guess what, that happens too.

Sometimes an album I love just randomly gets taken off Apple Music. Mostly recently this happened with Sigh's Infidel Art. I guess I can't complain right, cause I never actually owned it.

So I went out and bought the CD.

Another thing I see very frequently on Apple Music is that it will screw up less popular artists that have the same name and group them as the same artist. For example the Danish thrash metal band Artillery which I listen to and this random electronic duo I have no interest in all also called Artillery. Another example is Scottish heavy metal band Holocaust and this random edgy rapper also named Holocaust. This happens surprising frequently, where there will be a less well-known metal band I like and some random rapper who happen to have the same name, and Apple Music will think they're the same artist and therefore I get recommendations for this random rapper I have no interest in. I have encountered this bug for years and assume it will never be fixed.

Then of course there are times when I discover a new band, I want to listen to their music, but they are not on Apple Music. Then I must either buy or pirate. I buy when possible, unless the particular record is unobtainium which case I am forced to pirate.

Being able to physically hold a record I love so much, to actually be able to point it out in a shelf rather than search it up on Apple Music or Spotify just hits different. In a very good way. I feel a much greater connection to the album and listen to it more intentionally.

To be honest with you, most CDs I have bought have been used from a local CD shop or on eBay so it's not really supporting the artist directly, but I have bought digital music directly from the artists on Bandcamp. But streaming music doesn't pay artists shit which I think is a pretty well known fact at this point. If you want to directly support the artist, you need to go to their concerts, buy their merch, or actually buy their music.

Sometimes I want to listen to music without having to pull out my damn phone or turn on my computer. Maybe I don't want the distraction of an electronic device or I just don't want to look at a screen right now. I have been using an old Sony Blu-ray player as a CD player for this exact reason.

CDs come with extra goodies like posters, liner notes, lyrics, and interviews with the artist. Having a lyric booklet is very nice because again I do not need my phone or something with a screen to go lookup the lyrics for whatever album I am listening to.

The first CD I bought ever, Imrama by Primordial, an Irish pagan black metal band, is digipack that came with a booklet containing all the lyrics, a word from the front man, and a DVD recording of their first live show outside of Dublin. Cool!

Another CD I bought, Custom Killing by Canadian thrash metal legends Razor, came with this cool poster!

You can easily rip CDs to your computer for the convenience of digital music. I use abcde on my computer to rip CDs. After that, I use MusicBrainz Picard to appropriately tag the album. Then, I take it a step further and upload it to my home server, so I can then stream the album using Jellyfin or Navidrome on my computer and Amperfy or Finamp on my phone (note: Amperfy supports CarPlay for iOS, check it out!). I have a VPN connection setup to my home network so I can then stream my music from anywhere, just like I was using Apple Music or Spotify. The only difference is that it is MY music, and no company can switch releases or revoke my access.

In my opinion, CDs offer the best set of trade-offs to advantages when comparing all mediums of music.

	Convenience	Flexibility	Audio Quality	Ownership	Cost
CDs	3	5	5	5	depends
Vinyl	1	1	3	5	1
Cassettes	1	1	2	5	1
Digital	4	4	depends	4	4
Streaming	5	2	2	1	5

(note I have no experience with Vinyl or Cassettes and this is just based on what I've read)

CDs are easily the most flexible format. Not only can you listen to them using a CD player or any optical drive, you can rip them to your computer and get all the benefits of digital music too. And if you have the technical knowledge you can setup a server and then get all the benefits of streaming music. CDs also require less maintenance than vinyl, and vinyl can not be easily ripped without special equipment, nor can it be played without a turntable, and vinyls are very over priced right now.

However, I have found the price of CDs can vary dramatically. Whatever random crap you find at Goodwill might be 99¢, but if you are looking for something specific and rare it can easily be as much as a vinyl.

I still want to get into vinyl at some point, but I think for the foreseeable future my physical music collection will mostly be CDs to their flexibility and the expense of vinyls.

Obviously there are still cons to buying on CDs. One is bit/disc rot, so there might be a chance in 10 years that I pop one my favorite albums to into my CD player only to find out it no longer plays. To be honest, I'm not sure how much of this is FUD or reality. There are people you have had the same CD for 40 years and it plays fine. Of course, I back up all my CDs to my computer in digital form and then backup my computer, but it would still suck to not have them play anymore.

The most obvious con to me is that fact that CDs take up physical space. There are people much older than me literally selling off all there CDs just to make more space. While CDs are quite compact (hence C ompact D isc), a lot if not most people struggle with clutter and having too much shit and owning CDs just adds on to that. But that is the trade-off with ownership in general. You gain control and freedom to do what you want with the thing, but also have the burden of having to physically keep track of it and make space for it.

But overall, I still like buying CDs sometimes, and those are my reasons why I do even as a zoomer in 2025.