The Return of the CD aka Compact Disc

Back in the Mid90s, CD’s began to become the most popular, reasonable, and practical option for listeners to enjoy a great listening experience with their favorite albums. Vinyl was always there for the older folks, enthusiasts, DJs, and producers but the casual fans? We needed to listen to music and maybe our parents had a record player but at least for me, I couldn’t go anywhere near my dad’s record player. So around ‘93 - ‘94, cassettes were the only music medium I purchased because I had the Sony Walkman on deck. For $10, I could get a new album on cassette tape and that tape would stay in my walkman for weeks as I listened to every song and then flipped the cassette after side a was done. I loved and forever will love the cassette experience.

I have a vivid memory of the first CD I ever bought. Now keep in mind, there was going to the mall and buying a cassette all by my lonely but that was often an adventure as I was a kid buying gangster rap cassettes so I always needed to wait until somebody nice was at the register and then I went up there and just acted cool while trying to hide that parental advisory sticker which was a snitch telling parents and record store owners that a kid shouldn’t be listening to this… but of course I did. But now having your parents buy music for you? You were relegated to MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, or Fresh Prince on the hip hop side as there were no parental advisory stickers in site and each “rapper” was seen as “safe” to parents. We were at Price Club in ‘92 or ‘93 which eventually became Costco. They had a CD section with these long box CD’s that you would flip through to see what albums they had available. My parents told me I could buy a CD for the first time ever. I didn’t like the hip hop selection so I went with the artists I felt had the best vibe, music, and branding… The first CD I bought the debut album from TLC called Ooooooohhh... On the TLC Tip. I was just starting to get more interested in girls myself and I had the huge crush on Chilli while T-Boz and Left Eye just seemed like girls I could be friends with. So of course TLC was my first CD!!

We have to go back to long box CD’s real quick though… I know they were super expensive to make because of the excess packaging that would get thrown away but damn were they really cool to flip through at the record store. Eventually those long box CD’s faded away but CD’s were just getting started and as they presented a new way to listen to music which was a better audio experience but then also gave you the means to skip songs as now you could press a button and pick what song you wanted to listen to with ease. With cassettes? Much harder to skip songs and those cassettes would pop so you wanted to be wise with the way you handled them which to me, meant listening to entire albums without skipping… love that! miss that! but let’s check out some CD racks back from 1993 out in San Diego where if you look closely, you might see me digging… not really but I likely wasn’t far away.

I started building my CD collection but they were more expensive than cassettes which made it challenge for a young teenager trying to listen to as much good music as possible. CD’s on sale would be $11.99 but standard MSRP’s on compact discs back in the 90’s was $15.99 - $17.99. Cassettes were $9.99 brand new so now just to grab an album from a rapper or hip hop group I liked meant my dollar just got squeezed…. But that CD experience was something man… I was still buying cassettes during the CD renaissance of the mid 90s but when you snapped that CD out of the plastic packaging you had to be gentle. If you got scratches on the bottom of your CD that meant that your music wouldn’t play… or it would skip… so then you might have to bail a song you really liked or you just had to fast forward ahead a bit and get past the scratches on the CD. But that first listen of a CD for an album you hadn’t heard yet?!?!???!? Honestly the best. I would have my foam headphones on with the long wire attached to the vintage Sony Discman listening to albums like this while flipping through the CD booklet aka liner notes to learn about the art I had in my hands and in my ears. Listening to DJ Quik’s debut album on CD for the first time just hit different.

I was addicted to watching rap and hip hop videos so I could learn more about the artists and see how they presented themselves… how their record labels presented them… if artists’ music was as good as their videos and vise versa, I was ready to buy their CD with the money I had saved from umping little league games, working with a food caterer, from holiday cards from my grandparents, from money i stole from… .aight… you get it… I NEEDED CASH TO GO BUY MUSIC.

Look… I went in heavy on cassettes in 2020 as the pandemic hit and I had more time at home to enjoy myself. My wife was pregnant and we couldn’t really go outside much so I went inside… I went back to my roots when I was a kid and I started getting boxes and boxes from my parents’ attic of old cassettes… old CD’s… old sports cards… rap magazines… I brought it all back to my small apartment and I just started enjoying it… I was listening to cassettes again while flipping through old magazines from the 90s and it honestly brought me this since of joy that I missed. Sure I loved Spotify and the endless library of music but there was something about holding art in your hands… there was something about watching that cassette turn and that CD spin that unlocked core memories from me from times that were otherwise kinda suppressed from my mind… I remember pressing play on this cassette and just feeling cool again…

I didn’t get a CD player back into my life until around 2021 and when I did, I forgot how fun it was to put a CD into a portable music player (Discman, boom box, ghetto blaster, car stereo, etc) and then watch the cd spin and then all of a sudden you have music with audio quality that was super noticeable in comparison to what you heard on your walkman. And because the CD’s were bigger than cassettes, this meant more real estate for artwork, photography, information about each song and the album as a whole, and more shoutouts from the artists! I love liner notes… it let me see inside of the artists and understand where they were from, who they were cool with, etc. When I think of a CD aka Compact Disc, I think of one CD. Well, it’s actually 2 CD’s… I think of 2Pac’s double album on Death Row Records, All Eyez on Me. Any time I think of that album, hear that album, see that album, or anything related to Pac, I think of being amazed that I just bought an album and got 2 CD’s full of music… whoa… and the photography inside was so dope. I think of All Eyez on Me and I think of 16 year old me in my ‘91 Volkswagen Fox trying to keep my CDs scratch free and BUMPING in the whip. Having friends come in the car and we’d all know every word to the album and vibe together as we went to the mall… went to Dairy Queen… went to sports games… went to the record store… ALL OF IT.

We’ve all been lucky with Spotify and the availability of so much music from our past (and present) at our fingertips. But when you have like 17 different subscriptions for entertainment (Netflix, Hulu, Prime, etc.), Spotify could get cut and then you kind of stop listening to music??? It happens… We get older and we don’t have much time… and the little time we have, we use it to do the things that bring us happiness… that could be reading a book… working out… gardening… cleaning… playing video games… but add in a CD player and the dedication to letting music play is good for your soul… trust me… it is… the whole experience is like $50 upfront… you can buy a decent CD player for $40 on Amazon and then go buy an album you love for like $8 on CD. Or maybe $10 on CD… maybe $15… $25… $35… yup… levels to this. But let’s say you want to get back into Nirvana… Now go just search Nirvana In Utero CD on eBay and let me know what you find…. i’ll help you though… $15. So you can be out of pocket $55 on a new CD player from Amazon and a Nirvana CD. But now look… you have a new hobby… you listen to music and learn about the album, artists, city they were from, etc…. You experience music the way music is supposed to be experienced. You don’t need your phone… throw that in the drawer… go make a coffee or something…

and yes… i know this is on Spotify and YouTube but we aren’t messing with them right now for this… we are taking our phone and throwing it away for an hour… we are going to watch that CD spin while we just do the things we need to do. Maybe it gets the little one dancing a bit… listening more… dancing… maybe you’ll be a little more mindful with that cup of coffee…. i’m telling you… CD’s are back because they are a vibe… it’s an experience… and it doesn’t cost much… seriously… hit up some record stores and dig in their used CD bins for just like 12 minutes… Then find a CD for a few bucks that somebody slept on that you can now really get into and then let somebody else borrow it… that is dope. I think CD’s are coming back…. I wouldn’t say they’re here… I would just say the return of the CD is something to watch.