[Thor Joachim Haga]

Covers are important to me. I have some CD-Rs where I got the one and only Jim Titus to design the covers for me back in the day, and these look pretty much like the real thing. But if the CD-R is faulty, that won’t matter. I’m not going to hold on to an unplayable CD-R just because of the covers.

Two of the faulty ones I just threw away – one called “John Williams: Film Works and Arrangements” and the other being ANDRE PREVIN PLAYS THE MUSIC OF YOUNG HOLLYWOOD COMPOSERS, I have as files. And the covers were super basic, low resolution, regular paper. Nothing to keep.

My CD collection is also a piece of furniture and a “statement”. I don’t like it when there are spines displaying “Maxwell 700MB CD-R” or some such thing. Looks terrible. Thankfully, I only have ONE that is bare-bones like that.

CD-Rs were either meant as temporary placeholders until I got the real thing, OR a way to have super rare, unreleased material on physical format. But even the latter is getting less important to me, when I have the files. The files have become the temporary placeholders instead, until it gets a commercial release.