CD-Rs! Fail me, and you’re through!
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I’ve thrown away a couple of CD-Rs in my collection walkthrough recently, if they’ve had issues (no sound, or skipping).
CD-Rs were a thing in the old days when online files or YouTube videos weren’t readily available, at least not files for relatively rare items. You had to rely on music existing in people’s private collections, which they would then copy to a CD-R and send you. That isn’t really necessary anymore.
Besides, they’re mostly ugly-looking creatures in my collection, so I wouldn’t mind a collection of just regular CDs.
Anyone else feel the same? Or do you cling on to them, even if the music itself may be available on YouTube or other streaming services?
I still have all the CD-Rs that work as far as I know. I have all secure and I throw them away when I notice that they are broken only.
I don’t use Spotify and Youtube with all its ads is not really that pleasant to really listen to music (yeah you could pay for it…). And some CD-Rs are not available otherwise 😉
I have recently thrown a lot of CD-Rs in the bin. But there were a lot of nice samplers created by friends or my brothers or ex-girlfriends. A lot of nice memories. But I hadn’t listened to them for years. And probably most of the stuff is on Spotify. And in front of my inner eye I saw them collecting dust over the years and one day being thrown away by someone else after my death.
I still burn albums or “mix-tapes” from youtube to CDR from time to time. I need my music on physical media. If an album is too expensive on CD/LP, or only released digitally, I burn it. A bit of a hassle, but I do it anyway.
I do these things as well but I stopped buring CD-Rs for myself 10-15 years ago. I only do this occasionally for presents for friends (birthday songs or compilations for one generally film score interested friend) because sending a link is not proper present…
Also when I burned a CD-Rs I also had to have a cover/inlay and besides the work inkjet inks are an equivalent to shipping cost nowadays, too 😉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.
I don’t bother with covers.
There are occasions I didn’t but generally I like to have them. But it does not help being a designer 😉 Also all my digital albums need to have proper covers.
In the late 1990s/early 2000s, I was part of a network that traded compilations via CD-R. About 4 years ago, I had this panic attack, because I’d never backed them up. Thankfully, nearly all of them still worked.
In my experience, the CD-Rs most likely to go bad have an adhesive label on the top side.
In my experience, the CD-Rs most likely to go bad have an adhesive label on the top side.
Yes, my experience, too. Especially the thicker glossy ones. I early stopped doing that so a cover/inlay was enough. And the brand does make a difference. Other issues may be burning too fast and too cheap brands that I also often had gone bad reliably. I have still my first CD-R from late 1990s that has even an non glossy label even and it played flawlessy some weeks ago.
My entire music collection is in ALAC format, which means I have have transferred all of my CDs including all CD-Rs to ALAC. Most CD-Rs I had were copies of my own CDs (maybe for the car or something), so obviously I was never worried about them (they had to take the beating in the car and on the go, while the original copy stayed safe at home in the shelf). Very, very few CD-Rs I had were of rare scores otherwise not available (to me), but I did transfer those all to ALAC as well with no issues, so the music is “safe” now.
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