Why Collect CDs in 2024?

My relationship with collecting music and supporting your favorite music artists in the modern day.

EIRM is a music blog that talks about the aspects of music that I enjoy. I will be talking about bands you may know, and many you may have never heard of. On top of that, I will also discuss the origins of niche sub-genres, and other fun music stuff in-between.

---

Hello, once again. Thanks for catching up with the Electric Indie Riff Machine!

As I write this, I will have turned 25 years old… It’s not an immensely pivotal year such as 18 or 21 in terms of celebration, but I can’t help but feel just a tad bit… Retrospective. It’s hard not too really.

Like many others, I often look to my past to see how my choices have led me to where I am at today. Thankfully, I don’t have many moments of regret to dwell upon, none of which that deserve extensive pondering. In few mundane instances, many things in my life have stayed with me regardless of my choices. For example, it is difficult to find pants in my size (30 x 36), I often have a lack of motivation to do things that once seemed so stimulating, and I still have an affinity for physical mediums of content.

I recognize the lack of correlation between those three examples, but funny enough you could paint a pretty good picture of myself from them: A lanky, jaded, twenty-something, that covets material objects… Yeah, that sounds about right.

However, let’s move past my retrospective-ness and physical appearance issues for a second, and let’s talk more about music! After all, this is a music blog, not a therapy session.

My Personal Relationship with CDs

Growing up in the 2000s era, where CDs were the main platform for experiencing music, it is a no-brainer to find the connection between my love for CDs when listening to music. However, it goes a little bit deeper than that.

My Dad is highly influential to me when it comes to my music tastes. I can fondly remember going to work with him every now and again when I was younger. Since he worked for an oil field business, his job required that he do quite a bit of driving. To keep us entertained he had an arsenal of music at his disposal that ranged from bands such as Styx all the way to Disney Soundtracks. These soundtracks, in particular, were played constantly due to my immature fixation on pieces of media at my young age. I truly appreciate my dad’s patience with me as I’m sure he didn’t want to hear “One Jump Ahead” from the Aladdin soundtrack 5-10 times a day. However, I can’t deny that is still a banger of a track…

Another thing that was great about my dad’s CD collection is that he kept a lot of his favorite CDs with him in one of those zipper-closed cases with the plastic CD sleeves, y’know what I’m talking about. Whenever he allowed me to pick out the music we were going to listen to, I felt empowered. Something about unzipping that case and selecting from the trove of my dad’s music collection felt like an honor of some sort… Almost like a rite of passage? I can’t quite place the feeling accurately into words, but it made me feel important and closer to my dad, who I respect greatly. Love that guy!

Nowadays, I am paying somewhat of a tribute to my childhood, my dad, and to the artists that I admire by creating a CD collection of my own. I have invested a bit of money at this point to grow my CD collection and it’s starting to shape up! My center console in my car is literally filled with CDs, I have dozens of albums that I can switch out and, honestly, it makes me feel cool when I do it. The process of switching out a CD just feels right and empowering.

Sure, I still use Spotify and other music streaming services when I want to listen to something I don’t on CD, but I want to bring up an issue that I have with Spotify.

The Spotify Issue.

It’s not the 2000s anymore, you don’t have buy the full album to enjoy a band or an artist’s music. You can also stream individual songs online through platforms such as Youtube, Spotify, Bandcamp, Apple Music, and more. However, are these platforms allowing the artist to thrive financially off of their music?

Lately, there has a been a big buzz in the music community among the artists who have their music on Spotify and who were already being paid literal fractions of a penny for each stream. Spotify now wants to enforce yet another caveat before artists can get paid for their music streams. To sum the issue up, Spotify wants to require that artists reach a minimum number of streams before they can get paid. This model, on paper, is not supportive of the vast amount of smaller music artists that depend on their platform to promote their music.

To be fair, I want to give Spotify the benefit of the doubt on this issue. The main question I ask is, “Why was this model proposed?” The Verge has a good article on this topic, which has helped understand this potential new change on Spotify’s platform a bit better. Basically, these changes were brought up to crack down on “Streaming Fraud”, which would save Spotify a pretty penny each year as they wouldn’t have to pay those who are abusing the current stream royalty model.

Okay. Admittedly, that is a good reason. I don’t condone those who pay for their streams or find an inorganic way to promote their music (outside of normal advertising). Additionally, those who upload long-form media, such as Background Noise tracks, will have to have listeners tune into their track for longer than 30 seconds before they can receive an “official stream”.

This issue seems like a big grey area. I can see the good that comes out of it, but I fear of how this change will affect the future precedent of the company as a whole. Spotify needs to buckle down and figure out how to find a happy medium between the monetary needs of the artists on their platform and their own company.

If anything, I want to state that I have recently talked with a few music artists that have their music on Spotify and I have received mixed reviews. I mean, an artist or a band has a great opportunity to put their music on the world’s largest streaming platforms with ease. Spotify does a good job of keeping their platform fresh by offering new ways to discover artists through the plethora of curated playlists. Ultimately, some artists just want Spotify to pay them better and set the standard for the industry, which is completely justifiable and I back 100%.

If you are interested in learning more about how artists get paid on Spotify, I highly recommend that you watch this episode from the VoidFM podcast from Exociety, hosted by RAV and Kill Bill: The Rapper. They are upfront about how they are being paid from their music streams and their process with putting their music online, which is extremely insightful to those who want to make a career out of their music.

Financially Supporting the Artist!

It’s no surprise that the best way to circumvent the greater effect of the potential Spotify change is to simply buy the music. Obviously, I like to buy CDs, that is my thing. However, this may not be beneficial to you as you may not have a CD player like I do. Don’t fret! There are many other ways to support your favorite artists, which I will list below:

• Bandcamp

  • Many artists have a Bandcamp page online where they sell their music in multiple forms. Additionally, they can also set the price of their music and merch on Bandcamp to allow fans to pay a minimum amount, but have the option to pay more.

• Merch

  • Buying an artist’s merch shows the artist that people care about their brand. It allows them to continue making music, go on tours, get new equipment, etc.

• CDs

  • CDs are an almost forgotten piece of music media that I feel should get more recognition as they are cheaper than Vinyl and they are more convenient to store and play.

• Vinyls

  • For those who have an affinity for the aesthetic, the Vinyl is the choice for you. If you get a decent Vinyl player setup, then the sound you can procure from these disks are incredible!

• Patreon

  • Similar to Bandcamp, Patreon allows the artist(s) to create a page where fans can donate or subscribe to unlock exclusive content that fans will either have access to before others or entirely.

• Going to Concerts

  • The amount of tickets that an artist sells not only supports them financially, it also shows those venues, promoters, and managers how popular a band is. If you really enjoy an artist, go out of your way to support them in person!

• Sharing Music with Others

  • Sharing music has never been easier! There are no downsides to sharing your favorite music with others. Those artists get more recognition, which means more streams, and more financial support!

Starting Your Music Collection

This post was originally supposed to be about my fondness for collecting CDs, but it clearly took a different turn. However, to end this post on track (get it?) I want to share a few tips on how to grow your music collection whether it is physical or digital!

• Listen to the artists that you love and gain a deeper understanding of their style and message. This will carve a larger bond between you and the band/artist.

• Expand your music tastes by listening to artists within your favorite genres. Doing this will allow you to naturally learn about artists you have never heard of prior.

• Visit your local music stores to see what they have and really dig through their stock! Supporting an artist can have a positive cascading effect on the music industry as a whole. If you buy a physical album from a store, then you a supporting the store and the artist. Your purchase allows the store to stay open to supply more music and allows the artists the opportunity to create more!

• Buy full albums. If you buy the full album of a band that you love, then you get to hear the full context of the songs that you enjoy from them. For example, a ton of people say “Oh I love The Strokes!” However, it is almost guaranteed that they only know their popular songs. There is nothing wrong that. Don’t be afraid to dive deeper into the bands that you only know a few songs from, but you enjoy their style.

• Once your start amassing a library of music whether it is CDs, Vinyls, or an online collection, be sure to take the time to actually listen to them. There have been some albums that I have bought in the past that I have completely forgot about. Nowadays, I try and keep track of what music I buy to make sure I will actually listen to it. Basically, buy the albums that you think you’ll enjoy.

• There is no wrong way to start a music collection, you can take everything I said with a grain of salt. If you see a piece of music that you have to buy, then do what feels right for you! Just know that when you purchase someone’s music you are helping the music community as a whole.

Get out there and start collecting music to support your favorite music artists! Maybe think about adding a few CDs to your collection? They’re awesome.

Thanks for taking a ride on the Electric Indie Riff Machine!