Technology

what's a CD?

Mix tapes were better

How 'bout we tweak that just a tiny bit and use flash drives instead?

I never stopped. How else am I going to burn PS1, Dreamcast, and 360 games?

There was a certain intentionality to burning a CD that a Spotify link just can't replicate. Spending an hour picking the perfect songs to fit exactly 80 minutes, and then handwriting the tracklist... it was a real labor of love. It’s a shame that convenience has replaced that personal touch.

When I first burned my first CDs(after long time), I was happy, and I quite liked, but but since I buy CDs, I don't do that anymore. When I found my burned CDs after some time, I was intrigued to listen what was in it.

I still have my Blu-ray burner and a bunch of blank blue rays. When does the digital orgy start?

The reason I got a cd burner was the frustration of dealing with Bluetooth in my car. I got a Bluetooth capable, simple, CD compatible head unit. The best part about using a CD is it begins immediately when the car starts, versus fumbling with a phone. Though swapping CDs obviously isn't as great as using digital / streaming.

Nothing's stopping you from burning a CD right now. But ultimately, these kinds of nostalgic memories are less about the tech itself and more about remembering the happy times of youth. Bringing back the burned CD won't bring those back I'm afraid.

Feels like the article is slightly off base, the people today looking for something physical and memorable have been buying vinyl. In 2026 most people I know don't have a CD player let alone a CD burner. But lots them do buy and play vinyl and have record players for that purpose.

Or.. if the article is just a nostalgia deep dive then why the commitment to CDs? You could do the same passing around USB sticks if the purpose is to share music with friends.

Also wonder if the article writer's own discs actually still work, burned discs don't last that long. They mention having a a whole box of old discs but I don't know if they actually tried to play them and checked them for errors. A while back I was doing some data recovery for a friend who had all her stuff burned to discs over the years, turned out about 20% of her discs were either unreadable or full of errors.

It seems to me like the world has had 3 phases:

• Phase 1: People own media on records, tapes, etc. because that's the only way to listen to what you want whenever you want. The only alternative is radio, where you listen to what the DJ thinks you should hear. If you buy something once, you can listen to it whenever you want forever. (Or at least as long as the medium holds up)
• Phase 2: It was relatively easy to get the media you wanted on demand, but it wasn't always legal, because the copyright cartels were used to a certain way of doing business and didn't like disruption. During this phase people still bought read-only media in stores. But, they also sometimes bought blank media and filled it up from their computers at home.
• Phase 3: Everything is now online, and you no longer own media. In this phase you can listen to / watch whatever you want, but you don't get to own anything, and you have to pay monthly if you don't want your media viewing / listening to be interrupted by ads. In this phase, media you love can just disappear if someone loses the license to stream it, or the copyright owner decides to pull it or modify it. In this version someone like George Lucas can decide that the version of Star Wars you grew up on should change, and you now have to accept his new version.

Unfortunately, long-term storage hasn't kept pace with short-term storage and bandwidth. You can make someone a "mix tape" that's a USB stick, but if someone puts it on a shelf it might not be readable in 5 years. You could save the original version of Star Wars to a NAS. But, if your friend wants to borrow it, it's not as easy as grabbing a case off the bookshelf and handing it over.

I keep hoping that one of these "crystal storage" mechanisms takes off. Then we can much more easily be data hoarders, keeping everything, and not relying on a continued subscription to a streaming service for our favourite media.

Bring Back the Clay Tablet— They’re a love language. And a reminder of the hope we once had.

I think people undervalue cd/dvd/bluray. Up to this day it's best format for giving away data like family photos.

With any usb device there's much larger security risk. Also people want to get storage back.

Cassettes would like to have a word.

And why is burning an audio file onto a CD better than having the same file on flash storage?

Surely the what the world needs right now is more plastic.

Sure you can burn a CD, but I think I have nothing to play them anymore. My car (2020) does not have a CD player anymore. Nor my PC nor my laptop have one. I may have in my drawer an old BD reader DVD burner/reader with a SATA plug or something, I remember I plugged it on my laptop with a USB adapter yearsssss ago to rip my LOTR BD. It has been used 1 time in like 10 years.

In audio circles stamped cd’s have been making a comeback. It’s much like the last decades vinyl revival.

It’s not the older generations getting nostalgia, it’s the younger generations looking for ‘experience’ over content. Buying a physical thing, storing on the shelf, having a visible collection of disks to show off.

Additionally it is a revenue stream for artists, where despite the costs of mastering and pressing a cd, they can get more money from a cd release than from streaming. So artists have been incentivized do make releases a big deal since they money goes straight to them. It’s a bit like a ‘buy me a coffee’ but with a physical item.

You can buy brand new cd players, not just blueray players or vintage units that need service.

It’s a thing.

My friend and I got an old optiplex and upgraded it with a burner so we can make CDs. It's actually quite nice to have a physical medium for music in the car, and make mixes for different moods that you can switch between. We also know some people with older cars that only have CD and radio or the Bluetooth sucks so we'll make CDs for them too. Tons of fun and you can buy a usb CD / DVD burner for like $10 or $15 and CD-Rs are fairly cheap.