Rob Sheffield:

I’ve always loved CDs, and I never junked my collection, even when the format fell off a cliff in the 2000s. I cherish all noise-making gear, from cassettes to vinyl to streams. But the CD has its unique charms, especially for longer, deeper listening. No format has ever been kinder to music that takes time. It was the CD that turned Pet Sounds and Another Green World and Heart of the Congos and Astral Weeks into widely beloved classics, as opposed to cult items; it was the format that finally made Lee “Scratch” Perry a mainstream hero. An already-famous LP like Kind of Blue became a whole new phenomenon on disc. The quintessential classics of the jewel-box era — D’Angelo’s Voodoo, Radiohead’s Kid A, Missy’s Supa Dupa Fly — would have flopped as streams. 

Could not possibly agree more enthusiastically. The last couple of years I have been adding to my CD and Blu-Ray collections, because I want to focus my attention on art that (a) I own and (b) I want to encounter over and over again. 

CDs aren’t as cool as vinyl — you miss out on the big beautiful artwork and liner notes, and the ritual of playing isn’t as much fun — but the musical experience, for my money, is significantly better.