Via Ben Crowder, CJ Chilvers starting buying CDs not because he’s a Luddite, but because of the impermanence of digital subscription music:
A few years ago, the final studio album from Van Halen disappeared from streaming services. No one knew why.
Even Wolfgang Van Halen didn’t know why at first. Then, in an interview much later he said, “I hope people who like it have a physical version of it.”
That’s never a good sign.
A few months ago, David Lee Roth released a video explaining that he’s the problem. He refuses to renew the streaming rights.
What happened here isn’t unique. Media that was once considered stable and pervasive is now gone.
I brought physical media back into my life not to replace streaming, but to keep streaming in its place.
I’m always a little curious about the revival of vinyl: I have wonderful memories of buying a new album, spinning it up, and admiring the cover art and the lyric sheets. Dead Kennedys albums came with newsletters. Sometimes you got a sticker (Anthrax’s State of Euphoria comes to mind). But I wouldn’t trade having access to everything I ever owned and more to go back to that.
Except: like Crowder, I can’t seem to find some versions of songs that were previously in my collection (for example, when I want to listen to Incubus’s "Certain Shade of Green," I only get the chill acoustic version. That’s a fine version, but I like the one that sounds like a freight train hitting a concrete wall sometimes.) When you peer into the digital void, it looks back at you.
