In my effort to re-listen to my entire CD collection, I’m getting down to the discs I haven’t put on in years, discs that I might have only listened to once or twice. I wonder if this is a relic of a different period. Thanks to online services like Rhapsody, I can listen to an entire album before I decide if I want it, so I won’t get fooled by a particularly solid single. (And I can just buy that one song I like if that turns out to be the case.) And if I buy an album or a song electronically and decide I don’t like it so much after all, it doesn’t have to physically stick around and take up space anymore.
Then again, I’m still somewhat attached to having a physical disc that I can bring from place to place if I want. But in a few years we’ll probably just carry our iPods around and stick them in whatever docking stations we have around. The CD tower manufactures must be crying in their beers.