Tag Archives: CD

(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?

So far we’re up to ten drives across eight PCs unable to read the discs, and I’m getting a little peeved. Both look perfectly OK… no scratches, degradation, fading, rot or anything visible to the human eye — and these are two discs stored in two different rooms, far away from sunlight or other radiation. Feared lost is a time capsule. Continue reading

Posted in History | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?

The death of the Compact Disc, part 2

While a person’s physical music collection is priceless to the owner, there’s a genuinely calculable and traceable dollar value that can be attached to the legal contents of the “My Music” folder of your hard drive. In my opinion, this actually de-values the music and therefore the artistic worth of the original work. Their efforts have been reduced to a few megabytes which, on a more fruitful note, at least could potentially appear on several million folks’ hard drives, instead of gathering mildew in a warehouse somewhere. And what of the legalities of a backup or 2nd-hand ownership? Continue reading

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on The death of the Compact Disc, part 2

The death of the Compact Disc, part 1

Who hasn’t fallen for the charms of iTunes, MusicLoad, AmazonMP3 and/or Beatport for all their musical needs, buying and downloading gigabytes of music that you cannot touch or feel? Call me old-fashioned if you will, but nothing beats picking up a real record and admiring the physical, real entity that I hold in my hands. A record is a work of art. A recording is a historical artefact. Continue reading

Posted in Media | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dope from Africa

The doorbell goes ding-dong. The dog barks. The friendly postman drops off a parcel… a surprisingly heavy parcel, marked as “registered letter”. I wonder if this truly is what I had almost not expected to arrive (but secretly hoped it would). Continue reading

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Dope from Africa