I do! I own CDs and vinyls. I collect mainly CDs because they are smaller and need less storage.
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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Do you just collect the CDs or do you also play them with a CD player? I feel like it's not even worth the hassle of getting a system set up to play CDs compared to a record player because the quality won't be as good.
I've got a good couple dozen of CDs I bought over the years when I hadn't used Spotify yet - moved to self-hosting now - and I was always wondering if I should work on actually playing CDs instead of just burning them
Beyond the "experience". If you rip the CD into something lossless, it should be audibly the same. Vinyl versus CD. People claim "warmth" difference.
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100%. I buy physical copies of the books I want to read, because odds are I'll probably keep them and read them again in future. The ebooks I have are files I have been able to download and store on my system (and backed up), so they can't be edited or deleted.
I will always prefer a physical release for a film or TV show over digital-only. Not only do I not have to pay a subscription (and then worry that it's going to get edited or removed), but I get sound+video quality that exceeds what's possible on streaming at present. Plus there's just something nice about having your favourite movies and shows sitting on your shelf to remind you that it's there and something you enjoy, rather than a purely digital library that isn't as tangible or immediately visible.
It's deeply frustrating, too, when there are shows that you just can't buy at all. A few times in the past two years there's been a show on one of our free-to-air TV networks and their online streaming video service that I've enjoyed, but they're only there for a limited time and then gone. Can you buy them on disc or even digital only? No. They are almost as ephemeral as TV from the 1960s when shows were made to be shown once, maybe repeated a few times before rights expired, then gone (sometimes forever, if you didn't have space in your archives).
I mean, you can do that.
But it's inconvenient and expensive and takes up space. So most folks choose not to do that for pragmatic reasons. Physical media still is broad available for books and music. Less so for films and TV shows, but many are still available in physical formats at online retailers.
I have a lot of physical books, like 500+. People tend to be quite negative about it and have so for a long time, because the popular conception is that physical media is stupid and wasteful. A lot of people take pride in owning nothing physical and regard that as 'minimalism' and are more than happy to purchase digital rentals or subscriptions only to further this aesthetic.
But it makes no sense to continue to produce physical media if only a niche audience is buying it, unless the product is niche, cheap to produce and has a high mark up. That's why Vinly works, folks are willing to pay $30 per record and records cost pennies to physical reproduce.
I didn't read the article, so I'm not sure how hung up they are on physical media, but the title is about owning vs renting/subscriptions. There are still places were digital copies can be purchased and downloaded to own, DRM-free. Personally, I prefer to store bits on HDDs and SSDs rather than CDs. Of course, that option is limited. Digital music can still be owned (eg bandcamp,Q-something,etc), same for audiobooks (shout out libro.fm), ebooks less so, but still possible and workarounds exist (deDRM).
Movies and TV are where it really runs dry. There's a few indie creators you can buy from directly, but for everything else, if you don't want to have a bunch of dvd/blu-ray cases taking up space your only non-rent/subscription options are borrowing from the library (my jam, but a limited collection), or pirating.
currentaffairs.org? nah, i own my affairs!
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