The root of the new CD-revival talk

I don't fetish the format, but I do place value in being able to hold onto and store music that's liable to otherwise be lost. [READER]( I've read a [rash of]( [new]( [stories]( calling forth—or questioning the legitimacy of—a newfound CD revival. Most of these pieces are rooted in the news that CD sales have increased for the first time in two decades thanks to Adele. She sold a little less than 900,000 CDs of her 2021 album, 30, which [Billboard noted]( accounted for more than 2-percent of the format's sales; overall, the CD experienced a sales increase amounting to about 1 percent. Marc Hogan's [great and thorough Pitchfork story on new trends consumer habits around CDs]( points out that the format's sales were $483.3 million in 2020. That's less than 2.5 percent of the inflation-adjusted sales total for the format two decades ago, which sat at $19.9 billion. Also at the root of the new CD-revival talk is [a mashnote Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield]( published last month. I've read trend stories that relied on less substantial evidence than a 1-percent bump in sales following a precipitous downfall to obscurity. And generally, I don't think critics need to put so much weight on a trendy news hook (or the illusion of one) to write about something they care about. And Sheffield really cares about CDs. He loves them so much he littered his essay with grand, rosy proclamations that are impossible to substantiate, not that he lingers on any long enough to try. I'm not sure why it bugs me so much that he wrote that 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" and moved on. Perhaps it's because I genuinely enjoy a couple of those albums and don't think their cultural cache and success have anything to do with CDs beyond the format's ubiquity at the time those releases dropped. Sheffield praised CDs for the way they did a better job of "releasing fans from their 20-dollar bills" than any other format and suggested they encouraged people to invest "time and emotional energy" into listening to CDs without ever linking the emotional investment to the big financial one. Clearly Sheffield has no idea what it was like to a 14-year-old who felt cheated out of his snow-shoveling money after buying a copy of (hed) Planet Earth's Broke based on a single. I am generally ambivalent about CDs. I don't fetish the format. At the CD's peak, those silver discs were so dominant and so present in my life, they could seem disposable. They felt cheaper than pennies, and harder to get rid of too. I felt this acutely every time I got an AOL CD in the mail; though that mail spam served a different purpose than an album by a band, it added to my perception that these discs were cheap, pesky things that added little to my life. If anything, CDs showed me how to untangle the value I placed in the music they contained from the object that allowed me to experience those sounds, which later helped make the leap to MP3s feel easy. But I never stopped purchasing CDs, even though it's harder for me to listen to them now than they were two decades ago. The ubiquity of CD players—in stereos, cars, and computers—is obviously no more, which makes the concept of a CD revival curious. But as long as music gets released on CD, I still find myself buying them from time to time if the price is right. More importantly, I'll likely buy a CD if it's the only way to hear an album or EP, or the only way to hold on to a physical copy—I don't fetish the format, but I do place value in being able to hold onto and store music that's liable to otherwise be lost. Which is part of what I still find valuable in CDs. Its cheapness and disposability also made it possible for a large number of underground and independent musicians to manufacture and sell their music during the format's rise, and not all of those releases are available digitally. I'll be curious to learn more about what CDs were able to archive during the format's prime, which I imagine may emerge with more renewed interest in CDs. If there's anything else that holds my interest in CDs it will be a matter of how emerging underground movements adapt the format, and the influence using these objects may have on new creative works or emerging communities. The idea of a CD revival in the form of a genuine commercial rejuvenation will always feel ludicrous to me given the impossible height the format once reached, but there is always a real possibility of young people building something new with CDs. ([For his Pitchfork story]( Hogan interviewed several 20-somethings who've flocked to the format—such changes may already be underway.) This has happened with several other allegedly defunct music formats, even beyond the re-emergence of vinyl and cassettes. I'm reminded of Russ Forster, the Underdog Records founder whose obsession with 8-tracks led him to launching a zine about the format (8-Track Mind) and making a documentary about them too. Peter Margasak wrote about Forster's 8-track obsessions for [the Reader back in 2003]( and included Forster's history of DJing 8-track disco parties at the Fireside Bowl. Those parties began in 1989, about a decade after 8-tracks began their decline in popularity. Forster was still hosting 8-track disco nights at the Fireside in 1992 [when Green Day popped in to check out the scene](. A couple years later, the Fireside started its improbable decade-long run as the most exciting punk venue in town; I've long wondered about how Forster and 8-tracks may have played a role in the Fireside's punk glory days. And I wonder what CDs may do for the underground and alternative musicians of tomorrow. Sincerely, 🏆[Sign up for exclusive Best of Chicago updates to be the first to know who wins!]( 🏆 ["The Super Bowl's First Hip-Hop Halftime Show Was an Exercise in Easy Nostalgia,"]( by Clover Hope (Pitchfork) ["The Problem with NYC Mayor Eric Adams' War on Drill Rap,"]( by Andre Gee (Complex) Jeff K%nz, [2 Player Mode]( p2p, [Impossible Burger]( Billiam, [Live in Your City!]( Brbra Bush, [Blowie 1 + 2]( We've wrapped up season one of CQN! Listen back on all ten episodes [here]( or wherever you get your podcasts. [A time that was wonderful]( Remembering the very good company of Richard Christiansen by [Mark Larson]( [‘We need to be imagining other possibilities for ourselves’]( Cadenza offers a sneak peek at a new opera about the carceral state. by [Irene Hsiao]( [CPS nurses are exhausted]( Nurses say conditions remain dire more than a month after a standoff with the mayor. by [Adam M. 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