End of the CD age

The last of our CDs, stacked up and ready for donating to a charity shop.

When S- and I married in 1970 we resolved to do away with our collections of 45s and LPs. Sound quality had been good, but one accidental scratch was apt to render the whole record useless. Between us, our collections had accumulated a lot of scratches.

The favoured alternative at the time was tape cassette. In retrospect, they were pretty awful and tape players needed Dolby sound enhancement to get rid of the annoying background hiss. Worse still, those players (particularly the ones in our cars) were apt to chew tapes and reduce them to a tangled mess. There were two solutions to that; buy a new cassette or borrow a friend's and make a copy. Naughty, naughty!... but none of us seemed to worry unduly about copyright in those days. Indeed, most of my pop music collection had either been acquired from friends or recorded off the radio – Alan Freeman's Pick of the Pops on Sunday afternoons was an early favourite.

Little wonder, though, that when CDs became available in the late 1980s we began to make the switch.  Those early CDs weren't cheap but they had one huge advantage over their predecessors; they were durable.

Now its CDs that are on the way out. My own collection of digital music has gradually been growing, mostly purchased from iTunes or ripped off Youtube.  Last year, though, this girl caught up with the times and subscribed to a music streaming service. It was a toss up between Spotify and Google Play Music, and Google won the day.  Now owning any album or music track is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Our music collection has ballooned and we are actually listening to a lot more music than hitherto.

Different genres suit different occasions. When I'm cleaning the house on Thursdays you'll find my portable Bluetooth speaker blasting out rock or my ever-growing play list of pop music.  In the evening though (with the inevitable mug of Horlicks) classical music is favourite. I'm enjoying discovering composers such as Rodrigo, Pachelbel and Saint-Saens, whose CDs I would have been reluctant to buy.

For the last couple of years we've mostly managed with a cheepish Bluetooth adaptor, plugged into the back of our old CD player – a somewhat cumbersome arrangement, but it worked. However, when the adaptor gave up the ghost a few weeks ago we decided to ditch the CD player once and for all and buy this little beastie – a Bluetooth amp that connects directly to the lounge speakers.

The transition is complete.  Tomorrow the last of the CDs go to a charity shop.  Anyone want an old Denon CD player?