Saying Goodbye to Jewel Cases
Flickr: wirepic
When I moved to my new apartment a few months ago, I brought with me five or six boxes full of CDs. As I carried each box up three flights of stairs, the thought occurred to me: why I do I still have all of this? I had long ago transferred that music (everything that I still wanted to listen to, that is) to my computer. I never listen to the CDs themselves anymore — indeed, I don’t even have a stereo. I can’t even remember the last time I even bought a new CD; all of my music purchases are done online now. Yet I still had all of these boxes filled with CDs, and the CDs were taken up precious space in my apartment. Why did I still have all of this?
At last, a couple weeks, ago, I finally decided to reduce the clutter. After hearing someone else talking about storing his CDs in a wallet throwing away all of the jewel cases, I decided to finally do the same thing. It would make storing the CDs so much easier, and if and when I move again, I’ll only have one box to carry instead of six. I went to the store and found the biggest CD wallet I could find (it holds a maximum of 320 CDs) — and I bought two of them (yeah, I’ve got a LOT of CDs!).
For the last few days, I’ve been taking the CDs and accompanying booklets out of the jewel cases and putting them into the wallets. Most of the time, I’m throwing away the “back cover” of the CD packaging along with the jewel case. That’s been a maudlin experience for me, especially as I transfer CDs that I’ve had since my high school and undergraduate days. Those CDs have a lot memories — hours spent staring at them as I listened to the music play. Throwing them away feels like throwing away an important part of my past. I keep thinking to myself, “but what if I want to look at this cover art again, someday, as I listen to the music?” But I know that the truth is that I’m NOT going to do that. That’s just not how I listen to music anymore. Most of the music that I’ve purchased in the last five years has not come in a physical format. It does not have any cover art. The album cover is simply another artist-related picture on the web page where I’m downloading the mp3s.
Listening to music has always been an important part of my life. So throwing out these jewel cases and the back covers is a painful experience, and I suppose it means I am abandoning one small part of myself. The memories that I have of my CDs and their jewel cases will soon be just that — memories.
I’ve had much the same experience throwing/giving away vinyl records and jackets. The very same thoughts even. “What if I want to look at this again?” Music is not as important in my life now as it was then, and I’ve managed to cope with the loss. My clever son-in-law, however, always makes a CD backup of the songs he purchases online (and he says that an original CD will always carry more musical information that a downloaded piece of music could — though my ear is not sophisticated enough to appreciate that) and he’s even begun collecting vinyl records, which apparently are being produced again.
As recently as, say, six months ago, I too was burning downloaded songs to CDs, and many of the CDs that storing away are music CDs that I’ve burned over the last decade. But that always felt like such a chore. Now I just store the music on my computer, especially the downloaded stuff, to an external hard drive. It’s faster and easier.