When we moved a few weeks ago I realized this was the first time I’d arrived in a new apartment sans stereo. Then it occurred to me that I may never have a stereo again. This was a curious feeling. 

Starting with a college dorm room, setting up a stereo was a key decision—it had pride of place, sort of like a fireplace. Then you set up your CDs in heavily considered thematic rows. The Cure could be next to The Smiths, but, for some reason, not The Police. Could you put Pulp next to Blur if the band members were feuding? When you went to somebody else’s room you naturally felt an affinity with them if they had Green Mind by Dinosaur Jr. and they had the EPs.

This was your Music Library™ and, especially in your twenties, it was a large part of your identity. It made sense that it took up space and was difficult to move. Your musical sensibility deserved that effort! Then people started putting their CDs in sleeves in black nylon wallets to save space. I had completely forgotten the name Case Logic until just now. I did not like Case Logic. This diminished the library somehow. It was less visible but also less physical. 

Of course now we’re almost entirely digital and not physical at all. I don’t know what I did with my Sony stereo, with its orange digital numbers, which made it from Minneapolis to Maine to New York. Even after I crossed over to Bluetooth speakers, I kept my CDs in a huge military bag in my closet for a year before I was ready to dismantle the collection. I gave first crack to my friend Duncan Hannah, who still has a CD collection. He took some. 

That still left me with…a lot of CDs. Afghan Whigs from a particularly dark winter sophomore year. The entire Low catalog (different dark winter). Urban Hymns when it seemed like Richard Ashcroft was the coolest person, Urge Overkill from when theyseemed like the coolest people. The fact that I hadn’t listened to any of these in ages didn’t make it easier. I kept a few that made sense for my car (one of the last to come with a CD player). When I’m driving to fish I enjoy listening to Tom Petty and slow Cracker songs, for some reason. Occasionally Wilco. Maybe it’s because they feel particularly American to me. The Cure is not fishing music. 

Finally I started making the rounds at CD stores selling what I could. It’s a pretty humiliating situation to stack your beloved Music Library™ on the table while a guy in a ripped sweatshirt puts them into two stacks—a short one he wants, a tall one he doesn’t. Then he quotes you a number, absurdly low, that seems like an assessment of your musical sensibility. If he offers any praise, literally any kind word at all, “there are some really good albums here,” you feel entirely validated. Of course, then he says “We just can't take them, we already have a lot from this era.” You realize that of course they have a lot from this era, from my era. Everybody else went through the same divestment process, they just did it before me. 

Finally, I decided to keep about ten. I started thinking of a CD not as a way to listen to music but as an object itself, and which were worth keeping? What was a CD that really felt like a CD? R.E.M. Green felt like one of those, Depeche Mode Violator, The Joshua Tree. These were released when the CD was the dominant format, after tapes but before iTunes, when I was passionate about music the way only a young Rolling Stone subscriber can be.

Now we have algorithms. We have access to everything, even if everything is invisible. No young person will know the idiocy of a scratched CD skipping, or the fact that for years CDs came in long paper boxes because record stores didn’t want to change their displays. Then they got rid of the long paper boxes and instead shrink-wrapped the plastic box and put a separate sticker across the top of the box itself that was a pain to get off. Good grief. I remember somebody saying they had a friend who kept a small knife with him exclusively to deal with opening CDs. 

It was a hardly a golden era. But naturally I miss it. I think Bleecker Bob’s paid me $48 for most of the collection. That’s about the price of five months of Spotify.