A couple of months ago, I rid myself of our DVD player. All movies that I watch are now file driven. It was an easy move, since most of the movies I own, I inherited from my previous job. However, something I have been hesitant to clean out are my compact disks (CD's for you young ones). Years of my hard earned 5 dollar an hour cash was spent on BMG subscriptions, CD shops, and concerts. It's been 5 years now that I had boxed up my collection and just used files, but getting rid of the nostalgic collection has always been a thorn I've wanted to leave in. But the time has come that I part ways with my CD's. Of the 200 cd's I've kept over the years, I've decided to narrow my collection down to 30 CD's for reminiscent purposes. Going through these, I reminisce now of Ryan's CD history.
My parents bought a CD player around 1989. Billy Joel's "Storm Front" was one of the many CD's they bought. Billy Joel became my first favorite artist. After that, I had my Paula Abdul/Country music phase. I never purchased a CD or Tape during that time, my interest level was not very high.
The summer of 1994, with the help of my cousin Doug, my interest of music blossomed. Pearl Jam VS and Soul Asylum were the first two albums I every bought. That was shortly followed with my BMG subscription, which brought me Weezer, Counting Crows, Stone Temple Pilots. I then bummed Smashing Pumpkins and REM off my brother. My collection started to gain ground. It wasn't long until I stole all my parent's Beatles and Simon and Garfunkle C.D.s. In 1997, I started downloading MP3's. Mostly Blink 182, MXPX, and Goldfinger (during my awkward punk stage). MP3s were much harder to come by then, so the collection never grew and I didn't have much hard drive space (1GB) to store them.
Right before leaving to Brazil in 1999, I was logging around 200 C.D.s. That became my plateau for CD ownership. From that time forth for every CD I acquired, I got rid of another.
In 2002, I started ripping all my C.D.s. The computer became my main form of listening to music. I never even owned an iPod until 2004, but even till this day, the computer is my number 1 source for music listening. 2003, I decided that my CD's were no longer useful to have out and they were all boxed up.
Today, I decided they are no longer "Compact" enough.
Good bye old friends. Hopefully, I'll make enough selling you to buy myself a couple of songs on iTunes.
