An interesting article has been making the rounds in some of the online music circles I follow. In it, the author discusses what will happen when we, the children of the digital age, finally start having kids of our own and passing our music collection on to them. It’s an old tradition, and one that I think is fairly important. A solid chunk of my family’s vinyl collection, for example, comes from my step-grandfather. I never knew him, but there’s something very cool about playing his old jazz albums, knowing that he bought them, held them, cherished them. The same even goes for some of my parents’ albums, be it a beat-up Rick Springfield album my mom bought when she was a freshman in high school or my dad’s Livingston Taylor album he got autographed after a small show in Ft. Lauderdale. I love that sense of nostalgia, the idea that there’s a story in the physical album.

In addition to vinyl, some of my favorite music inheritances are tapes. I fell in love with the 80’s when my parents gave me one of their old mix tapes, appropriately titled Totally 80’s. That’s when I kicked off my love of 80’s pop with gems from Tommy Tutone, Tears for Fears and more. I love the idea of mix tapes. There’s something so raw and honest in hand-picking the songs for someone and sitting there listening to each one, fingers on the play/pause buttons, stack of cassettes sitting next to you. Mixed CDs are so effortless, almost an afterthought. With a cassette, every gap between songs is imperfect and of varying lengths, the result of human error. Maybe I’m just a sucker for romantics like that.

So here’s the question: what happens when (and if) I have kids? Do I send along my iTunes password? Do I burn thousands of mix CDs? Bequeath them with a super-powered external hard drive? I’ve only had a digital library since fifth grade, and I’ve amassed thousands of songs via the iTunes store, digital samplers, even the occasional audio ripped from YouTube. Like the author writes in the article: “While there may be many a memory associated with a specific album or song, any copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy that you hand down holds no more sentimental value than a copy of that same song sitting on YouTube.” 

I try to buy physical albums when I can. I’ve been trying to build up my CD library by hitting up vintage record stores. I finally found a battered copy of Jack’s Mannequin’s debut album Everything In Transit a few weeks ago. I’ve owned the digital album for years, along with every B-side and alternate track out there, but I’ve never owned the physical album. Slowly, I’m amassing a physical collection of some of my favorite albums, the ones I only own digitally. Some may say it’s a waste of money, you have the album already, why does it matter, but it’s important to me to own the actual CD.

One of the most obvious arguments in favor of non-digital music? Accidents happen. Over the years, I’ve had laptops stepped on, dropped on concrete floors, smushed by energetic typists. I try to back up everything I have on external hard drives, but it’s difficult to keep up sometimes when I acquire new music almost daily. When one laptop died (pre-backup-obsession), I spend hours using an iPod-to-computer transfer application (Senuti, which I highly recommend), and because I hadn’t synced all of my music to my iPod, I lost a good chunk of it. 

Besides, there’s something wonderful about the physical album, whether it’s trying to wipe off someone else’s coffee stains on the album artwork or ripping open that over-the-top plastic packaging the first time you purchase it. And oh god, do I love lyric booklets. One of the first CDs I bought was N*SYNC’s instant classic No Strings Attached, and I vividly remember curling up on my bedroom floor, lyric booklet in hand, trying to memorize the words. I still do this when I buy a new album. 

Another plus for physical media: portability. I will never purchase a Spotify account for the same reason I will always try to buy physical media: I want my music available at any time, any place, without being handicapped by app maintenance or internet connection. Spotify, you’re fantastic, but I like to have my music offline so I can play it on a plane, on a train, wherever. When I’m out in the boondocks of Missouri, I can barely get cell reception, let alone a solid internet connection. I’d rather take a fat stack of CDs on a road trip than struggle with connecting to some cloud when I go out of range. 

I could rant for another thousand words about the romanticism of physical media, but the point is that I need to take care of my music so I can share it with my children some day. Sure, I’ll be glad they have my digital copies of obscure debut albums you can’t buy anymore, but I’m more proud of the discs I brought to Warped Tour, sweat-stained and autographed. I’m more proud of the albums I bought the day they were released, brand new albums I had to beg employees to go dig out of unpacked boxes in the back. Hell, I’ll even pass along some of my grandparents’ vinyl some day, my parents’ mix tapes, my favorite CDs. Music doesn’t always have a physical story to accompany it, but when it does, that’s something that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Long live physical media.