gemini://tobykurien.com/replies/2021-10-30-re-compact-discs.gmi

I too have felt that there was something better about popping in a CD/tape and using physical buttons to navigate the music, and that infinite playlists, and even having my "entire collection" of music on my smartphone's microSD card was counter-productive. I wrote about it here:

> Previously I had dumped my entire music collection onto my smartphone and realised that this is bad because I get paralyzed by choice and only listen to a few favourites (not a fan of random play). I often forget that I had added some podcasts or music shows and they go unlistened. I wanted something like the old days of cassette tape, where I could pop in an audiobook tape, listen to it part-way, then later pop in some genre of music, and later still go back to the audiobook tape and continue where it left off. Except instead of tape, I'd be using USB thumbdrives.

So my solution has been to make myself a USB thumbdrive based player from a Raspberry Pi Zero and the Pimoroni Pirate Audio headphone module. This has worked so incredibly well for me that I deleted all music and players off my smartphone and now exclusively use this device for all listening, and have been for the last 6 months.

Over the months I've been tweaking and fine-tuning this player. I accidentally cracked the screen when the device was in my pocket and bumped up against my car door, so I added a clear plastic protective layer that actually makes it easier to press the tiny buttons. The software has been tweaked to the point where it's really robust and functional. I love that I have a collection of USB drives to suit my mood (uplifting music, chill music, audiobook, podcasts), and I just pop in the one I want to listen to, and it continues from my last playback. I feel like this has most of the benefits of tape/CD, with maybe the only drawback being that I can't show off my "tower of CDs/tapes" collection.

Re: Compact discs