• 02 Nov, 2025 *

I used to have a very extensive personal music library. I spent so many years of my life curating my songs in iTunes, making sure all the metadata was correct, adding in missing cover art, and putting together playlists. I knew my music SO well. An old game I used to play was putting my entire library on shuffle and naming any song within the first few seconds of it playing. Since moving away from my personal music library, I’ve noticed that I’m less connected to my music. I don’t curate my own playlists as much as I used to. I don’t put everything on shuffle and skip every song until I find what I actually felt like listening to. I don’t feel like it’s mine anymore - it’s all the streaming services.

I’ve got a pretty decent physical CD collection (over 40 albums) but it’s been a long time since I’ve really used any of those CDs. For most of these albums, their purpose was to be ripped to mp3 so I could put them on my mp3 player/iPod to listen on the go. After I got rid of my walkman in favour of these options, I wasn’t really in the habit of using a CD player or listening directly from the CD itself–except in my car.1

I remember picking out a favourite CD or burning a mix tape for summer holidays to put into the multi-CD player in our van for the big family holiday we would always take. When I started getting music online instead of buying CDs, I’d burn them to a CD so I could play it in the car. Look at this gem!

These mix tapes have been sitting in my glove box mostly neglected for a long time. I’m not sure at what point I moved away from using CDs and switched to an AUX cord. I’d guess around 2016-20172, whenever I made the (foolish) decision that personal music libraries were dead and streaming media was the way forward (and when I had to drive for work instead of taking public transit). I have a distinct memory of thinking “why pay $10/mo for a single album each month when I could pay $10/mo for infinite music?” Hm...

In a recent car-cleaning session, I found a different CD sleeve wedged underneath the driver’s seat (I bought my car used). I was surprised to find it consider I have owned this vehicle for 13 years now and this isn’t the first deep clean I’ve done. The case is all black and it was REALLY wedged in there, so I think I assumed it was literally part of the car. I was so excited, thinking I’d discovered a time capsule of someone else’s music collection, but alas it was a bunch of audiobooks about real estate and network marketing lmao. But what I did get was a new large capacity CD holder (32 slots; the one I already had only held 6 CDs). I decided that instead of storing my CDs in their jewel cases on the top of my tall bookshelf gathering dust, I’d put them in my car to actually be listened to.

This moment was really what finally fully pushed me to bring back my personal music library. With the way things are these days, this idea had been bouncing around in my mind more and more frequently: I want to move back to physical media. I’ve had one foot out the door of Spotify for a while now, but the other foot was stuck behind pretty badly and I hadn’t taken any steps to change it. I felt like Spotify was so monopolizing that I didn’t know how to take the plunge to leave. It’s so easy! It’s so ubiquitous! I’d so thoroughly neglected my personal music library that the idea of going back was a big hurdle. But let’s be honest, those are just shitty excuses. I can’t keep supporting Spotify and all of the horrible things they keep doing. It’s time to put my actions with my morals and actually support artists.

A few months later, it’s been slow but steady progress to transition back to a personal music library, but I’m so glad I did. I went through the process of re-ripping a lot of my CDs because I hadn’t kept the original files (for some reason? I guess cause I still had the CDs?) but I had old backups of most of my other music so that was straightforward enough. I went scouring through bandcamp and put together a large wish list of music, surprised at how many songs were available on that site. I also started using my local library for CDs as ways to listen to new music instead of relying on streaming services. I requested all my Spotify account data and streaming history exports and then I plan to fully delete my account.

Goodbye streaming services and hello personal music library. It feels good.

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My car still has a CD player. I thought this would go without saying, but apparently not. My parents recently purchased a new, fancy, 2025 vehicle and it has no CD player. I told my dad that my car is more high tech than his.↩ 1.

according to my spotify account data export that I just got, I made my spotify account on March 3, 2016, so this tracks↩

#music