Are you fed up with the streaming era when it comes to music? You’re not alone. Here’s what people are doing.
[This was my weekly column for GlobalNews.ca. – AC]
Somewhere in a box in my crawlspace is a silver first-gen iPod Nano, which was my gateway drug into the Apple universe. It’s probably tucked away with a first-gen iPod Touch. Sitting on a shelf in my home office are two old-school iPods. One is the red-and-white special U2 edition that I bought in October 2024. Next to it is a white fourth-generation unit, the first with the touch-sensitive click wheel, which I somehow acquired about 10 years ago.
Elsewhere in the house, I have a couple of DVD players I no longer use, along with a Blu-ray player that got disconnected due to underuse. And back in the crawlspace is a Pioneer LaserDisk machine from some time around 1995, along with a cache of the massive 12-inch discs it used. I kept them out of sheer nostalgia. I consider them museum pieces that will never be used again. Then again…
Music fans — especially Gen Z — are getting a little disenchanted with new-fangled digital ways. Tired of having to have an app and a subscription for everything, there’s a movement afoot to return to somewhat simpler times. Not only have sales of vinyl increased by double digits every year since 2008, but CD sales are also slowly stabilizing after years of decline. And lately, there has been an uptick in interest in CDs, Blu-ray discs and plain old iPods. What’s going on?
