Disc rot, brain rot

I thought there’d be no better way to celebrate Miles Davis’s centennial than to listen to his whole discography in chronological order (more on that later). Little did i know it’d change the way i see music. And it has nothing to do with Miles Davis himself. You see, i still have a sizeable CD collection, including a few editions of Kind of Blue. What i didn’t know is that most – if not all – of them suffer from some sort of degradation. One disc from the early ’90s has turned a deep brown and can’t be read by any of my players. A few exhibit a bit of pitting, but it’s difficult to judge whether it’s an inconsequential manufacturing defect or the first signs of disc rot. Worse, a lot of recent releases are slowly but surely delaminating. Compact discs were supposed to be more durable than vinyl records. Admittedly, some of my LPs sound really bad, but none of them are outright unplayable. Compact discs are sometimes advertised as the antidote for streaming. They might be less…