My 8-Year-Old Listens to CDs. I’m Keeping Her Away From Algorithms.

These days, I’ve been filling our residence with piles and piles of CDs. I am not alone: physical media (primarily vinyl, but in addition CDs) have been on an upward gross sales pattern for the previous 5 years.

However in contrast to vinyl collectors or tastemakers on the lookout for uncommon albums, I’m listening to CDs as a parenting transfer due to my 8-year-old daughter.

I did not need her to hearken to AI slop

As she grew out of the “Baby Shark” music of her toddlerhood and into appreciating rock, pop, hip-hop, and folks, I wished her to have the chance to discover on her personal and the liberty to decide on what she preferred.

However once I put Spotify in my daughter’s fingers, she would scroll, pay attention for a couple of seconds, then scroll once more. She would turn into mesmerized by the quick movies that play with the music.

She would strive trying to find “narwhal” or “axolotl” and discover AI slop songs. The ultimate straw got here when dozens of playlists popped up within the search outcomes with NC-17-looking playlist cowl artwork. I seemed down at my cellphone display crammed with anime seductresses, and I used to be completed perpetually with making an attempt to let my youngster navigate Spotify on her personal.

I gave my youngster a pile of CDs

An experiment ensued: a CD participant and a pile of CDs. My CD player in 2026 is good-looking, wood, and Bluetooth-enabled. She will choose something. If streaming have been a sprawling trash pile crammed with needles, CDs are a playground with a lovely fence. If streaming have been an artwork museum with AI-generated animations abruptly flashing in entrance of the Mona Lisa, CDs are a quiet gallery with excellent gentle.

Streaming wasn’t simply dangerous for my child; it was dangerous for me. I had grown more and more dissatisfied as my personalized playlists served me an increasing number of acquainted tracks, sending me into the identical well-worn rivulets of songs which are inoffensive and foolproof for me.

After I placed on a CD, it’s simpler for me to give up to letting it play from entrance to again. After I need to search for a lyric, I pull out the liner notes. There isn’t a danger of my seeing a notification. The quilt artwork is perhaps pale and stiff, however it’s not going to pivot to video. CDs are a part of my struggle for presence, a small however essential reclaiming of what it means to be nonetheless in an area and hearken to a track.

We have been shopping for new CDs

I’ve been delightfully shocked to seek out that CDs are nonetheless available on the market on this planet, at thrift shops, property gross sales, and even Goal and Walmart. CDs have traits that kids crave: they’re tactile objects made from glass and plastic that require cautious dealing with. They arrive with their very own context — the duvet artwork, liner notes, monitor itemizing. Importantly, they arrive with little or no censorship overhead for folks. In amassing a small CD assortment for our household, I’ve changed the fixed “no”s and negotiations my daughter and I had over Spotify with music that could be a hearty sure for me. Sure to Bonnie Raitt, sure to the Cranberries, sure to Soul and R&B Immediately.

Vinyl data have an analogous physicality, however CDs have a couple of key benefits over data, in my humble opinion. They’re smaller and cheaper. If you happen to actually need to, you may nonetheless burn virtually any CD. And the audio high quality of a CD is unbeaten, although a lot of individuals have woo-woo beliefs on the contrary. The seduction of a needle dropping right into a bodily groove is actual, however I am going to take the much less romantic, plucky CD any day.

I’ve found new artists

Our joint journey into CDs has blasted me out of the algorithmic doldrums and into an area of discovery and receptiveness. I have been listening to new-to-me artists like Lucinda Williams and Invoice Evans. I dug up my outdated CD books and located mixes my mates made for lengthy street journeys. I remembered how central music was to life and friendship again once I was a teen, and CDs reigned.

I need my daughter to have that type of deep relationship with music sometime. She’s a typical 8-year-old who places on Taylor Swift 90% of the time; now and again, we rock out to Queen, Avril Lavigne, or The Donnas. Once we search for one thing to hearken to collectively, we simply scan our plastic circumstances and choose one thing. We get to the enjoyable half sooner. She digs the brand new Muna file, which has an apropos monitor, “Large Stick,” through which lead singer Katie Gavin turns into the voice of the algorithms that rule our lives, chanting, “I could make you need what I need you to.”

We dance, we holler, and I benefit from the satisfaction of understanding that nobody is making us need something we have not chosen for ourselves.