CDs are a fairly garbage archival medium, as the thousands of screaming discs I’ve resurfaced in my life will attest to—especially the ones already permanently hobbled by pinholes. They offer no sonic benefit that can’t be reproduced by the advanced version of the digital technology that made them possible in the first place. Vinyl is still produced, and for people who like the fetishism of physical media, they offer actual benefits to the listener, as opposed to CDs, where the only real benefit over vinyl is consistency of quality.

CDs, like cassettes, like eight-tracks, are a transient medium. CD drives are already designated as legacy hardware in computers, and more and more cars are being produced without CD players. I can buy a VCR right now, but I’d still have to explain what the hell it is to my youngest niece and probably her older sister. And I sure wouldn’t be heading to a VHS store to pick it up — niche market items get sold in big box stores. I’m betting that’s the way it’ll go with CDs.

I’ll grant you that no one knows what the future will bring or what waning technologies it will deliver a coup de grace to with the infinitely heavy business end of its temporal hammer, but you didn’t fault me for granting myself children in the future. I augur that I’ll have kids someday because that’s how humankind works. I imagine that CD stores will disappear someday because that’s how technology works.