IceClass
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2007
- Posts
- 2,677
- Likes
- 51
I hate the CD jewel case.
I really can't stand the damn things.
In fact, I hate the CD jewel case with every fiber of my slightly pear shaped and doughy being and after 25 years of mucking about with them I've had enough!
The CD "jewel" case is an outdated dinosaur whose illicit and underhanded mission is well past it's original purpose and sell by date.
Forget the current precarious status of it's contents: the CD itself; the jewel case's mission is illicit because it was designed to attack by stealth; while seducing under false pretenses. It was underhanded because while the precision jewel supposedly required this fiddly overpackaging, the entire early eighties were punctuated with dizzying regularity by corporate sales goons in grey suits and cheese ball grins tucking into bacon and eggs served on a CD to demonstrate it's resilience to abuse and projected longevity.
Signaling the decline of analog and the high street arrival of the new digital Compact Disk, the jewel case, as is all good packaging, was designed to inflate the perceived value of the product within.
Clasped within it's tight press, the CD was new and shiny where vinyl was all about yesterday and a dust magnet. Offering bit perfect digital precision, it strikingly and graphically signaled the new era of digital audio and the limitless possibilities of human technological progress to the dazzled and heretofore analog high street consumer.
It also unleashed upon the world a veritable deluge of broken hinge tabs, dropped media, busted finger nails and frustrated, not to mention financially fleeced punters.
The arrival of a new format is always a golden opportunity for corporate music to rearrange pricing structures and the jewel case allowed for this hansomely and did it's job well. Folks were convinced to shell out a premium for the technological "jewels" contained within and the artists got to renegotiate their contracts to reflect the latest format's potential for increased revenue streams. Their people were quick to demand and get higher royalties which *the* people, the fans, us if you will swallowed willingly while blinded in the dazzling golden glare of the CD jewel.
Corporate music got more cash, Keith Richards bought himself another blood transfusion and the consumer got stuck with the damn jewel case.
Almost thirty years later on the "jewel" has been a freebie in magazines for years and landfills everywhere are still swollen with AOL dial up CDs.
Jewels they are no more.
So why the damn jewel case?
The hinges are a fatal design flaw and are intrinsically designed to snap off and choke small chihuahuas.
Lord knows how many tons of their petro-chemical flotsam now populate the planet.
Does the music industry really think those fragile hopelessly ergonomically defeated containers still help me to part with the ridiculous sums of cash they persist on demanding for their increasingly homogenous, compressed and mediocre wares?
Are they fearful that customers flipping through rows and racks of music contained in fiberboard sleeves will equate the product with it's premium price tag to those freebies they threw away with the magazine wrapper only a few days prior and reject them?
They shouldn't be.
I have in my music collection a very solid percentage of CDs contained in cracked, broken, even missing jewel cases. Some of the CDs are scratched.
Some were much treasured and cost dearly.
Some were special ordered, some were rare imports and most came from a long way away with shipping charges that often cost almost the same as the CDs themselves.
Almost all came a cropper because of the inherent design flaws of the jewel case...and admittedly, on the odd occasion, overly ambitious amounts of Grolsch© and/or various other concoctions.
Choosing a new CD from one's collection is a dicey lottery. You never know if the next one you pull out will cave in under your thumb from the crack in the cover or if the broken hinge will cause you to convulse wildly as the hinge flys in one direction (towards that Chihuahua) the cover and case fly in the other and the CD lands on the stone floor before being trampled by the kids.
Even when you do remember to be careful and check first; noting the perfectly shiny case and intact hinge there's still no guarantee the silly little teeth that grip the CD by the spindle inside haven't all broken off; inevitably sending the CD crashing to it's familiar spot on the stone floor.
Besides even the ridiculous design and inherent fragility, the CD jewel case takes up way more space than a single 1mm thick disc has any business doing.
Compare the Thickness of the CD jewel case against 3 CD Mini LPs:
Perhaps then we can imagine the miles of shelving we'd spare in our living rooms and dens not to mention our backs from humping those crates of CDs from dorm to dorm to batchelor to family home before fighting over them during your divorce when you and the missus both realize the darn things have cost more than your last new mini-van.
So why keep the whole crappy, dysfunctional charade going?
It's not working.
I don't feel like a CD is "jewel" like any more. I'm not in awe and trembling with anticipation as I trash another fifty dollar manicure peeling off the shrink wrap.
And more than anything I hate all those busted cases.
The Mini-LP CD may be less voluminous and structurally imposing than the jewel case clad product but that doesn't mean it doesn't lend itself to some nice packaging efforts as these Miles Davis and George Harrison reproduction Mini-LPs complete with anti-static sleeve and exact copy album cover and liner notes from Japan demonstrate:
So stand up and be counted and let's hasten the death of the jewel case.
And while we're wheeling in the guillotine run to your CD collections and share some pix with us of your favourite MINI LP CD and let us and the industry know if you prefer Mini-LP style packaging to jewel cases.
I apologize for the rambling rant and thank you for reading patiently this far but I've just had another one of those butter fingered moments where I grabbed more CDs than I could hold and sent them in a spray across the man-cave.
Notch up another 3 busted cases and a sadly scuffed and rare Young Gods CD.
I really can't stand the damn things.
In fact, I hate the CD jewel case with every fiber of my slightly pear shaped and doughy being and after 25 years of mucking about with them I've had enough!
The CD "jewel" case is an outdated dinosaur whose illicit and underhanded mission is well past it's original purpose and sell by date.
Forget the current precarious status of it's contents: the CD itself; the jewel case's mission is illicit because it was designed to attack by stealth; while seducing under false pretenses. It was underhanded because while the precision jewel supposedly required this fiddly overpackaging, the entire early eighties were punctuated with dizzying regularity by corporate sales goons in grey suits and cheese ball grins tucking into bacon and eggs served on a CD to demonstrate it's resilience to abuse and projected longevity.
Signaling the decline of analog and the high street arrival of the new digital Compact Disk, the jewel case, as is all good packaging, was designed to inflate the perceived value of the product within.
Clasped within it's tight press, the CD was new and shiny where vinyl was all about yesterday and a dust magnet. Offering bit perfect digital precision, it strikingly and graphically signaled the new era of digital audio and the limitless possibilities of human technological progress to the dazzled and heretofore analog high street consumer.
It also unleashed upon the world a veritable deluge of broken hinge tabs, dropped media, busted finger nails and frustrated, not to mention financially fleeced punters.
The arrival of a new format is always a golden opportunity for corporate music to rearrange pricing structures and the jewel case allowed for this hansomely and did it's job well. Folks were convinced to shell out a premium for the technological "jewels" contained within and the artists got to renegotiate their contracts to reflect the latest format's potential for increased revenue streams. Their people were quick to demand and get higher royalties which *the* people, the fans, us if you will swallowed willingly while blinded in the dazzling golden glare of the CD jewel.
Corporate music got more cash, Keith Richards bought himself another blood transfusion and the consumer got stuck with the damn jewel case.
Almost thirty years later on the "jewel" has been a freebie in magazines for years and landfills everywhere are still swollen with AOL dial up CDs.
Jewels they are no more.
So why the damn jewel case?
The hinges are a fatal design flaw and are intrinsically designed to snap off and choke small chihuahuas.
Lord knows how many tons of their petro-chemical flotsam now populate the planet.
Does the music industry really think those fragile hopelessly ergonomically defeated containers still help me to part with the ridiculous sums of cash they persist on demanding for their increasingly homogenous, compressed and mediocre wares?
Are they fearful that customers flipping through rows and racks of music contained in fiberboard sleeves will equate the product with it's premium price tag to those freebies they threw away with the magazine wrapper only a few days prior and reject them?
They shouldn't be.
I have in my music collection a very solid percentage of CDs contained in cracked, broken, even missing jewel cases. Some of the CDs are scratched.
Some were much treasured and cost dearly.
Some were special ordered, some were rare imports and most came from a long way away with shipping charges that often cost almost the same as the CDs themselves.
Almost all came a cropper because of the inherent design flaws of the jewel case...and admittedly, on the odd occasion, overly ambitious amounts of Grolsch© and/or various other concoctions.
Choosing a new CD from one's collection is a dicey lottery. You never know if the next one you pull out will cave in under your thumb from the crack in the cover or if the broken hinge will cause you to convulse wildly as the hinge flys in one direction (towards that Chihuahua) the cover and case fly in the other and the CD lands on the stone floor before being trampled by the kids.
Even when you do remember to be careful and check first; noting the perfectly shiny case and intact hinge there's still no guarantee the silly little teeth that grip the CD by the spindle inside haven't all broken off; inevitably sending the CD crashing to it's familiar spot on the stone floor.
Besides even the ridiculous design and inherent fragility, the CD jewel case takes up way more space than a single 1mm thick disc has any business doing.
Compare the Thickness of the CD jewel case against 3 CD Mini LPs:
Perhaps then we can imagine the miles of shelving we'd spare in our living rooms and dens not to mention our backs from humping those crates of CDs from dorm to dorm to batchelor to family home before fighting over them during your divorce when you and the missus both realize the darn things have cost more than your last new mini-van.
So why keep the whole crappy, dysfunctional charade going?
It's not working.
I don't feel like a CD is "jewel" like any more. I'm not in awe and trembling with anticipation as I trash another fifty dollar manicure peeling off the shrink wrap.
And more than anything I hate all those busted cases.
The Mini-LP CD may be less voluminous and structurally imposing than the jewel case clad product but that doesn't mean it doesn't lend itself to some nice packaging efforts as these Miles Davis and George Harrison reproduction Mini-LPs complete with anti-static sleeve and exact copy album cover and liner notes from Japan demonstrate:
So stand up and be counted and let's hasten the death of the jewel case.
And while we're wheeling in the guillotine run to your CD collections and share some pix with us of your favourite MINI LP CD and let us and the industry know if you prefer Mini-LP style packaging to jewel cases.
I apologize for the rambling rant and thank you for reading patiently this far but I've just had another one of those butter fingered moments where I grabbed more CDs than I could hold and sent them in a spray across the man-cave.
Notch up another 3 busted cases and a sadly scuffed and rare Young Gods CD.
