There used to be Greatest Hits

The Best Greatest Hits Collection Ever

In years past this was the time of the year I got to reflect on noteworthy greatest hits compact discs that I picked up over the course of the year.  But 2011 was almost completely devoid of greatest hits releases.  R.E.M.'s "Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage" career spanning retrospective was the only thing that even piqued my interest.  I opted not to buy it because I already own two of their other collections that have almost all of the same songs.  I actually did get one... the Good Charlotte collection was made available about a year ago but it was publicized so little that I didn't notice it had been released until it was summer.

There was news this week that, for the first time in history, music distributed digitally via download surpassed music distributed by physical media of which the compact disc is the majority.  Yep, 50.3%.  I still have yet to purchase any music digitally.  My digital music has always come from the CDs that I bought.  Whenever I'd pick up a new greatest hits collection the first thing I would do is rip it to MP3 so that I could listen to the songs on my iPod and then I would put the CD in one of the remaining slots of my 400-disc Sony changer.  Now I have to accept that my discontinued changer may never see a day where it is completely filled (I think it still has around 50 empty slots).  I also have to accept that the music format—and my hobby of collecting greatest hits—will both soon be a distant memory.

I really miss the way it used to be... I guess that's probably to be expected when you reach your 40s, huh? :(