Disc rot. It’s a thing. A thing I’d relegated to the dusty corners of my memory until a recent, stark reminder. And also the thing that’s convinced me I need to digitise old media – while I still can.
Years ago, I stopped buying CDs when an album I wanted didn’t get a physical release. The habit broken, I went all-in on digital – and then streaming. But streaming’s ephemeral nature began to gnaw at me. That and my towering stacks of unloved albums made me decide I should start buying CDs again.
Naturally, I needed something to play them on, and was fortunate to spend quality time reviewing the Ruark Audio R3S for Stuff. But I got a nasty surprise when the unit, having been flawless during playback, suddenly appeared to struggle with one of my favourite old CDs. It started skipping.
This made no sense. I took the disc out. I put it back in. Skip skip skip! Only after having tried this a couple of times did I think to flip the CD over and check whether it needed cleaning. It didn’t. It needed chucking out, because the edges were suffering from disc rot.
Last Train: cancelled
This wasn’t just about a broken CD. It felt like the loss of a tangible link to my university years. I’d first heard the album in question – Banco de Gaia’s Last Train to Lhasa – in the college bar. (Why, yes, I did go to university in the mid-1990s…) And unlike many other albums from that time, to me this one has over the years lost none of its potency.
I initially considered sourcing a direct replacement. But what would be the point? It wouldn’t be my copy I’d listened to throughout the years. Moreover, if my copy was ‘rotting’, chances are others from that time were too, given that this problem was often linked to specific manufacturing plants and record labels.
So I made peace with it being gone, and then bought a 4CD remaster. Handily, that came with an MP3 copy, so I didn’t even need to digitise the physical media. But the incident got me thinking: do I have much other, older media silently decaying, ready to vanish at a moment’s notice? And is it already too late to save some of it? The answer to both questions is, almost certainly, yes. And it’s not like I wasn’t warned.
Be kind, rewind
Over the years, I’ve glumly looked at faded photos I should have scanned but didn’t. And now they’re even more faded. I for years held on to Commodore 64 floppy disks with my earliest digital art, and only recently had them digitised. One was not salvageable. Worse, I still have stacks of Betacam SP, VHS and cassette tapes, relics from my video art and band performances. Chances are, many are long dead. But even tapes that aren’t might be one play from being chewed into oblivion. Not that I have players for most of them anymore anyway. Gah.
You might argue all this old media should simply fade away or be chucked into a skip during an act of catharsis. Doubly so in an existence where I’m already surrounded by so much digital detritus. Thousands of thoughtlessly captured photos, never revisited. Countless documents that will remain forever idle. Endless songs I’ll never listen to again.
But perhaps that’s why those old physical items matter and need to live on. They are part of my history, anchors from a time where memories were captured in glimpses. A roll of film. A chance tape recording. Long before an era of 24/7 smartphone snappers. And unless I want a gap in my own life’s history, I should digitise all this old media while I still can.