Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, I waxed verbose about my long-standing like/loathe relationship with commercial radio, the medium that lured me into Top-40 fandom in my pre-teen years and spurned me from high school to the present.

One digression was left unexplored due to issues of relevance and length:

My reluctance to embrace MP3s would require an entry in itself. Short answer: not at this time, but thank you for the option.

Far be it from me to let a promise of digression remain unrequited.

I recognize that digital music has numerous advantages over CDs and its precursors, but I have yet to embrace iTunes or to fill multiple external hard drives with jams for a variety of reasons. Some of them may sound tired and overused; most are conclusions I reached over the years after repeated bouts of personal deliberation. The list includes:

* Physical artifacts impart a sense of existence. I’ve downloaded the occasional free samples offered by myriad sites. I’ve also copied a few tracks onto my hard drive from albums I didn’t want anymore. When I’m not looking at the contents of my Music folder, I never remember what’s in there. I peek at it once every 4-6 months and then forget the contents all over again. By contrast, my CDs and cassettes present a more vivid mental image that allows me better recall of my personal musical options. For the most part, I know what is or isn’t on those shelves.

* Tiny album cover art is an effrontery to the artists and photographers who designed them. I don’t care how many dpi your screen is designed to handle; reducing such works to to the size of a shirt button obscures and destroys details and artistic choices. To me an album is a holistic package of music, art, packaging, and sometimes a few extras (essays, photos, lyrics, trivia in the end credits, and so on). Yes, one component is more important than the others, but inspired album design can convey an artist’s tone, unify a body of songs, and affect your impression of the album as a whole. Taking their efforts for granted is an insult to their profession and expressions.

* Albums are satisfying chunks of entertainment. Just as trade paperbacks collect issues of a comic book series or DVD boxed sets collect TV episodes for convenient viewing or binge-watching, albums represent a wider portrait of a musical act during a given career period than one catchy summertime single can. Granted, the hit/miss ratio for album-track quality can fluctuate in displeasing directions if an artist cranks out too much filler material, but when an album clicks, the cohesion of ten to twelve consecutive killer tracks is an uplifting sensation, especially if sequenced just right.

* Curating takes time. Pop a CD in your player of choice and presto: instant playlist. MP3s require culling, sorting, transferring, and rearranging, especially if you’re converting the albums you already own into pure non-physicality. Perhaps purchasing copies of your favorite songs and albums through online retailers is faster and offers cloud-based organizational perks. Somehow I’ve yet to become interested in paying twice for all the music I already own. I’m sure I could dedicate the labor hours to the task if I thought it would be tremendous fun, but I have a ridiculously long list of anything else I’d rather do with my scant free time.

* I don’t want to become my own least favorite DJ. I try to be careful about not pulling out the same ten CDs for listening pleasure again and again. Fortunately my brain has a handy randomizing function that can pull names out of an imaginary hat and remind me of old favorites I haven’t revisited in a while. If I limited myself to listening only to music I’ve purchased online or copied from CDs, my options would be distressingly limited unless I began working day and night to ensure I had thousands upon thousands of digital options, lest I end up boring myself and embodying the kind of radio station I spent last night deploring.

* YouTube users have already done the heavy lifting. When I’m feeling too lazy to walk into the other room for a CD, I don’t even need to rise from my seat to go fetch. Based on my occasional searches, mankind has already banded together to upload the entirety of post-1978 popular music to YouTube, whether in the form of official music videos or of worn-out recordings with static images affixed. So far my frequent games of Stump YouTube have yet to uncover a recording artist that absolutely no one has immortalized on their site. As long as they exist as a free service that hasn’t yet been sued out of existence by Big Music or greedily converted to a pay-per-view model, I have no idea why I would need to own copies for myself.

* I’m free from the dreadful temptation of Internet piracy. Three cheers for the moral high road! Unless occasional reliance on YouTube for free samples counts as piracy.