A long time ago, you could go to a special store and trade government paper for music disks and tape that you got to keep forever.

When I discovered that it was possible to buy and download drm free lossless flac-files i went back to buying music again. Never looked back tbh.

honestly, most of my CDs have been used once: Put in a PC and ripped (to 96kbps MP3s, of course!)

That bitrate seems low? I always thought 160-192kbps was the floor for a decent sounding rip, but it’s been over a decade since I’ve even had a CD so maybe things are different now

The Bitrate part was a joke, yes. 96k is low, although I just remembered a special mp3 codec from NERO that allowed for such low bitrate, at the same perceived sound quality as 128kbps.

But obviously, all my CDs have been ripped as either V2, V0 or 320kbps - I personally have not noticed any difference to FLAC files with either of those qualities.