Feels like the article is slightly off base, the people today looking for something physical and memorable have been buying vinyl. In 2026 most people I know don’t have a CD player let alone a CD burner. But lots them do buy and play vinyl and have record players for that purpose.

Or… if the article is just a nostalgia deep dive then why the commitment to CDs? You could do the same passing around USB sticks if the purpose is to share music with friends.

Also wonder if the article writer’s own discs actually still work, burned discs don’t last that long. They mention having a a whole box of old discs but I don’t know if they actually tried to play them and checked them for errors. A while back I was doing some data recovery for a friend who had all their stuff burned to discs over the years, turned out about 20% of her discs were either unreadable or full of errors.