Something's in the 2012 air, as two people — apparently unaffiliated with each other — post about the poor, downtrodden, caught-between-two-favorite-formats medium that is the CD, on the same exact day.

Read the excerpts after the cut:

First, John Schooley with 'I Come Not To Bury The Compact Disc, But To Praise It':

CDs get a bad rap. Bashing the compact disc while praising vinyl has been the choice of the cool kids for awhile now, but it seems to be more about appearances than about the intrinsic value of either format.

I'm grateful to the CD. I'm not a dick toward it. Don't be so high and mighty about vinyl, you ungrateful bastards.

If you really like music you end up having to be able to play just about anything, because there is always some stuff you'll never hear otherwise. Just as I bought vinyl because that was the only way to hear certain things that hadn't been reissued on CD, I bought CDs because some of the releases on CD were of things that were so rare, I never would have been able to find a copy of the original vinyl release. Or, if I had, I wouldn't have been able to afford it. CD reissues performed a valuable service by putting impossible-to-find records in the hands of us regular folks.

The mid-1990s to mid-2000s were actually a golden era for CD reissues.

They cleaned up and remastered recordings, they hunted down unreleased tracks, they got knowledgeable people to write informative liner notes. They dealt with our ridiculous copyright laws, and the major labels (and sometimes, reluctant artists) who owned the rights to the material, and who were reluctant to let it see the light of day again. Without the good work of these people in the pre-iPod era, I either wouldn't have heard a lot of the music I love, or I would have had to pay outrageous collector-scum prices to hear it. In fact, I think it is safe to say that we owe the current richness of the vinyl reissues we now enjoy, in part, to the wave of CD reissues from previous decades.

As the era of the compact disc closes, we should afford it in passing the respect that it deserves, and allow it to live out its final years with respect and dignity.

And then Rob Manuel with the similarly titled 'In Praise Of CDs':

I've been experimenting with CDs again. In my month or so of CDs here's what I've learnt:

CDs end — this is a good thing. Say you type your favourite act into Spotify chances are it'll keep playing until you're sick of it. This is quite a negative emotion to be associated with your favourite music. 'Get it off, my brain is going to explode.'

CDs are cheap. My local charity shop sells them for £1. Playing pot luck is a fun cheap hobby. Amazon has amazing deals on with 5 for about £10.

CDs are like buying MP3s with a physical back up.

Put a CD in a player and it'll still be in the player when you next enter the room. This encourages repeat listening. Repeat listening makes music familiar — and that's how it becomes your favourite music.

Every single CD case — I can take them off the shelf and associate a memory with it. The Björk single I bought in Mike Lloyds in Wolverhampton for £1 in 1994 — I used to buy singles as I had very little money. The Sisters Of Mercy CD I accidentaly stole from the library (I took back the cover and didn't realise I had the disc until years later).

If you pile up the CDs on your shelf the spines are readable and they say 'listen to me'. They remind you of what they are and ask you to play them.

CDs don't pause between tracks like your iPod/Spotify. This matters on albums that are meant to run together. Say Dark Side Of The Moon. These records are BROKEN by this tech. If I was Roger Waters I'd take a shit in Apple's office and refuse to stop shitting until this was fixed.

The medium is the message. The CD says, 'I covet this precious artifact'. The computer file says, 'This is disposable data'.