MiniDisc Playlists 1-10 - Physicals
Monday, September 09, 2024A breakdown of the physical MiniDiscs of the first ten MiniDisc playlists I’ve made.
I feel like I’ve always had pretty decent luck when it comes to finding cool items at thrift stores or yard sales and one of the reasons why are these MiniDiscs. I found my current MD portable (a Sony MZ-N510) in the bagged electronics area of Savers one day during my junior year of high school, with a MiniDisc already in it! It was someones mid 00s alt rock playlist and was kinda neat, kinda ehh, to my 16 year old ears at least. Very cool tech, but with just the one disc, to the shelf it goes. Later that year, I go to a yard sale and to my surprise, someone was selling their MiniDisc hi-fi deck, an Onkyo MD-2321. But, I wasn’t here for a MD deck, I was here for a VHS/DVD player, and also to my surprise, they were selling one of those too. I bought the VHS player and got in my car and left, but the MD deck just wasn’t leaving my mind. One U-turn and five minutes later I bought the Onyko deck. Then, I got a lot of MiniDiscs from Japan on Ebay and in the summer of 2019, my first MiniDisc playlist was born.
MiniDisc 1: Summer ‘19
Using label stickers from a VHS-C tape, I kept it simple and was inspired by fashion season naming. “Master” but it was recording my plugging my phone (LG V20 with that cool DAC at least) directly into the analog-in RCA ports, using downloaded Apple Music songs.
MiniDisc 2: A/W ‘19
Going for an opposite color from the orange of MD1, I forgot that less is more with the second disc of the series. Continuing but doing a bit too much of the same labeling as the first disc. The random Japanese sticker was from a Bleach sticker sheet I found at Goodwill (I have never watched or read Bleach), and I used more of those labels that come with blank tape media. I also thought it would be cool to reword the “Lucir” of the TDK disc to “Luvir”, and idk lol, chill out Lupe Fiasco.
MiniDisc 3: Where Did Spring Go?
Unreal.
You can’t fuck with me.
TripleS owes me 40,000 dollars (jk just give us more songs like Inner Dance omg).
I mean who else does it like this. Fuck Yandhi. Nelly swag. I mean who else puts a damn bandaid on their shit. No one. Band 4 band: I’m winning every time. AND THAT SHIT WORKS TOO!! MY PORTABLE AND MY HIFI DECK DGAF!!! Just wait til you see what songs are on this playlist too my word. Also the abrupt end of my public school career due to Covid is why this one is named what it is.
MiniDisc 4: Techwear Type Beat
A neat little break from the DIY labeling of the previous three, I repurposed a collage I had made during May of 2020. I could’ve done a better job at printing and actually putting it on the disc though. Pasted on a clean lil Sony Neige disc.
MiniDisc 5: Summer ‘20 (Handle With Care)
To be honest I felt like I just needed to include some shit on the fronts of these things and again, I forgot that less is more. These labels came from a length of packaging tape used by Never Content JP. I bought a license plate and some stickers from them and thought the tape was cool, idk. I should’ve just only used the bottom “handle with care” bit, but the useless Japanese text trope struck again.
MiniDisc 6: Inside
While the playlist was based around… Late 2020 to early 2021 probably, and was created in May 2021, the accompanying disc was created in 2022 probably. Hand embossed labels from a Dymo label maker, displaying the decimal representation of the ASCII “MiniDisc:6”. I really like this blank series btw, I have more of these Maxwell Color Club discs.
MiniDisc 7: Overdue
These upcoming discs don’t have any labelling at all lol. I didn’t really bother with putting the playlists onto physical discs after number 5 so these discs were assigned much later after the playlists were created. Will I label them in the future? Probably, just for consistency. If I do I’ll update the images and delete this whole shit and you’ll never know. That’s when I feel like it though, and I don’t feel like it right now, and probably won’t feel like it for a while. I just chose a disc in a color I haven’t used in this series yet.
MiniDisc 8: I. Estes
This disc is the first of a two disc series, due to too much music having significance during this period of Winter 2021/Spring 2022. A basic blue/red pairing was chosen for these two discs, not at first though. That was because I needed to save my last 80 minute disc for the next playlist, and the full “red hot” color of that blank made me think about using a blue disc for the corresponding first playlist. It just workz sometimes.
MiniDisc 9: II. Infatuation
This disc is the second of a two disc series, due to too much music having significance during this period of Winter 2021/Spring 2022. This “RED HOT” blank was chosen because it was the last 80 minute MD I have left lol, and I could not make any compromises on this playlist. All the songs must be present.
MiniDisc 10: Crash & Burn
A full blank Sony Neige was chosen to match the tone of this playlist: empty lol.
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And that concludes the breakdown of these 10 MiniDisc playlists. I still have more playlists in my library to complete and continue making, but this is what I have so far. I’ll continue to keep making these periodical collections of music, but I want to also expand into themed playlists, like a collection of pure instrumental songs I like, or as many 10/10 songs that I can fit into an 80 minute disc. IDK! We’ll see later what I come up with.
If you wanna see/read about what the fuck is on these playlists lol, then you can read about my breakdown of those: hereeeeeeee
Thanks gang.