As John Lewis reports a 96% rise in searches for CD players, music fans share their reasons for ditching streaming

CDs appear to be having a resurgence. John Lewis said searches for CD players are up 96% since July, while another report on trends in music and film this year found that CD sales are up 16%.

With this in mind, we asked music fans why they favour discs over other formats, and if it is a new preference or a lifetime habit.

As SpaceX impacts Ukraine and AI-generated music divides artists and fans, critics are asking what happens when technology has too much control over our lives

• This was originally published in TechScape, a newsletter about how technology shapes our lives. Sign up to receive it here

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you while sitting in front of Roy Lichtenstein’s monumental Drowning Girl, on view in New York City. Today in tech, we’re discussing the perils of Elon Musk’s one-man global infrastructure, AI-generated music and a Guardian AI conference in Paris.

People describe their return to physical media – whether to protect data, support artists, or retain control of one’s choices

For some, it is the security of knowing they have a physical copy of their favourite films and music, free from algorithms, interruptions and the vagaries of streaming. For others, it is the sound of needle on vinyl, the click of a cassette player and the ability to interact with a physical format.

We asked people if they were moving back to CDs, DVDs, vinyl and older formats to escape algorithmically curated content. Here are some of their responses.

Long-abandoned formats such as cassettes and VHS tapes are finding new life as consumers seek a digital detox

Ten years after the last video recorder manufacturer ceased production, the first straight-to-video movie for two decades – This Is How the World Ends – was released this month. The resurgence of vinyl began long ago; sales are at their highest level for over 30 years. But record buyers enthuse about the warmth of their sound and the generous visual expanse of album covers. In contrast, the new movie is shot in HD; the director acknowledges that those watching it on video will see a cropped, fuzzier image. The point of the exercise – beyond creating a buzz – lies not in the inherent qualities of VHS, but the effect of its rarity on the viewer.

When everything is available in high definition with one swipe of your screen, cumbersome physical formats that must be hunted down appear both nostalgically inviting and strikingly fresh. Last year, Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl was released in multiple physical formats, including cassette and CD – technically digital, but also enjoying a revival thanks to its retro feel. The title track of her previous album, The Tortured Poets Department, mocked a lover’s attachment to his typewriter, notoriously favoured by hipsters.

Streaming platform says remix tool agreed with Universal Music Group will protect artists from piracy

Spotify’s chief executive has defended the company’s move into AI-generated music, claiming it offers users and creators a better alternative to piracy and unregulated AI slop.

Last week, the platform announced a new feature in which premium users will be allowed to create their own, AI-generated remixes and song covers using music from participating artists.

Licensing agreement will allow listeners to use AI to create content on streaming platform for first time

Spotify and Universal Music Group have agreed on a deal that will allow subscribers to generate song covers and remixes using artificial intelligence.

The licensing agreement is the first time the Swedish streaming company will allow listeners to use AI to create content through its platform.

Whether made by human hand or shady algorithm, emotion-based playlists are everywhere. But if you’re looking for a superior soundtrack to ‘all the feels’, get your ears round these selections from our music writers

Music might be the greatest mood enhancer in the world: it’s certainly hard to think of another art form that can so effectively tip a feeling of happiness into euphoria or create a suitably gloomy space in which to wallow in melancholy. There have always been albums designed to evoke a certain mood, from Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely to Essential Chill Out Vol 2. But in recent years, we seem to have become more interested in the relationship between music and mood. Streaming services are thick with mood-based playlists. There appear to be hundreds of the things on Spotify, from the straightforward (Happy Vibes) to the vague (All the Feels), and they appear to have struck a nerve: Spotify’s own curated mood playlists are now vastly outnumbered by user-generated ones, soundtracking everything from Friday at the Office to – I swear I’m not making this up – Losing Someone to Suicide.

There are those who have detected something sinister in all this. Liz Pelly’s 2025 book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist suggests that the Spotify’s seeming obsession with mood-based playlists is linked to its focus on what it calls “lean-back consumers” – not ardent music fans, but the kind of people who would once have turned the radio on in the morning and left it burbling quietly away all day. These playlists, Pelly suggests, exist as a latterday equivalent of muzak, designed to be as unobtrusive, unsurprising and unadventurous as possible, to seamlessly play in the background without really being noticed.

Song that topped Swedish Spotify rankings ruled ineligible after elements of song revealed to be partly AI-made

A hit song has been excluded from Sweden’s official chart after it emerged the “artist” behind it was an AI creation.

I Know, You’re Not Mine – or Jag Vet, Du Är Inte Min in Swedish – by a singer called Jacub has been a streaming success in Sweden, topping the Spotify rankings.

Platform with 700m users says it is investigating after Anna’s Archive claims to have scraped tracks and metadata

An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.

Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.

Many users of the app were shocked, this week, by this addition to the Spotify Wrapped roundup – especially twentysomethings who were judged to be 100

“Age is just a number. So don’t take this personally.” Those words were the first inkling I had that I was about to receive some very bad news.

I woke up on Wednesday with a mild hangover after celebrating my 44th birthday. Unfortunately for me, this was the day Spotify released “Spotify Wrapped”, its analysis of (in my case) the 4,863 minutes I had spent listening to music on its platform over the past year. And this year, for the first time, they are calculating the “listening age” of all their users.

The streamer’s annual charts are just another version of the tech that’s alienating us from our inner lives. Hold on to your musical memories and reclaim ownership of your taste

I like year-end list season. I like an opportunity to remember and reflect on the records that stuck with me over the course of a year – especially when there is a chance to recommend something that others may have overlooked. I like looking through friends’ favourites for albums that I missed completely, and making a big listening queue. I like following along as critics attempt to determine the year’s “best”, even when I end up yelling into a group chat about how wrong they all are. I like it because it all requires looking back, racking your brain and processing your year in listening. It requires thinking.

This year, as Spotify Wrapped takes over social media feeds again, I am struck by how the whole concept seems to discourage that critical practice for something more passive. It nudges listeners away from deep consideration and towards accepting a corporate-branded scorecard reflecting a very specific perspective on musical value. It encourages music fans to believe that the records they streamed the most must be the ones they liked the most, which is surely not always the case.