The Deleted Years?

Found this article (A Decade of Music Is Lost on Your iPod. These Are The Deleted Years. Now Let Us Praise Them.) from this article (Jewel-Box Heroes: Why the CD Revival Is Finally Here), and I take exception:

Everything you bought from 2003 to 2009 is stuck on a dusty iPod for which a charger can no longer be found, or on a MacBook that’s three MacBooks ago. Whether you bought that whole first Kaiser Chiefs album or just plunked down the 99 cents for ‘I Predict A Riot,’ you don’t have it anymore.

  Ahem. I’m not necessarily proud of what remains from that era, but it’s still here.

Screenshot of Apple Music in 2023, showing iTunes purchases from 2004

2004 was about when I got my first iPod, a mini, that I still have and use today (albeit refreshed). And that’s just the music I bought via the Apple iTunes Music Store. A quick glance at my music folder on my NAS shows MP3s dating back to September of 1997! (Ah, college... I remember everyone having open Windows or AppleTalk shares and a huge sort of communal playlist up on the LAN we built. Most folks had computer speakers hooked up (like the venerable, nigh ubiquitous Altec Lansing ACS90s), but I ran my Windows machine inline with my receiver using the TAPE 2 monitor loop and the mixer built into Windows, and had ... More decibels.)