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2 weeks Ago
If you’re at a flea market in Singapore, you may notice Raymond Yeo’s wares before you see him. His CD collection and accompanying player stand out, an instant jolt of nostalgia even in a space typically packed with preloved bits and bobs from bygone eras. The player is meant for customers to test the CD they want, ensuring the audio quality before purchase.
But it sometimes has the opposite effect. “The opening line when people see me selling CDs is somehow they go into confessional mode, and they tell me they don’t have a CD player,” said the 46-year-old avid CD collector. “Others say things like, ‘Nobody really listens to CDs but I do and I found you.
’ I get these kinds of sentiments.” Yeo runs a small social enterprise called OK Compact Disc – a pun on Radiohead’s third studio album OK Computer – which he started in 2022. He estimates he’s served 200 to 300 people thus far, with at least 10 per cent who are repeat customers.
Some folks approach him with their unwanted CDs – including some that are still sealed, once bought simply to support an artiste. He tries not to price each copy beyond S$15 (US$11.20).
That would be considered the high end of prices, reserved for pieces he considers rarer or more in demand, such as The Star Wars original motion picture soundtrack he once had. On average, his CDs cost between S$5 and S$10, though some sell for as low as S$3. Interested customers can peruse his selection on a Google Docs catalogue linked on his Instagram @okcompactdisc that’s updated monthly.
If they don’t find what they want, Yeo is usually willing to put in the legwork to hunt it down, charging customers an additional, nominal finder’s fee. He then tests the CD on his own player before selling it to them. This, of course, comes with the risk that the CD isn’t in resale condition, but he’s happy to bear the cost.
Earlier this year, he was on a mission in Yokohama to find a Japanese CD for a customer, who had sent him a photo of the album cover. After searching several stores for the whole day, he finally found the album tucked away on a shelf. “That was kind of memorable, shopping on behalf of someone in a faraway land.
And it's something that he cherished enough to bring overseas,” he said. As it turned out, the customer loved the CD so much, he brought it with him back to Australia where he was studying. Interestingly, many of Yeo’s customers are people who don’t appear to have grown up with CDs based on his observations.
One of his regulars is a 22-year-old student who relies on him to source for specific CDs. Justin Francisco currently owns about 20 CDs from various genres including modern pop and old school rock, and plans to continue his collection. “As a music lover, I really listen to lots of music.
I just want to collect CDs to remember each of these bands ...
Album cover art naturally makes me want to get CDs too. It’s nice to present to people who visit your house,” he said. It’s “very rare” for sellers to “go the extra mile” to look for CDs that he wants but they don’t have.
Yeo, however, doesn’t just help Justin find these CDs, but takes the initiative to recommend other titles he believes his customer may fancy. And he’s often right. Another regular and one of Yeo’s top customers, a 19-year-old student, similarly shared that whenever he has a certain CD he figures she’d like, he offers to let her listen for free at home before deciding whether to buy it.
Blythe Gay Min started buying CDs from Yeo about two years ago when she chanced upon his display in a store at The Cathay, and has since amassed a proud collection of 36 CDs, of which many are Japanese artistes. After he moved out from the mall, they stayed in touch. Part of the allure of collecting CDs is the lyric booklets, she admits.
She did, in fact, grow up listening to CDs and watching movies on DVDs. (She still does the latter with her collection at home if she can’t find the film online.) “I’ve never sold any of my CDs and don’t plan to do so .
.. It’s a whole different vibe.
I know Spotify is simple and you don’t really need CDs anymore, but it just feels nice to have access to physical pieces to listen to,” she added. Yeo has a cheaper rate for students, including the finder’s fee, seeing it as his duty of sorts to the niche community of CD collectors. “It’s really younger people who have an interest that you can cultivate,” he said.
While Yeo isn’t a streaming snob – he listens to music on YouTube or via streaming channels like Mixcloud – he has over 2,000 CDs (and counting) in his own collection, an impressive feat even for someone who started collecting from a young age. But he didn’t start buying CDs with the intention to sell them later in life. He didn’t even plan to listen to them for several decades, even though he later realised he could if he wanted to.
A standard audio CD is said to have a shelf life of 50 to 100 years, so most of his “should last”, he believes. Before CDs entered his life, he listened to cassette tapes which tended to have “mechanical noises”, like a hiss and wow. A hiss is a high-frequency noise that’s characteristic of analogue magnetic tape recordings, while a wow refers to a change in frequency caused by irregular tape motion during recording or playback.
These noises from tape decks, and even vinyl players such as when the needle touches the vinyl, come across stronger than they would on a CD. But these tend to be happy trade-offs for vinyl aficionados, for instance, who may term such noises a “warm” sound. On the other hand, while not completely flawless, Yeo believes CD recordings are “the gold standard when it comes to fidelity”.
“I would even go as far as to say it’s a recreation of the actual recording ...
So what is actually recorded, you hear it. You don’t really hear all this other stuff (on other mediums) that people either love or get used to,” he added. Even if the CD itself doesn’t endure, nostalgia does, though this shade of longing is decidedly different from the nostalgia fuelling a resurgence of vinyls among the younger generation.
In my view, vinyls represent an abstract concept of the good old days rather than a music medium many of us actually listened to growing up. CDs tend to be associated with a more recent, relatable past in our minds, the birth of the digital era. But due to the increasing speed of tech advancement changing the way we live every year or so, the resulting nostalgia can make it seem like the classic CD is a century-old relic.
Mixtape subculture, too, which began way before Spotify collaborative playlists, gave added meaning to the CD. Though Yeo doesn’t see this as a strong reason he personally collects music CDs, he admits, “To give a loved one, or someone who you like a lot, a mixtape is like saying: This is a playlist I made for you. I think there is a kind of romanticism.
” From a seller’s perspective, CDs are also “artefacts with cultural value”. So flea markets aside, Yeo hosts free listening sessions on Tuesdays from 12pm to 8pm outside Casual Poet Library in Bukit Merah. At this weekly event, Tuesdays With Raymond, visitors can read while sipping a drink (there’s a cafe next to the library) and listening to music on his CDs.
Consider it culture education. The man was an English and Literature teacher with the Ministry of Education for about a decade after all. Although he is present to interact with guests, there is no pressure for anyone to socialise, as enjoying music can be a deeply personal activity.
It’s a romantic idea at odds with Singapore’s pragmatism, but Yeo might be on to something. Before Spotify Discover Weekly took the hard work out of discovering new music and artistes, I’d spend hours in HMV and CD Rama, skipping from one in-store CD player to another, hoping to chance upon my next earworm. Never mind that the players were configured so customers could only listen to 30 seconds of each track, not the whole album.
Every time I put those grubby headphones on and turned the volume up, the noise in my head quietened down. I’ve found that specific feeling hard to replicate in the era of streaming, perhaps because music is more readily available than ever. We tend to appreciate something less when we can access it more easily.
“There are others who sell CDs, but those folks are (usually) faceless Carousellers,” Yeo added. “But I like this very human dimension that makes it worthwhile and interesting, where the relationship goes beyond a (transaction).” The goal of Tuesday With Raymond sessions seems to echo what the founder of Casual Poet Library had observed from public reactions to her community library : Singaporeans are sometimes drawn to impracticality.
That said, it’s hard to avoid the reality of living in Singapore, so Yeo makes “certain lifestyle choices that will feed me”, he shared candidly. This includes taking on several short-term assignments, such as visitor experience work in art galleries. His love for CDs won’t rake in the big bucks, he is clear about that, but neither will fellow CD connoisseurs lose a seller anytime soon.
“The way I see it, I do get back what I've given to build this community. And the more I give, the more I get,” he said..
