This must be the worst piece of modern design ever: The CD jewel case. I even LOOK at one sideways and it either cracks or the little arm snaps off. I am not sure I have an intact one in my entire CD collection.
I realize you can buy new ones, fairly cheap, but COME ON these things have a half-life shorter than a flea’s orgasm. It’s ridiculous.
What I like are the CD’s that are wrapped so tightly that you end up wreaking the case getting it out of the cellophane, which is stronger than the actual case. I don’t think any of those idiots who use them have actually tried to open the damn things.
keith
If you want cheap (read: free) replacements, check with local radio stations, especially college radio.
When I worked in college radio, we didn’t have space in the record library to keep CDs in jewel cases, so we transferred them to little plastic sleeves. We threw those suckers away by the dozens.
The advantage of working for a record company - More jewel cases than a man could ever need for free! 
Yer pal,
Satan
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The stupid little things were designed twenty years ago. At that time it was obvious that the design was terribly flawed. Do they scrap the mold and start over? No, they spend piles of money on new molds. Customers the world over get pissed whenever they use the product, but the only option presented the consumer is miniature cardboard LP covers. Which are fine to use, but lack the “feeling of quality” of the jewel case. The record companies need something to justify charging eighteen bucks for the latest N’Sync CD.
Jump to when the first generation of molds wears out. An engineer sees this as an opportunity to redesign the product so the customers aren’t pissed off anymore. Does management approve an upgrade? No; they are perfectly happy with what they have. The old molds for the clear part get reordered.
What pisses me off is that the other half of the clamshell has been steadily modified and improved. It’s the flimsy clear part that is completely interchangeable with the original. No effort has been made to buttress the arms. The arms are still made of clear styrene, the most brittle substance on Earth.
And we haven’t even gotten to how they can only be opened one way, and you need two functioning hands to do it. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a lawsuit under the ADA. When I have my inevitable stroke I think I’ll file it.
And the trouble with those little cardboard replacement covers is, What the hell do you do with the booklet? Most of my CDS, the jazz and classical ones anyhow, come with little booklets stuffed with information on the music.
We won’t get into the fact that they’re printed one-eighth the size of the old LP jackets. As I get older and more decrepit and my eyesight deteriorates, I can foresee a huge magnifying glass sitting next to the stereo.
Two days after I bought the Dylan 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert a friend was looking at the art and dropped the jewel case onto the kitchen floor with a tremendous crash. Now I can’t open the fucking case up (into two pieces) without reliving that day, and feeling a rush of irritation with the friend…
Yeah, free replacements are easy to come by, but a tremendous amount of plastic is being wasted. Why produce something that is bound to break in normal use? Our landfills are overflowing with poorly designed cheap/free crap.
Also, the jewel cases take up a lot of space on the shelf–way more than is needed for the skinny CD and any booklet it might come with.
I could transfer my collection to some other kind of storage, but there are two problems with that. First, there is usually no place to put the booklet, as Uke mentioned. Second, half the CDs these days have no identifying info on the CD itself, so unless it is in its case, you have no clue what it is. Besides, if I buy a CD, it is not unreasonable to expect it to come in an appropriate storage container. I don’t want to have to shell out more money just to get some storage that doesn’t suck.
I transferred my entire CD collection to clear flexible plastic sleeves that hold the CD + booklet; some even hold 2 CDs + booklet(s). (The only problem is they don’t hold the “tray card,” that paper sheet sealed in the back of the jewel box; I pry open the back, pluck out the tray card and store it separately.) This system allows me to keep my entire collection in six 5 1/4" floppy-disk boxes
Several manufacturers make the sleeves. After extensive research, I went with the ones known as CD Viewpaks manufactured by Univenture of Dublin, OH. They probably have a website, but I don’t know it. Phone: 614/761-2669. They have a whole line of CD storage products. Hope it helps!
[hijack]
Hey, Satan! You work for a “record” (they’re still called that?) company? What do you do for them? You’re intelligent and articulate, so you’re obviously not in management.
[/hijack]
The won’t change the mold b/c of the record stores. I remember when CD’s came in those giant fucking Plastic things you literally had to do battle with to find a Cd in there. I was told they did that to make the CD’s harder to shoplift. But when they made the switch to selling CD’s in just jewel cases alone, lots of stores got pissed b/c they had to redesign their shelving systems entirely, blah blah blah.
You can easily make an improved jewel case designed to match the old one in every way, except it wouldn’t break so easily. No need to make it bigger; just make it better.
Remove wretched shrink wrap:
Scrape the edge of the case on a sharp edge such as a door or square countertop. Ater a half dozen or so strokes the plastic should be frayed and can be easily removed.
Remove the even more wretched tape on the edge of the case:
Carefully pull back one of the hinges and flip the lid up and over and pull apart the two halves (still attached by tape) at an angle. Reassemble carefully. BTW, this is how stores remove the CD’s to allow the customers to sample them at the listening bar. They simply omit the very last step by leaving the tape on and shrink wrap the case when done.
Thanks to 'lil Sis (cellgal) for showing me these tricks.
Oblio, in my quality classes these would be called fixes, not solutions. But, since none of us is in a position to implement a solution, they’ll have to do. Thanks.