in hearing any new music so I never bother with it at all I'm afraid. I may sometimes listen to a M*J* compilation since they tend to be more 'historical' in nature.

Except for the Cornershop track

but cover mount CDs are the main reason I very rarely buy magazines these days. I didn’t ask for them and I don’t want them. They reek of desperation on the part of the publisher, as if the magazine’s not good enough to stand on it’s own. They just clutter up the house until I take them to charity shops. And stop telling me they’re free, they’re costed into the overall product just like everything else. Rant over.

The last cover-mount I actually listened to was an Uncut McCartney thing about 4 years ago BUT I cannot for the life of me bring myself to chuck them out. My living room is like an ant colony of freebies. The thought that there's still a brilliant Tom Waits cover or a live Jayhawks undiscovered in the morass stays my hand. Realistically, I know that they harbour more Kula Shaker than one man needs for a lifetime.

Particularly the "best of this month's new releases" ones, there's always something good on there that I haven't heard before.

When you get themed cds with other magazines, they can sometimes be great, but if I'm not interested in the theme then they'll just be dismissed, so it's a riskier proposition.

I'm happier now the Word ones come in slimmer cardboard cases, the jewel case ones do take up too much space if you get a lot of them.

and I can't bring myself to ditch them either because there'd often be an exclusive rare track amongst the sonic slurry. The themed ones could be rather fine. The cmCD I played the most was one called 1965.

I used to like Jockey Slut magazine's free CDs. They really opened my mind to new* electronica.

*Well, 'new' back then

...were Uncut's Unconditionally Guaranteed ones, which genuinely gave a flavour of what was new and current. All others are rubbish in comparison, apart from the odd MOJO blinder or themed retro disc from Uncut.

We do put an inordinate amount of time into trying to make sure that the whole thing is a good listen, which is the reason I'm indoors on a Bank Holiday with a pile of CDs. But we do know that you can't please everyone with everything, and that a CD full of stuff that's "very WORD" can be a little samey, so we try to make sure there's a bit of dance music, non-Anglo-American stuff and so on on the CDs.

We can't claim to always spot future megastars but, checking back over the past few years, here are a few artists of whom we could justifiably claim "You heard them here first": Aloe Blacc, CW Stoneking, Hollie Cook, John Grant, The Avett Brothers, Epic45, Larsen B, Gayngs, Rilo Kiley… None of them are on the MTV VMAs but they do seem to have hit the spot with a lot of readers.

It must be an impossible task though.

You ever tempted to include a nosebleed Dutch gabba track in between a tasteful Rumer and Rufus Wainwright number sometimes?

In fact, it was finding half-a-dozen of them in a local charity shop some years ago which alterted me to the existence of the magazine.

Rather than listen to them in one hit, though, I tend to put them into iTunes and have them shuffle round with other material over the course of the next few days. There are always a few tracks which get deleted after listening, but there's always at least half of each one that's both new to me and enjoyable. I've found it a great way of getting into new (for me, anyway) music, and have gone on to buy quite a few commercial CDs and downloads off the back of being introduced through the Word CDs.

Magazine in't bad either!

Inevitably, the CDs are hit and miss because they cannot encompass all musical tastes, but I have discovered a good few artists through the cover CDs.

Just lately I've been buying Songlines because their cover CDs are really varied. In that case, the CDs are better than the magazine itself. With The Word, it's the content of the magazine and the quality of the writing that keeps me coming back for more. If the CDs were stopped, it would be a shame, but nothing to stop me subscribing.

That's how I happened upon The Word, in fact.

I cannot generally stand music radio. It just annoys me, because it bears out what I have believed for some years now, that 90% of all music is crap. I won't willingly subject myself to crap music more than once.

Trouble is, how did one, in the late 1990s, get to hear good new music if one wouldn't listen to music radio? Magazine Cover CDs. They didn't cost much and you didn't have to read the attached magazine unless you wanted to, didn't have to play the CD again if it wasn't to your taste.

I was in a bit of a musical rut at the time and thought I'd give the genres I was unfamiliar with a go.
Hip-Hop, Garage, Trance, Electronica, Indie Rock, World, Jazz, Folk, Americana, Avantgarde etc. I found a little bit of stuff I liked in all of these and the usual percentage of crap. My horizons were broadened and I discovered a source of good writing, The Word.

These days I'm not so musically inquisitive so I subscribe to The Word, MOJO and Songlines and I buy Uncut, Froots, BBC Music Magazine and Classic FM magazine if the cover CD or some article within takes my fancy.
I don't buy very much music these days because I have loads of stuff already, a lot of which I'm barely familiar with if at all. What I do buy tends to be filling gaps in what/who I'm already familiar with.

I like a good cover CD and I always listen to new ones from beginning to end and copy them onto the hard drive. Sometimes, something I didn't like when I first heard it will pop up on shuffle and I'll like it enough on a second hearing to look and see what/who it is. Maybe even look for more of it, so they do still work for me.

When did we become so spoiled? When I were a lad several weeks of anticipation built up to a flexi disc single attached to the NME. Only to find out the reason why they never released that Exile On Main Street track officially.

NME cassettes? Save up the coupons and send cash to receive them. (Awfy glad I did though)

Now we're carping about the clutter they cause and the hassle of listening to them. You ungrateful shower of gits!

I've found lots of goodies through the Word CDs. Thanks for making them

While I'm here Noel Gallagher went up hugely in my estimation for the CD he compiled for Mojo the other month. Icing on the cake for me was Jungle Rock by Hank Mizell, I'd been trying to find that on CD unsuccessfully for ages

using the cover mounting glue as cement.

Hi guys

I too am a fan and feel moved occasionally to play a few suitable tracks on hospital radio- in amongst more familiar stuff. I call the show 'Music You Didn't Know You Were Going To Like'.

I stick all the Word CDs in iTunes and have a smart playlist which generates an auto playlist of 30 songs from the last 6 months which I stick on occasionally. As you might expect there's usually some I skip and some Iike. But at least I've heard them. These is a cracker on the Latitude one, can't re,ember the name, but it's a big squelchy analogue synth instrumental. And a complete dog with hideous 80s syndrums. Variety, you see.

I wish the CD had more roots/folk/country stuff but I guess that's not Word. Shame.

Load onto the iPod, listen all the way through once, and delete the songs I know full well aren't my bag and aren't going to grow on me, that's usually 4 or 5. Listen to the remainder a day or two later, delete the ones that are still a bit "meh". Repeat. By now, I'm now probably down to 4 or 5 "keepers" that I then put into a "Word Best Of 2011" playlist that I'll listen to once a week or so... I might delete the odd one or two as time goes on, but by the end of the year I have a very solid 50-or-so tracks, many of which I'll have investigated further, so job done...

The Mojo CDs appeal to me more in general as they're themed, so even though there'll probably be 3 or 4 a year I have no interest in whatsoever, most provide a cohesive hour of listening that I'll actually listen to as albums... I'll echo the praise above for the recent Noel Gallagher collection, and the Paul McCartney "Roots" CD, which although just public domain stuff, was a really nice selection. Top marks too for the Amorphous Androgynous CD (which I'd have paid real money for), and the occasional electronic CDs, which tend to be really well put together.

.....Love and Doors' CDs in 'The Times' a few years ago, it surely can't be long before the artist featured on the cover of Mojo/Uncut etc. (Dylan, Hendrix, Stones etc.) is backed up with a copy of one of their LPs on CD.

I don't plan to ever buy another Uncut with a Stones' feature.
However, if it came with a free copy of 'The Rolling Stones' or 'The Rolling Stones No. 2'.......

Some of it is not to my taste, but that's the same for us all right?

I download them then put them on CDs for the car mixed up with other stuff and see if I like them or not. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't but I've found some real faves among those CDs over the years.

Don't knock them.

PS If I was running The Word and was constantly told what a waste of time the CDs were I think I'd go into a decline. As someone said earlier, you ungrateful gits.

to be uninterested.

occasional themed CDs, I've always been under the impression that they mainly exist as a marketing opportunity for recently-signed acts.

Which may or may not be true. But anyway, with the rise of the incredibly cheap boxset, 1p CDs on amazon marketplace, the charity shop hauls, etc, there's never less than about 30 Cds stacked up waiting to be listened to, and the cmCDs are always at the bottom of the pile. That's not being ungrateful exactly. It's just I know that my ridiculous overconsumption is actually diminishing my enjoyment of music. In some ways I'd prefer it if I could only afford to buy a single vinyl album a month that I'd actually listen to properly.

All my own fault I know, but whenever I buy a magazine now with a Cd on the front I think, Christ, not another one.

Tracks from Word in iTunes at the moment. That's 3 less than a few minutes ago when I deleted all three from The Aliens which I found beyond irritating. I've put 'em all in a playlist and am working through them, out of interest like, and also cos I am in the process of looking for work which never fails to trigger all sorts of avoidance activity. Hot hits so far:

Same sky, different planet - Angel Brothers (utterly sublime instrumental)

Amadou and Miriam - La realite, and also Magosa

Draw the stars - Andreya Triana

Wait for me - Anti Atlas

VCO - The Bongolia

All absolute crackers. The search goes on.

PS - anyone know how to exclude podcasts from smart search without then including everything else?