For decades, music fans’ lives revolved around physical collections such as vinyl shelves, cassette tape stacks, and the well-known zippered wallets stuffed with CDs. Charlie Wood, an Estes Park resident, is attempting to recreate the tactile experience in the digital age.
Wood, a longtime software entrepreneur originally from Texas, recently launched an app called CD Wally, available on the Apple App Store. The app allows users to browse and play albums from their Apple Music libraries in a way that mimics flipping through a physical CD wallet. The idea grew out of a simple personal frustration.
“Modern music streaming is great; you have access to everything. Literally everything ever made,” Wood said. “But when I can listen to one of a hundred million things, I am paralyzed by choice.”
Instead of endlessly scrolling through playlists and recommendations, CD Wally recreates the experience of browsing a limited collection. Users flip through virtual sleeves, view realistic disc artwork and select albums much the way they might have in the 1990s.
“I miss the feeling when I was a college kid in the nineties and you had your wallet of CDs and that was your selection,” Wood said. “You could do that or listen to the radio. I miss the feeling of constrained choice. It’s a fundamentally different experience than modern streaming apps.”
Wood brings decades of experience in the tech industry to the project. He wrote his first line of code in sixth grade and later received a computer science degree from the University of Texas at Austin.
Over the years he founded several startups and worked in enterprise software before launching Spanning Cloud Apps, a company that pioneered cloud-to-cloud backup technology. Spanning grew to about 50 employees and was acquired by EMC in 2014.
Although Wood retired from startup life about a decade ago, he has continued experimenting with software projects. He and his family moved to Estes Park from Austin about three years ago after spending years visiting the area seasonally.
“I love it. It’s the most beautiful place,” Wood said. “Every morning I wake up from my bed and go to the kitchen. It’s the best view I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Wood began developing CD Wally earlier this year using artificial intelligence coding tools that have dramatically changed the way software can be built.
“I had this idea for a visual CD wallet for a long time,” Wood said. “I approached a friend 10 years ago who was a professional iOS developer to help me make it, but he wasn’t interested. Then these AI tools came along, allowing me to create what I had been dreaming of for years.”
Wood used Claude Code, a coding tool from Anthropic, to generate much of the program’s software. He also used Google Gemini to help create and visualize interface elements before translating those designs into code.
“You have to describe what you want in words,” Wood said. “I was trying to write out the feeling of looking at a CD wallet, but it wasn’t getting it. Then Google Gemini made me a video and it was amazing. I fed that into Claude Code and worked from there.”
The first working version of the app took about two months to complete, a pace Wood said would have been dramatically slower with traditional development methods.
“In the first two weeks, it did what I estimate would have cost $350,000 if I were to pay developers,” Wood said. “It costs me about $100 a month for the tools.”
When asked if software developers should be concerned about AI taking their jobs, Wood gave this candid response.
“Yeah, I would be worried,” he said. “Now, there is a lot more to the job than just writing code, and AI cannot do everything, but it can make a single software developer more productive. If I have a ten-person team, this year I can hire one who uses AI to complete the same amount of work—you want to be that one guy who can use AI.”
Beyond nostalgia, Wood wanted to create CD Wally to express a deeper concern about how modern technology influences media consumption.
“In our modern life, so many things are decided by an algorithm,” he said. “The news you read, what you see on social media and the music you hear are all decided by an algorithm.”
By recreating a fixed “collection” of albums rather than recommending new songs constantly, CD Wally encourages users to rediscover music they already own.
“There are albums I’ve had for 30 years, but I haven’t been listening to the entire album in years,” Wood said. “The order is part of the artist’s artistic expression. We have totally lost that over the years.”
The app also focuses heavily on visual detail. Digital discs display subtle reflections and lighting effects that respond as users tilt their phones.
“Those tiny details that people might not notice are my favorite part,” Wood said.
Currently, CD Wally works only with Apple Music libraries and is available exclusively on Apple devices. Wood said adding compatibility with services such as Spotify would require significantly more development work.
“That’s the biggest question I get,” Wood said. “Right now it’s iOS only. Apple Music only. CDs only. I might do one for vinyl or cassettes and make it compatible with Spotify later, but doing that doubles my workload, and if it isn’t a hit on Apple Music, it won’t be on Spotify.”
For now, Wood considers the project an experiment. The app offers a free version and a paid upgrade, though revenue so far has been modest.
“It’s made beer money so far,” he said with a laugh. “My goal is pretty simple. If the money coming in pays for the tools I’m using to build the apps, then it’s worth it.”
Wood continues to work on multiple software experiments through his independent development studio, DGR Labs, and says “CD Wally” is evolving quickly. Even if the app remains a niche product, Wood is proud of what he has built.
“In truth, the reason I created CD Wally was that I wanted this tool for myself,” Wood said. “I wanted to relive the feeling of flipping through a wallet full of CDs and admiring the artwork on them. I began developing it, and it was like, ‘Yes. This is it.’ I had recreated the feeling I was missing.”
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