They've been in my attic for the past 10 years experiencing extreme temperatures that would have destroyed vinyl (probably 130 degrees in the summer and freezing during the winter). So far every CD I've played has played perfectly.

> a complex and brittle laser reader

It's a very low tech thing at this point. The player I used the day I brought the disks down was $9 at Target and it worked just fine.

> the physical experience of owning and playing them was never anywhere near as pleasant as vinyl

I don't think it's that far off, especially when you factor in some of the audio advantages that the CD format has.

Vinyl is more fun though, no question about it. The format you are proposing would be even less fun. CDs have problems, but they are still (for now) the dominant format, by a factor of around 6x.