I just cleaned the lens and the inside of the lcd display on one of my MD decks: a Sony MDS-JE520 from 1999. Here’s one reason I still use the MiniDisc format today: I like to make compilations. MiniDisc forces you to interact with your music. You have to go through your record collection to select the tracks you want to record. Often, I stumble upon music I had forgotten about. Sometimes I have different versions of certain tracks, remixes or edits that I can choose. Most of the time, the lesser known tracks end up on the disc.
You can find more information about MiniDisc here. Or check out Jonathan aka vhsmemory on Youtube.