I was going to say it, but Doofy beat me to it, that local records stores still do a lot for CD sales, though they are hard to find and nonexistant in some areas. I've lived in Dallas for just over 3 months and have sadly yet to make the trek to Good Records. Having a car with a CD player also makes me appreciate CDs a bit more, than not too long ago when I had a car with a tape deck.
So file sharing is not legal, but what about cd sharing? If a group of people listed their cd's and did 1:1 swaps that should be allowable. What do you think counselor?
I've thought about doing it a number of times. A number of the bigger CD stores around me have all shut down - including a pretty good used one. It's been a while since I've been able to head to Tunes in Hoboken and sadly I have still never made it to Princeton Record Exchange.
Somehow I've just got to get rid of the crate in my basement.
Apropos of nothing, a few days ago I tried visiting Google Play Music in my hotel room in Kyiv. It correctly detected my location and showed me the Ukrainian interface and prices, which given current exchange rates works out at $1-$2 US per album. But you have to log in to purchase, and of course as soon as I logged in it showed me US prices.
It's an interesting feature of digital boundary protection that whereas I can legitimately buy a physical CD in Kyiv and bring it back to the US, I am not allowed to do the same with a download of the same music, and that the digital protections are not actually based on where I am purchasing, but on where I live. That's a new thing compared to pre-digital shopping abroad.
It's interesting as well that this works differently for other media - I was able to watch four episodes of The Expanse on Netflix in Kyiv, but the series is not available on Netflix in the US - so in that instance I was able to watch because of where I was and not because of where I live, though of course I did pay for it where I live.
It all makes some kind of sense, but it's interesting.
I won a battle to get CD's back into my local library after a refit, its now well used and well stocked out, i.e. the new Flaming Lips was in the racks 2 days after it came out. I still buy CD's as well and our local charity shops have bargains in them. The only problem I now have is one of my friends can get in them on a Monday morning and get the pick of the best items. I love my CD collection, every day I still go to it and pick out something from the racks. As I said before I want to own music, not rent it
I still bristle at the characterization of "renting music". That may have applied in some brief "buy but only while subscribed" period of offerings, but now we pretty much have two modes: owning and streaming. Streaming cannot be described as "renting" - it's just on-demand listening - it's either available to listen to at request time or not. That has no relationship to the concept of "renting".
I don't know, I think your last sentence at least is overstated. Renting an apartment means paying a monthly fee for on-demand use of the space, and that when you stop paying you have to stop using it. Using Spotify et al means paying a monthly fee for on-demand use of their music library and when you stop paying you have to stop using it. You are quite right that there is no reason not to do both, bit it seems a stretch to say the two concepts have no relationship, even granting the perfectly true point that streaming does not have to be thought of as a mutually exclusive alternative to owning.
I agree, streaming and owning have different functions, and I use both. But I also know people who have adopted streaming as a replacement for owning, and while that is maybe fine for them and to each their own (though perhaps not ideal for artists), that's when the line "I want to own my favorite music not rent it" seems relevant to the reasons some of us have for not wanting to go that far or for wanting to focus mainly on purchasing. It's not necessarily a denigration of the separate value of streaming, but can be just a way of saying that there is music I want control over even if/when Spotify et al finally go belly up (which seems a reasonable analogy to wanting to live in a location even if the landlord sells the property for redevelopment).
I won a battle to get CD's back into my local library after a refit, its now well used and well stocked out, i.e. the new Flaming Lips was in the racks 2 days after it came out. I still buy CD's as well and our local charity shops have bargains in them. The only problem I now have is one of my friends can get in them on a Monday morning and get the pick of the best items. I love my CD collection, every day I still go to it and pick out something from the racks. As I said before I want to own music, not rent it
I have two different library systems in Houston, the city of Houston, and then Harris county, where the city and suburbs reside. The former is all about CDs with a large inventory and selection, while the latter doesn't seem to buy CDS often with no way to suggest a purchase and they use some of the various difficult to use streaming services instead.
I just got Taylor Ho Bynum's Plustet on cd; I wanted it from Jonah's list and I had Amazon monies from Christmas, and the cd was just a little more than the Bandcamp dl so I got it and have been really enjoying it in the car.
Just got a Spontaneous Music Ensemble set in the mail too.
Just went to the used music store and got a Flaming Lips CD too.
So yeah, I still like my antiquated plastic!
I find more and more that some things I just enjoy more on cd in my car, while others I like better on iPods with headphones.
I just can't enjoy streaming. I always listen with headphones, except in the car. I have a limited data plan and no wifi at work/ can't use my work computer for music. And trying to stream at home from my phone I find that sometimes the wifi cuts out on me and I lose my place.
I do like streaming services that let you download as long as you're logged in; if I log into my wife's account on Amazon I can download prime music. But anything I really like I end up wanting to buy anyway.
For me, the problem of owning is that it takes up space. If you're surrounded by all of the various formats, it can get a bit claustrophobic, so even tho I'm a bit more in favour of ownership, it's ownership in the form of archived hard drives and the occasional special packaging of recordings. I've never paid "rent" for Spotify because the times I've listened have never grabbed me enough to look forward to listening again. Maybe if they had a random button, I'd consider it more often. There is an online random Spotify button that someone provides, but you have to click the button after each tune - and "Forgotify" has been fun when I've used it, but, again, I've never paid for any of this. I have so much stuff here to listen to - plus all those links to things that all you guys and gals provide, it becomes rather overwhelming. Music collection as bonsai: watch it grow as you occasionally shape it by trimming it back.
I have a friend who lives near Syracuse who rips CDs and then tosses them out. I'm sure he hears from other friends who would like those to be sent to them.
Always in favor of owning (10,000+ and counting plus lost more digital). Also love my local library system. I use it to update old and scratched LPs and try new things I wouldn't ordinarily buy. So much music ..... so little time. Cheers!
Nice concept - I just never seem to "trim back". I did, however, just get rid of an old stereo receiver that hasn't worked for over a decade - does that count???
You might reach that point some day. Mine's in the 5 figures too - and high sixes in the digital realm helps (as well as eBay) alleviate the mental weight of having to deal with it all. After the age of 50, eBay began looking pretty fine - especially with the addition of special "iSale" software to move things along.
My CD collection is 4 towers downstairs, 2 upstairs, loads of boxes of CD's and then the digital collections. I still love that feeling when I look through the collection and find something I forgot I had and want to play
Gp, my comments about "renting" were in trying to compare apples to apples - the idea of "owning" vs "renting", say, a single album. Streaming subscriptions are leasing access to a large library. It simply makes no sense to me to stream album X and say "oh, I'm renting album X right now". If you want to say "I'm renting access to a gigantic music library", then ok, I'm fine with that usage, though don't think it helps make the point Lowlife had in mind about the endowment effect. In other words, I don't think you can meaningfully contrast the phrase "renting" with "owning" in the context of the access working today.
Lots to follow up here. I too like owning the music, but I do occasionally stream, via Prime mainly, to listen to something I might or might not like to see if I want to buy it. Ideally I would buy CDs all the time, much better quality than downloading. But I wouldn't have anywhere near the amount of music I have without downloads at a price I can manage. (£8 to £10 for most non chart CDs compared to a typical £2 to £2.50 for most of my emusic downloads) However, given that much of the stuff I download I haven't played that often, maybe I would be better streaming - my answer is that perhaps a third of the time I listen to music is in the car without the ability to stream.
Alongside this is the statistic that in December more LPs were sold in the UK than CDs. I did hear though that perhaps half will never be played! That is a whole discussion in itself....
Libraries is an interesting one too. Our County library system stopped CDs two years or so ago. At the time I represented the Church of England on the County Council Committee responsible for education, which include libraries. I asked why this had happened. The response I eventually got was that it was not cost effective with many CDs not being taken out enough to recoup costs, alongside the fact that selling off the existing stock would raise funds for new books - our libraries are expected to raise half their funds through money raising means, such as fines, renting DVDs etc.
a third of the time I listen to music is in the car without the ability to stream.
Recently, I rented a car. Bringing along a collection of 10 discs with random tracks, I was all ready ... until I realised that there was no CD player to be found (!) Luckily, I had my wife's old iPod Touch with tunes that I had put on there years ago for her enjoyment. When I returned the car, the young girl who was at the check-in heard my story. She had this look of "CD player? Why would you expect an old relic like that?"
I have got a CD player in my car but it is not that accessible (in the glove box) but i can play music from my iPod or iPhone with complete control. so I use that
Gp, my comments about "renting" were in trying to compare apples to apples - the idea of "owning" vs "renting", say, a single album.
Ah, understood. Though I can understand how streaming can feel like that to a person (like me, or maybe lowlife, I don't know) who basically does not do playlists and random listening but is still very album-centric. In practice, in some alternate universe in which I gave up purchasing and streamed-only, I would likely still focus my listening heavily on a certain range of specific albums (the size of the music library wold be pragmatically less relevant - I don't want to listen to all of their music), and I would be paying a monthly fee to do so, and then if I stopped paying/the service stopped existing they would stop being available to me, and I would have no residue with which to enjoy the endowment effect; all of which is an admittedly loose analogy to renting. (Of course, at another level there is some similarity with owning - if electricity becomes unavailable I will not really own any of my music.)
But I agree with your broader drift: streaming is paid access, the album is not the most relevant unit - at least for average streaming behaviors, and it need not replace owning but supplements it.
I have got a CD player in my car but it is not that accessible (in the glove box) but i can play music from my iPod or iPhone with complete control. so I use that
I have both a 6-disc changer built-in and a cassette player. There's also the option of using an iPod, but I have to use one of those cassettes that plugs into the Pod. I used to, for years, make CDs for favorite restaurants, but that's going by the wayside too. Change!
Well, I buy CDs! Largest percentage is used CDs/bargain hunting, followed by releases that aren't readily available and/or cheaper on digital (eg, ECM, Mosaic), followed by wonderful packages (eg, Numero). In all 3 categories, supporting local retailers and buying at live shows is part of the deal.
I suppose if money was no object I'd just buy CDs, but then what would I do with all those CDs? Even if I didn't prefer to "own," you just can't find all the stuff I want to listen to on streaming services.
I splurge on Amazon for cds once in a while. I also still buy enough when I visit Sounds of the Universe to be given freebies; but it's nothing like the habit I used to have, then again London is almost a desert for music shops (except for the johnny-come-lately vinyl fashionistas). Emu has largely taken over with the main exception being like Doofy buying cds from musicians at shows. Every new cd also means I get further behind in the job of a lifetime - ripping cds to FLAC ready for when I go live in a cave in The Shetlands.
It is not just London that is almost a desert for music shops not much of the rest of the UK. For my area HMV is the only store selling anything other than chart CDs. As an aside I was in my local Tesco (equivalent to Walmart) yesterday and they had a display of twenty or so LPs, price ranging from £22 to £40!
Gp, a brief personal note: I very frequently shuffle my own large library, but only use streaming to play albums (primarily in an investigative mode). I never, ever shuffle when streaming. So for me the album sorta is the most relevant streaming unit.
Me too. I was wondering whether that is part of what creates the subjective feeling that using a streaming service is kind of like buying albums except not getting to keep them. But apparently not for you.
Comments
Yay! Probly the death of chain record stores has helped places like this.
My local seems to be thriving, with an endless supply of used cd's ($5 every day) and used vinyl.
I've thought about doing it a number of times. A number of the bigger CD stores around me have all shut down - including a pretty good used one. It's been a while since I've been able to head to Tunes in Hoboken and sadly I have still never made it to Princeton Record Exchange.
Somehow I've just got to get rid of the crate in my basement.
It's an interesting feature of digital boundary protection that whereas I can legitimately buy a physical CD in Kyiv and bring it back to the US, I am not allowed to do the same with a download of the same music, and that the digital protections are not actually based on where I am purchasing, but on where I live. That's a new thing compared to pre-digital shopping abroad.
It's interesting as well that this works differently for other media - I was able to watch four episodes of The Expanse on Netflix in Kyiv, but the series is not available on Netflix in the US - so in that instance I was able to watch because of where I was and not because of where I live, though of course I did pay for it where I live.
It all makes some kind of sense, but it's interesting.
I agree, streaming and owning have different functions, and I use both. But I also know people who have adopted streaming as a replacement for owning, and while that is maybe fine for them and to each their own (though perhaps not ideal for artists), that's when the line "I want to own my favorite music not rent it" seems relevant to the reasons some of us have for not wanting to go that far or for wanting to focus mainly on purchasing. It's not necessarily a denigration of the separate value of streaming, but can be just a way of saying that there is music I want control over even if/when Spotify et al finally go belly up (which seems a reasonable analogy to wanting to live in a location even if the landlord sells the property for redevelopment).
Just got a Spontaneous Music Ensemble set in the mail too.
Just went to the used music store and got a Flaming Lips CD too.
So yeah, I still like my antiquated plastic!
I find more and more that some things I just enjoy more on cd in my car, while others I like better on iPods with headphones.
I just can't enjoy streaming. I always listen with headphones, except in the car. I have a limited data plan and no wifi at work/ can't use my work computer for music. And trying to stream at home from my phone I find that sometimes the wifi cuts out on me and I lose my place.
I do like streaming services that let you download as long as you're logged in; if I log into my wife's account on Amazon I can download prime music. But anything I really like I end up wanting to buy anyway.
Wow, way longer post than I meant to...
If you're surrounded by all of the various formats,
it can get a bit claustrophobic, so even tho I'm a bit more
in favour of ownership, it's ownership in the form of archived
hard drives and the occasional special packaging of recordings.
I've never paid "rent" for Spotify because the times I've listened
have never grabbed me enough to look forward to listening again.
Maybe if they had a random button, I'd consider it more often.
There is an online random Spotify button that someone provides,
but you have to click the button after each tune - and "Forgotify"
has been fun when I've used it, but, again, I've never paid for any
of this. I have so much stuff here to listen to - plus all those links
to things that all you guys and gals provide, it becomes rather
overwhelming. Music collection as bonsai: watch it grow as you
occasionally shape it by trimming it back.
I have a friend who lives near Syracuse who rips CDs and then tosses
them out. I'm sure he hears from other friends who would like those
to be sent to them.
Mine's in the 5 figures too - and high
sixes in the digital realm helps (as well
as eBay) alleviate the mental weight of
having to deal with it all. After the age
of 50, eBay began looking pretty fine -
especially with the addition of special
"iSale" software to move things along.
Alongside this is the statistic that in December more LPs were sold in the UK than CDs. I did hear though that perhaps half will never be played! That is a whole discussion in itself....
Libraries is an interesting one too. Our County library system stopped CDs two years or so ago. At the time I represented the Church of England on the County Council Committee responsible for education, which include libraries. I asked why this had happened. The response I eventually got was that it was not cost effective with many CDs not being taken out enough to recoup costs, alongside the fact that selling off the existing stock would raise funds for new books - our libraries are expected to raise half their funds through money raising means, such as fines, renting DVDs etc.
Like amc2, a longer post than intended!
I was all ready ... until I realised that there was no CD player to be found (!) Luckily, I had my wife's old iPod Touch with tunes that I had put on there years ago for her enjoyment. When I returned the car, the young girl who was at the check-in heard my story. She had this look of "CD player? Why would you expect an old relic like that?"
But I agree with your broader drift: streaming is paid access, the album is not the most relevant unit - at least for average streaming behaviors, and it need not replace owning but supplements it.
There's also the option of using an iPod,
but I have to use one of those cassettes
that plugs into the Pod. I used to, for years,
make CDs for favorite restaurants,
but that's going by the wayside too. Change!
I suppose if money was no object I'd just buy CDs, but then what would I do with all those CDs? Even if I didn't prefer to "own," you just can't find all the stuff I want to listen to on streaming services.