The Pros and Cons Of Streaming

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by bvb1123, Jan 12, 2019.

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  1. hEARt PhoniX

    hEARt PhoniX living musical polyamory

    Like Björk's Biophilia app or Brian Eno's Reflection or Bloom app. Yes, though ... I may find the idea exciting but have never bought such an app ...
     
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  2. Kingsley Fats

    Kingsley Fats Forum Resident

    I'm finding it hard to believe/understand that a file that has been clipped, ie. data has been lost or corrupted, can be unclipped ie.lost or corrupted data can be restored.
    From an IT point of view this seems implausible.
     
  3. danner

    danner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Birmingham, AL
    I think Adrian Belew did this a few years ago as well.
     
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  4. ShockControl

    ShockControl Bon Vivant and Raconteur!

    Location:
    Lotus Land
    If my physical LPs and CDs were abducted by aliens, I would gladly pay the monthly fee for streaming and never look back.
     
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  5. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Streaming presents no ethical dilemma for me. Technology changes business models, we've all gone through it. In my business, the journalism business internet technology completely unwound the business model that prevailed when I entered the field -- which was, for newspapers for example, classified real estate and job advertising, department store display advertising, and subscription and newsstand fees. The change drove many companies out of the business, it drove ME out of the business, but I'm not sure it was unethical for consumers to read their news for free on websites, or for advertisers or real estate agencies to take their business and move it to the likes of indeed and online MLS's. There are now many fewer journalists able to make as much money as journalists once did, but there are many more journalists publishing directly as citizen journalists and, more start up and small scale journalism businesses that are surviving, in fact, probably more journalism available to end users than ever (as is also the case with musicians, I spend $50 a year subscribing to Dave Douglas' Greenleaf Music label and platform, and there's more recorded music available to listeners than ever before in history). I don't know that this has led to less innovation or inspiration in the news business, in some ways, the opposite, it's driven the need for innovation and opened doors for these smaller scale entrepreneurial enterprises.

    The internet has made more content available to more people across the globe faster and easier (and easier to share), it's also made self-production and distribution cheap and easy, that enormous supply has driven down the price of content and the value of content creators. All of us in the business of making media, or who were in the business of making media, have had to deal with it. At least the growth of paid subscription streaming over the last three or four years has turned the recorded music industry from a shrinking one to a growing one, that creates more money which all the participants can negotiate about how to divvy up, vs. 20 years of shrinking, and zero compensation for anybody via file sharing. I'm curious, do you see an equal ethical dilemma in using an ad blocker app in a web brower? Or buying used CDs and LPs?
     
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2019
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  6. Hammerpeg

    Hammerpeg Forum Resident

    Location:
    Manitoba, Canada
    Every time I read that ability to sample being used as an argument for Spotify, I wonder why these people aren’t using YouTube for that same purpose for free.
     
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  7. Kingsley Fats

    Kingsley Fats Forum Resident

    This may be true for the 4 major labels, however, i believe that they outsource the CD duplication to a number of independently owned/run plants.
     
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  8. bvb1123

    bvb1123 Rock and Roll Martian Thread Starter

    Location:
    Cincinnati Ohio
    Because YouTube doesn't make customized playlists based on your listening habits which makes it easier to find bands that I'd have never have found just searching YouTube blind.
     
  9. egebamyasi

    egebamyasi Forum Resident

    Location:
    Worcester, MA
    I have never thought about how much an artist is compensated when buying a piece of physical media. I have no idea. Do you think the artists are getting paid for the used vinyl I bought 30 years ago?
     
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  10. bvb1123

    bvb1123 Rock and Roll Martian Thread Starter

    Location:
    Cincinnati Ohio
    No, artists do not get paid on resold media.
     
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  11. hEARt PhoniX

    hEARt PhoniX living musical polyamory

    Well, it's a bit more expensive than a record (even a high price one), but I can very clearly say one of the very, very, very best buys during 2018 was a tiny 24 bit bluetooth receiver called EarStudio by radsone.com . This is a tiny little piece of audio mastery and it has become absolutely essential gear for me. I use it to drive my beloved AKG K240studio, use their app and it's equalizer to get some nice bass up and here we dance. The great thing is that these cans are quite hard to irritate and with some selfmade EQ presets I can react to different needs.
    The Earstudio sounds awesome to me, extremely near to direct injection, no noise like we had to learn to accept while on bluetooth. They even offer you the choice to use unbalanced or balanced headphones.
    Other usecases are a receiver to uae in your car or as input to your home setup. I personally don't use neither.
    In addition to bluetooth it can also be used as an USB soundcard for your laptop/PC/mobile phone (via OTG) and it can pair two devices.
    So far I have used it with my phone and as USB soundcard and to make phonecalls.
    https://www.radsone.com/earstudio
     
  12. Kingsley Fats

    Kingsley Fats Forum Resident

    I guess this is a question directed towards bvb1123 but still relevant to everybody else.

    As pointed out the streaming services deliver almost everything ever recorded (or so we are told to believe) so how out of that vaste endless supply of music do you determine what new music you will hunt down.
    What steers you to that part of the haystack that you believe will contain the needle you are looking for.
    Streaming facilitates the listening. What stimulates the interest.
     
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  13. egebamyasi

    egebamyasi Forum Resident

    Location:
    Worcester, MA
    That's my point. By streaming one is contributing some something to the artists. The agreement between the streaming service and the record label and the artist is not something I have control over. I pay $15 a month for a family subscription to Spotify.
    This takes care of all portable music for three people. I still listen to physical media inside my house. I find most of what I need outside and in the car on Spotify. Only once did I find a song missing from an album on Spotify. It was A Little Bit Of Bad by NRBQ. That must be a publishing thing with Al Anderson. It made my "definitive" NRBQ playlist incomplete. If an actual album I want is unavailable then I'll seek it out elsewhere. I love streaming. I can't believe I spent all that time and money downloading files. I never use any of them except the rare ones that can't be found in any other format. I will probably never use my iPod classic again. It was pretty cool at the time though.
     
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  14. bvb1123

    bvb1123 Rock and Roll Martian Thread Starter

    Location:
    Cincinnati Ohio
    When you open a Spotify account you pick like 10 artists as favorites and Spotify will suggest playlists with those acts and acts with a similar sound. And the more bands you add to playlists you make for yourself the more varied artists Spotify suggests to you.
     
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  15. plextor

    plextor Forum Resident

    It's not perfect but izotope de clipping tool work wonders. Visually the wave form looks normal afterwards and DR tests can go from DR8 to DR12 after adjustments.

    To the ear it sounds much better, brings out details in the back ground and is not fatiguing. To me after years of doing this it has been well worth the time to manually declip any CDs or digital music I collect that is a victim of the loudness wars.
     
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  16. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    These platforms, btw, don't come close to delivering almost everything ever recorded. There's lots of older stuff that's not up on these streaming platforms, there are companies that don't put their releases at all -- new or old -- on streaming platforms (there of course also are releases for which no physical media exists).

    But in terms of discovery, for me, it's the same things that always drove my discovery of new music -- professional reviews in publications, word of mouth from friends and forums like this one, radio airplay. I personally haven't found the recommendation engines of any of the streaming platforms all that useful. They're just mostly based on an "others who like X also liked Y" type of calculation which has never produced great results for me and which doesn't really factor in what music you might already know about. But others have found these very useful.
     
  17. Collapsed Lung

    Collapsed Lung Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York, NY
    Ah yes, the old "something is better than nothing" argument: a rhetorical device that works fine in theory, but when you're getting a check for six cents instead of six hundred dollars, kinda seems silly.

    I'm a musician, so I can't claim to know the economic models of websites, but I certainly have a paid subscription to my local newspaper. I do my best to make sure content creators are reasonably compensated.

    I think of streaming as being akin to used CDs and LPs: A great discovery tool. Of course, used LPs and CDs have the added benefit of supporting local record stores, who do so much for communities, as mentioned previously. Streaming has its place in a larger economy, but when it is the ONLY means of music transmission, artists, labels, and retailers all suffer. It's a piece of the pie, but if it's the whole pizza, nobody eats well.
     
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  18. Kingsley Fats

    Kingsley Fats Forum Resident

    All you say is more than likely true. The wave files may appear "normal" once again & the DR once again expanded back to it's original range. Your listening enjoyment restored to how it was before , however, what you have ended up with has not replaced or uncorrupted the data that was removed/destroyed from the original source. What you have ended up with is an enhanced digital equivilant to a 3rd generation analogue tape. Data loss has occurred.
     
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  19. danner

    danner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Birmingham, AL
    I still rely on the same word-of-mouth, music blogs, and whatnot that I did before streaming was a thing. The weekly Discover playlists on Spotify are a nice addition too, but I think all the Christmas music I played last month did some strange things to my "taste" algorithm.
     
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  20. bvb1123

    bvb1123 Rock and Roll Martian Thread Starter

    Location:
    Cincinnati Ohio
    I must be lucky because I'd say out of every 40 song Discover playlist Spotify makes for me I really like about 7 or 8. Sure, not perfect by any means but definitely very helpful.
     
  21. Kingsley Fats

    Kingsley Fats Forum Resident

    Is that the only way that you discover new music. ?
     
  22. crp207

    crp207 Forum Resident

    I have 4000 cds and lps.. I stream 95 percent of the time, even if I own the album. I wish they would a implement more expensive pricing structure with the proceeds going directly to the artist. I’d be happy with paying $30 a month if it meant support for the folks I admire.
     
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  23. hEARt PhoniX

    hEARt PhoniX living musical polyamory

    And another post, on another topic.
    Yes, I do love streaming, I am a happy Spotify subscriber. The most recent acquisition I was seduced to buy because I grew accostumed to it via Spotify exposure is Brian Eno's Music For Exhibitions. The box literally arrived yesterday. It's great, one of the high points of 2018, and there were a few. Even though I almost forgot about it due to that vast amount of music, but thanks to it's availability (to me as a subscriber) ...

    Though I do treasure my personal collection and am extending and expandig. I too have seen things being taken offline and return later (or not), so buying still is essential for the essentials. :) We have also taken the time and effort to rip all those CDs securely as flac files and built a personal music share of nearly 1TB (including the downloads I bought either from bandcamp.com (a lot!) or Qobuz (a few). I threw an Ampache - Music Streaming Server above that folder and built our personal "Spotify" that way. It's a pleasure to connect to my collection and have it at my fingertips even when I am not home via web access.
    Plus I rotate a lot of albums through my phone's storage space as original flac to have music at hand even when I have got no connection.
    So to me: clearly streaming yes, I do it a lot, including using my selfmade private streaming service which streams the flacs directly through a WiFi connection and downscaled to mp3 when accessing it from the outside on the go.
     
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2019
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  24. Old Zorki II

    Old Zorki II Storm Watcher

    Location:
    near Tampa, FL
    And yet some algorithms do exist... Perhaps not to the point of full recovery, but still.. Lots of discussions on the subject, some are too complicated for my old brain. Often the reason is not make completely "original uncomperssed" -but rather more palable for listening.
    Just like SweetVinyl Sugarbox - click removal on the fly...
     
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  25. jmrife

    jmrife Wife. Kids. Grandkids. Dog. Music.

    Location:
    Wheat Ridge, CO
    I ripped all my CDs to FLAC; I paid to have my SACDs/DVD-As/BluRay to FLAC; I signed up for Tidal (new music every week) with a veteran's discount. My roon account provides all the cover art/credits etc I will ever need and seamlessly integrates Tidal; Qobuz is on the horizon. I am playing thru a pre/pro and power amp which provide clean 2.0 and 5.1 playback.

    Now, I understand that artists are not treated fairly by the streamers. Get Better Lawyers. My subscribing and downloading (or not) will make zero difference in their compensation. Litigate. I support your cause.

    For me, personally, quality hi-res streaming with couched up iPad control is wonderful.

    Cons? Having to sift through four pages of complaints about the process.:whistle:
     
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