Parting with CDs

Understood - to clarify: 1) I am no longer a college student and 2) I do not have enough space in my home whereby a large collection of CDs might be displayed that was in a room that could be used solely for this purpose.

So, I am an otherwise mature and responsible adult who would have to decorate and organize a home around stacks of CDs everywhere if I chose to maintain a large physical collection anywhere other than a storage locker.

I mean... no.

 

I don't understand what being a college student has to do with it. So, for you, its all about home decor and music has no place in your home decoration scheme. I get that. Everyone makes a place in their home for what they love, be it clothes, books, music, paintings, or whatever. For some people, what you call clutter IS their home decor. Your position is a bit like telling Picasso to clear out all that useless clutter and just get a copy of Photoshop already.

 

McCartney use to complain about having to pay someone to perform his own Beatles songs. Usually, royalties are split between performers and songwriters on recorded music. The Rolling Stones were advised early in their career to write their own music.

 

OK, just for grins I’ll pretend to buy into your argument about musicians not receiving their fair share for CD sales. By conceding the point that streaming may not be adequately compensating artists either you’ve unintentionally made my other point about CDs still being the best deal for consumers who want quality music at their fingertips.

How’s that, you may ask? Simple. As an advocate for streaming you’re not only ignoring the wishes of musicians, but also ignoring consumer displeasure at being nickel and dimed to death. Streaming services are on coarse to monopolize the listening habits of the music listening public for profit. I’ll grant that it’s a clever ploy, but consumers do wise up.

Physical media provides the means for music fans to buy once, collect the music they like and listen to it as often as they like without being charged for it again, nor the risk of it going away or increasing in price. Streaming convenience has a hidden price tag beyond eating away at soul of the music consumer.

The bottom line, two wrongs don’t make a right. Turning this around, I’d rather support discount book stores, record stores and online vendors collect and pay out royalties for reselling used CDs than condone streaming services ripping off both artists AND consumers through siphoning off monthly fees as the monopolistic middle men of music controlling what we see and hear.


Cat

 

Finally someone gets it.

 

Yes, but that would solve the problem of the 'writer' because the writer would also be the artist and it's the artist that's got the Bentley while the writer has a Kia.

I recall Christina Aguilera and Britany Spears people outbidding each other for the latest song from Diane Warren back in the day, for example.

 

Who’s Britany Spears? Is she some badly spelled meta data being streamed to you? Shame you didn’t have the cover in front of you to get it right.

 

As a consumer, I was spending $23 a year on music for the last 10 years. I'd purchase and download 2 complete albums and 3 hit songs per year, that's it. The rest of my listening was from my personal library of around 20,000 songs I've purchased either as AAC files or from CD and ripped to iTunes.

The last two years, I'm spending $150 a year on a Streaming subscription. I'm still only interested in a couple of new albums and singles a year. But I'm streaming the 20,000 songs I already own as it's super-convenient, and I'm discovering a many new ones as Apple Music gets smarter and understands my tastes better. Yeah, I bought Hotel California on CD 25 years ago for $15 and, yeah, I'm paying to listen to it now, but I feel that's only right as the Eagles haven't seen a dime of my money since 1994 and they deserve it.

So that's an example of Streaming being pro-artist and pro-consumer. Artists are collecting $150 a year from me instead of $23 and I'm getting immediate, voice command access to any song or album ever made as well as the rarities in my personal collection for the cost of one decent dinner with the family. Win-win.

No one is getting ripped off except curmudgeons stuck in a CD drawer who don't understand the very technology they are so quick to condemn.

 

Not quite. The Rolling Stones were advised to write their own material so that they were both artist and songwriter. And of course, if someone covers your song, then you get an extra payday.

How 10 Major Songwriters Make Big Money
Whitney Houston got a massive payday from the Bodyguard, but it turns out that Nick Lowe also earned big from just one song. I imagine he made more money from this album than from his own releases.

 

If you already own 20,000 songs (and presumably bought them on new CDs), why would you pay to stream them? Just play them from your phone, which is essentially streaming them without having a service do that for you. Then buy the digital files of the albums/songs you want since you say it is such a minimal number of new ones. When you bought the Eagles CD 25 years ago, they didn't expect a continuous revenue stream from you. If streaming didn't exist would you rebuy Hotel California every couple of years to make sure the Eagles stay well-fed?

 

Honestly, all this talk about what the artists gets is posturing. Let's be real, I have no freaking idea how much Richard Thompson has made from me over the years. I've bought his work at gigs, from Beeswing, and Amazon. I've never known what slice of that sale price went to him.

Things are a little more transparent now, because we know what Spotify pays per play. So then we start posturing over which transaction makes the artist the most money. But you know what? The slice the artists gets isn't part of anyone's - or barely anyone's - equation when deciding to stream or not. It's all about convenience and getting things cheaply. That's it. Convenience and cheapness, I'd wager, covers 95%+ of reasons why people stream.

I think the artists cut is a red herring. How many people are going to stop streaming because a non-tier 1 artist can't make a living from Spotify income? Not many, imo. It's convenient, it's cheap, job done for most. Very few people concern themselves with the artists income at the end of the day.

I'm more concerned with their apparent desire to kill off CD, which is ridiculous, imo. But let's wait and see how the market ends up.

 

Thanks, and I'm aware of most of that. Where I'm coming from is that Joe Bonnarraoo in his video diatribe mentioned that his producers, musicians, and writers were making a tiny amount of money off of streaming.

And that may be correct, but it doesn't matter as much if the producers are being paid comfortable salaries by record companies and songwriters are being paid cash for songs by record companies before they're recorded.

 

Physical books are a reminder to me. If I buy a book and scan through it for 30 minutes, it just being close to me in the following years elicits memories of what I previously reviewed. Elicits memories and builds connections through physical proximity. Physical symbolic representations in the form of physical books connecting with the visual and tactile concrete objects themselves strengthens memories and facilitates cognitive connections. Scanning a personal bookshelf of 100 well chosen books can be very productive. Similar to physical music products. It's a synthesis of so much.

It's an investment in a fuller life and a hedge against mental and emotional deterioration. And probably curbs the onset of Alzheimer's or forgetfulness while building synapses and preserving memories. I can order food without a menu via the phone but can imagine much more and make a more satisfying decision if multiple senses are involved and actively engaged as I'm deciding what to order.

 

Great question. The answer is: Convenience, Listening Experience, and Lifestyle.

Convenience: Between my wife and kids we've got 5 iPhones, 4 iPads, 3 iPods, 4 MacBooks, 3 HomePods, and 3 Apple TVs. Before Apple Music, all of those devices needed to be physically sync'd to my physical iTunes library of 20,000 songs and some of the devices couldn't see the whole library, just the songs that I purchased via iTunes which is only about 10% of the total. Syncing and maintaining physical libraries across multiple devices is a major pain. Create a new playlist? Download a new favorite song? Have to sync it individually to all the iPhones and iPods to hear it. Apple TV has no storage, so the 3 of those need a wi-fi connection to a notebook to see those files and play them. Note that this mess is all pre-streaming. Put a non-Apple streaming service (Pandora, Spotify) and things get even worse, now you've got 3 different sources and none of them talking to each other easily if at all.

Listening Experience: Similar to what I said above, Apple Music is unique in that you can upload your entire ripped library including boots and rarities as part of the $10 monthly fee and from that moment forward the service sees all your personal files and the 45 million songs it offers as 'one' entity. And all your playlists on all your devices automatically sync across all those devices. No more physical syncing. Just add a song to a playlist and it happens instantly to them all. Doesn't matter if the song is one of your personal files or something you've never owned. They all live together in one place at the same time.

Lifestyle: All 3 of my Apple TV's act as Apple Music hubs to 3 home theater systems in different rooms and the 3 HomePod's are Apple Music smart speakers in different rooms. So its basically Sonos for a lot less money and with a lot more flexibility. I can take a HomePod speaker to a beach house, connect it to wi-fi, and have access to my library or just ask Siri to "play a week's worth of beach songs". I can rent a car in Arizona, connect to CarPlay, and have access to my library driving to Sedona. I can pack an Apple TV in my suitcase and have my library at a resort in Fiji.

So...if you've been purchasing albums and songs in iTunes and maintaining proper album art and naming conventions and custom curated playlists for the past decade you've got a big head start and a big reason to stick with Apple and join Apple Music. All of that stuff in your existing library instantly becomes available on all your devices and anything with an internet connection anywhere in the world. So I'm not actually "paying for Hotel California twice". I'm actually paying for the convenience of everything I just mentioned and for $10 it's the price of two slices of pizza to unify my library and give me unlimited access to 45 million additional songs. If the Eagles make a few bucks in the process, fine.

 

I bought myself a nice tablet in order to read books on it. A Nexus.

Anyway, long story short, I bought a hardback just this week.

 

Musicians are just hired hands. They rarely make money off sales.

 

It's what I thought, so it was strange to hear Joe Bonnham make such a big deal about them. And writers, I believe, are paid a flat fee for the song plus royalties on plays, it's not like they're all destitute. It's spin. "Waaah, we want to make a bigger piece of the recording pie". Aaah, nope. It's been this way since 1940. You knew the deal when you chose this career path. Now get back on the road and start touring, go sell some t-shirts, "artist".

 

Where is your music store opening?

 

It's only a valid argument for some. Context is everything. Why do people drive old cars and motorcycles? Just get a nice new Toyota. Who doesn't love steam trains? I'm not equating CDs with such antiquated technology but to suggest that the visceral element of owning physical media is a context that a voice command cannot replicate.

 

Exactly. Wait till the blasphemy in Ballad of John and Yoko gets beeped out, or the F-word out of Working Class Hero.

 

In a world where kids grow up watching TV shows like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones that would have been R-rated movies when I was a kid, and play first person shooter games eight hours a day, I highly doubt censoring the naughty words in 50-year-old rock songs is Big Brother’s top priority. Every modern rap hit drops the F-bomb and the N-word every five seconds. but, yeah, the thought police are going to bleep out John Lennon.

 

Keep your CD’s and try streaming. Please.

 

I use the profanity filter all the time. Makes it easier to play at a kids party.

So much of music is background sound to our lifestyles, and the cleaner the better. I don’t need my wife giving me the stink eye because an inappropriate song comes on with a bunch of 7 year olds on a water slide nearby.

 

My example was a bit facetious but the point still stands, that those with an agenda and political muscle may decide that they have a right to tell us what we can and can't hear. I read recently of how George Orwell has been bowdlerised in digital texts. Any attempts at censorship will likely be incremental and under the radar.

 

I no longer want to live on this planet.