Do you count non physical product that are in your streaming library as part of "your collection"?

I agree with that. What I have found in my senior citizen years, after 50 years of collecting LPs and CDs, is that my enjoyment of music is not tied to the collection of physical LPs and CDs.

 

Have you disposed of the LP's and CD's?

 

I don't know "how it fits"...it just does somehow. I collected LPs and CDs for over 50 years just to be able to listen to the music I wanted to when I wanted to, not to amass a collection of physical media. The "collection" part of it was just a by-product. I can now listen to the music I want, anytime I want, without having to buy the media. I don't understand the controversy. I think it's cool. Having said that, I don't plan to get rid of any of my physical media, I just don't feel the necessity of buying or collecting any more.

 

I do 50% entire albums, 50% song shuffle (where I'm shuffling songs from hundreds of albums at a time)

 

People wrote in the conventions of the day or the forms they chose for artistic reasons. But they prepared material for a two sided 45 minute LP or a 77 minute CD because that was a form for music in that time.

 

Something that was said yesterday nailed it- those who "collect" music identify with the collection, it becomes a deep reflection of them no different than the politics they practice or the eyeglasses they wear. What started out as a simple way for a teen to listen to some disposable pop songs has turned into thousands of spines on shelves, and instead of viewing them as a quaint piece of their childhood they've elevated it to snooty high-art. Styx was a fun band but they ain't Van Gogh.

That's the irony. Music is an aural experience. All that loud packaging designed to get it sold in Sam Goody in 1976 shouldn't be coveted, it should be discarded. The beauty of streaming from an audiophile standpoint is that it's pure- it's just about the music. And that's what the focus should be on here. The music. Not the fluff.

 

This.

I think eventually all the Neverstreamers are going to come to the same conclusion that you and I have- there is something extremely liberating about Streaming. When one no longer has to worry about the condition or location of physical objects and can have equal enjoyment from a simple speaker sitting on a shelf or a smartphone in a car, it's gamechanging. And then, after a few months, the service starts to know you and feed you new material, it's magical and that's where it goes from 'equal enjoyment' to outright superior.

Sometimes I stare at my HomePod like I did my Walkman back in the day. Like "how did they get something so small to hold so many songs". It's incredible.

 

Oh no. I have kept them. I have to figure out how to sell them as my daughter (my sole heir) wants nothing to do with them and does not want to be stuck with having to sell them when I die.

 

The point is, the long music form has been in existence for centuries.

Certainly many popular albums have just been collections of songs.

But the concept album is considered to have started with Frank Sinatra, and concept albums are still being made.

The suite or album is an enduring form.

 

I speak for myself, obviously. A huge portion of the thousands of albums I was forced to buy during the 1985-2003 CD era (because the single was abandoned and there were no downloads) featured 1 great song, 2 decent songs, and 11 songs of filler that I never listened to. I paid for a lot of bad music. I wore out skip buttons on my hardware. That's my experience. If you were fortunate enough where every album you ever purchased was 14 songs of epic artistry, that's good for you, it is not typical at all.

One of the benefits of the iTunes Music Store from 2004-2018 is that instead of buying albums we could preview and purchase only the ones we felt were keepers. With streaming, no more need to hit the skip button. Once Apple Music or Spotify learn your likes and dislikes, they simply never get played.

Commercial-free and Dud-free. That's the benefit of streaming. Discovering new songs from 40 years ago or brand new, and loving each one instantly, that's the magic of streaming.

 

Same here, though I yearn for the days when a new album from a favorite artist would come out and it was just perfect from Track 1 to Track 14. Drop the needle and it was heaven. No duds. But those days are long gone for me. As new bands emerge and my favorite bands age, they aren't coming out with 50 minutes of epic, themed symphonies. They have 1 or 2 good songs and the rest are filler.

Exactly right. And outside of a coveted few, these aren't pieces of art. These aren't important pieces of literature, opera, or drama. These are disposable ditties designed to sell for a month, drive excitement for a tour date, and be replaced by the next one a year later. I love Radiohead, but I'm not listening to Kid A all the way through, that's torture. I'll listen to the 3 tracks of merit and ignore the rest. Doesn't make me less of an audiophile. Makes me discerning.

 

I have never bought a CD that had 11 songs of filler.

Seriously, what artists are you talking about that gave you all these 11 songs of filler? Name a couple of them.

 

You realize that if you built that collection of downloads on curated playlists in iTunes that just by signing up for Apple Music they all move over and are instantly streamable on any device you own anywhere in the world, right?

My epic Psychedelic Beatles playlist has been with me since 2004, updated with the remasters in 2009. When I signed up for Apple Music last year, I hit one button, boom, that playlist is now part of Apple Music. Does it matter that the files live on the cloud instead of on a hard drive? No. Who cares where files live?

 

Since 1975, "curation" has meant two things: 1. A personal library of albums. 2. A personal library of hand-curated mixtapes.

Albums are the entire body of work as the artists see fit. Mixtapes are your personal favorites in any sequence you like.

So with Streaming, curation is those two things- Albums you've selected, Mixtapes you've made- and a third, very cool, thing- Mixtapes machine learning has created for you out of the 50 million songs available.

If you get past the cardboard and the plastic and the shelves and just get down to the music, streaming is exactly what you've had since your first cassette deck plus the bonus of having a machine that's learned your likes and dislikes suggest some new mixtapes (playlists) for you. Sure, you can curate new ones yourself, no one is stopping you. But it's very interesting to see what comes of computer support to sift through the millions of songs out there. I find they nail it and I discover a lot of new music that way.

 

I have to know I own something whether it be mp3 or AAC files, or CDs. Otherwise I ain’t got it.

 

He likes

Ed Sheeran
Taylor Swift
Maroon 5
R.E.M
Coldplay
Radiohead

Based on his posts on the other streaming threads

So it’s pretty accurate that they have 11 filler tracks per album. But I like a lot of artists whom I enjoy the whole album.

 

My son gets out my LPs and looks at the sleeves, and when one sparks his interest he listens to it on Apple Music. It's never occurred to him to actually play the record inside the sleeve.

I'm moving in six months and I'm probably going to dump everything by then, LPs to Amoeba and CDs to Goodwill. Can't decide what to do with the 75 or so Music Matters Blue Notes I have; maybe Audiogon?

 

My daughter doesn't like music. She genuinely finds it unpleasant to have to listen to any music. My father is the same way. I am glad that so many people are still passionate about collecting LPs and CDs, as that may make it possible for me to sell my collection for something, anything.

 

At the risk of directly insulting another forum member, I would add that no, you are indeed not the first to point this out. I only have one person on ignore here, and when I see a thread based on a simple question (the thread here is NOT about whether streaming is good or bad) go on for over a dozen pages and become rife with arguments that are way off the original point, I am never surprised to see that such a thread is filled with posts from that member I am ignoring. Sometimes, I unignore briefly (as I did just now, to my regret) just to see if anything has changed from my earlier impressions. I never fail to be disappointed in that regard.

On these forums, people will often have wildly different opinions about everything under the sun. And arguments will arise. But I think there is a distinction to be seen when someone is intentionally exaggerating their view, and saying things they know will be controversial here, in a dismissive, egotistic manner. Within ten seconds of un-ignoring, I saw at least three statements that were both dismissively presented and willfully offensive (relative to the subject matter), and as usual put forth opinion as incontrovertible fact. I believe this person thrives on negative attention, that somehow feeds a massive ego, because he has never seemed to ever question his own point of view of himself or anything else. Perhaps I'm being insulting here, but I am being honest about my point of view, and I understand there are others. It is the true sign of a troll that one not only takes up controversial opinions, but gleefully digs his hole deeper and deeper with greater hyperbole, because he enjoys the conflict and negativity that arises, in a way only a sociopath would. I believe the signs of this kind of behavior (which I should definitely get back to ignoring) would be clear to me, even if I generally agreed with his points of view. In the end what is going on here has absolutely nothing to with the thread topic or even streaming. It is instead, at the very least, the perverse, extended enjoyment of riling people up.

 

Mixed in between some of the more pointed comments on this thread are thoughtful discussions of the nature of music enjoyment, the nature of collecting, and specific factual topics related to streaming. I have learned a lot from this thread and find it very valuable.

In my real life, I have noticed that few people I know still buy physical media and nearly everyone I know accesses music from streaming or watching YouTube videos. Most of the people I know are casual music listeners, although some have sizable music collections purchased mostly years ago.

It is very interesting to see how the communities of audiophiles and physical music collectors have reacted to the new technology in a very different way. I find it fascinating.

 

Popular artists in the genres of pop, alternative, rap, singer-songwriter, and guitar rock between 1985-2004. For example:

Love U2. Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, fabulous albums. Their follow up's, Zooropa and Pop, they each had 3 good songs and the rest were nothing to me, what I'd call 'filler'.

Love REM. Green, Out Of Time, Automatic For the People, New Adventures In Hi-Fi, epic albums, listen to them all the way through all the time. Monster, Up, Reveal, only a handful of good songs between them, the rest mean nothing to me and are what I'd call filler.

Eminem. 3 great albums. The next 3, full of filler. Lenny Kravitz. 2 great albums. The next 3, full of filler. Oasis, Blur, Bruno Mars, Death Cab For Cutie, Counting Crows, Doves, Drake, Foo Fighters, Genesis, Interpol, Jay Z, John Mayer, Kaiser Chiefs, Kanye West, Keane, Manic Street Preachers, Maroon 5, Radiohead......about a third of their LP's are worth owning and listening to all the way through. The other two thirds, only a few songs of interest.

Hey, it happens. Not every artist knows when it's over. Just saying that iTunes Downloads allowed us not to have to pay for 14 songs. Streaming is even better, it just figures out what you like and what you don't. Apple Music in particular. It has 14 years worth of data on my plays and purchases and playlists. If there are 3 good songs on Travis' third album, Apple Music knows those are the only ones I want played.

 

In the spirit of thoughtful discussion of the nature of streaming, I will add that unlike some who have commented on this thread, I actually do not like Spotify's computer program generated personalized playlists for me all that much. I like to pick out my own music.

I also find that the playlists which Spotify picks out for me are often not very accurate about what I really like. I think that is because I listen to such a wide variety of music that Spotify's computer program can't figure out what to do with me.

For some reason if I play an album of any pop or rock music on Spotify, the Spotify playlist which follows always includes Jimi Hendrix's "Hey Joe," Crosby Stills Nash & Young's "Almost Cut My Hair," and Traffic's "Light Up or Leave Me Alone." I don't think I have ever picked out those songs on my own on Spotify. So why does Spotify's program determine that those three songs are my absolute all time favorites? They are not my all time favorites. It is odd to me.

As I said, I prefer to pick out my own music. However, I will say that when I play an album on Spotify in a genre of music which I rarely play and do not know much about, the Spotify playlist which follows is often a fascinating "greatest hits" of songs I have never heard in the genre. For example, I played a Loretta Lynn 1960s album on Spotify. I don't listen to much country music of the 1960s and don't know much about it. The Spotify playlist which followed was a revelation to a newcomer to the music, like me. It contained a variety of 1960s songs by different country greats. Some of the songs had titles which I had read before, but I had never actually heard the songs. Now that was interesting.

 

I've written and deleted a similar post a few times because I couldn't quite get the idea across as well as you did here.

In my case, I think it's because my taste in music is not very logical or consistent and I have no desire to make it so - which is what mechanical learning depends on to be effective. This is not a knock against streaming platforms, which I consider valuable research tools as well as a terrific mobile alternative to my existing music collection. But the repeated sales pitches of "never a dud" and "only hits", thanks to AI algorithms, seems aimed at someone who definitely isn't me. Too much of the time, it's the "duds" I find I am drawn to.

 

I have discovered some songs and some artists on the Spotify generated playlists which I had never heard before, and which I liked a lot. For example, I played a Buddy Guy album on Spotify, and the blues music which followed the album in the Spotify generated playlist contained some blues recorded after 2000 which I really like and had never heard. Two of the songs were by Nick Moss and the Flip Tops. Somehow I had never heard any Nick Moss in my life, and I found that I really like his music. Then there were some songs by the North Mississippi All Stars. I have one album by them, but the songs on this playlist were really good and I had never heard of the albums which they came from.

This is all very hit and miss, random, and messy! Just the way I like it. That is how I discovered a lot of the music I have ever discovered in my life, before streaming existed. I love Professor Longhair's music and had never heard any of it until I overheard a song playing in a record store years ago. I went up to the counter and said, "whoever is playing now, I want to buy some of his albums." That is what Spotify's playlists are like for me. Accidental discoveries of things I really like.

 

I agree that it's possible to deeply enjoy music without having a physical copy of it. I also find that the package that contains the physical copy of my music often enhances the artistic experience when it contains artwork, lyrics, photos, and information about the band. This stuff doesn't necessarily make the music any better but it enhances, for me, an artistic experience that transcends the music and I miss it when it isn't there.

I bet most of you have a deep association of Dark Side of the Moon or Sgt. Pepper or Physical Graffiti with the package it originally came in.