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

Sure it is. As long as you pay your monthly subscription you're keeping your Meatloaf. $10 from your checking account, it's Paradise By The Dashboard Light for as long as you like.

CD's erode over time. In 10 years, that copy of Bat Out Of Hell is going to be useless and the label won't be making anymore. Hello streaming.

 

For those audiophiles who won't eschew their old CD collections for streaming, a subscription to Spotify or Apple Music can be considered the best $10 audio accessory on the planet.

 

You never know how you will use Spotify. I started out using it to explore music I had never heard. But now when I am in the car I sometimes use Spotify to play old favorites that I feel like hearing, own on CD, but don't have the CD with me. Everything from "Rocks Off" and "Rip This Joint" from "Exile on Main Street" to Sun Ra songs to Duke Ellington's "70th Birthday Concert" to Muddy Waters Live at Newport to Murray Perahia plays Mozart piano concertos. Those are a few I played in the past few weeks in the car with Spotify.

I also use Spotify to explore a lot of things I don't own. I use it for everything, whatever I feel like at the moment.

One thing I really enjoy about Spotify. There seems to be one album by every major rock and jazz artist which I just never bought, and have never heard. On Spotify I can finally hear them all, very easily. It's been fun.

 

When your CD of Electric Youth gets swiped from your car, it's gone, no more Debbie Gibson.

When your smartphone is swiped from your car, you haven't lost your music. It's safely on a cloud high above the Earth. You can listen to it on any computer, phone, or tablet you like, it'll be on your smart speaker the moment you get home.

 

+1

If only they'd take the time to learn. Get a free, 3 month subscription to Apple Music and really put it through its paces, really take it seriously and embrace it. Even if they still don't like it they'd know what they're talking about. I swear, 90% of the posters here think streaming is low resolution, has commercials, doesn't allow specific songs to be requested, and sounds crappy over $20 Alexa hockey puck speakers. It's like talking to a wall.

 

Good post Gas, and I agree with almost all of it.

As far as this cray-cray fear that Apple, Amazon, and Google go out of business and streaming dies, consider the inverse though- if doomsday ever struck and streaming went away, all one needs to do is purchase the songs they've collected in their "likes" and playlists as downloads in iTunes and voila- no harm done. I don't know, maybe 40 songs I've streamed in the past year are good enough to be included in my 20,000 song download collection. So I'd just buy them and download them if that freakish occurrence ever came to fruition.

 

Streaming companies aren't in the business of taking songs away. They are in an arms race right now, just like the early days of cellphones, it's a battle to get subscribers.

And, FYI, Apple, Google, and Amazon, you know, three tiny weak companies, are using Music as a way to grow their core businesses. Apple needs streaming to avoid losing their Music Store and as a sweetener for people to stay in their gated ecosystem. Google needs streaming for the massive ad revenue through YouTube. Amazon needs streaming to power their home automation business and set themselves up for the day that they drop CD's entirely, no different than their Kindle saved their paper book business.

Point being, those companies love music as a hobby and are in the music business as a side gig to promote their bigger endeavors. The revenue is small potatoes. They can run them at a loss indefinitely. Spotify and Tidal, different story, they aren't backed by the biggest tech companies on the planet. But Apple, Google, and Amazon? LOL. This nonsense about artists vanishing really shouldn't be part of the conversation any more than the threat of an asteroid colliding with Earth and ending civilization.

 

i have maybe 1,000 CDs, a small handful of vinyl and some 15,000 (at least?) albums, singles, live, etc. that are in lossess on an external hard drive backed up to the cloud. i definitely count the digital downloads in my collection as some of that stuff was never release physically,e tc.

 

you need to read up about CD rot. if it's a commercially pressed CD, it only happens to some of the very early, wonky pressing of stuff.

 

This is a great post and a great question. The answer:

The true audiophile is in it only for the music. The fan who isn't serious about his music "collects" things like plastic discs, cardboard boxes, and coffee table books. Serious music listeners find it easy to convert to streaming because it's all about the music. Casual "collectors" put up a wall and won't consider it because they need milk crates full of disintegrating paper board in order to feel good about the experience. The new Beatles 45 box is a great example. Bunch of people looking to waste their money on songs they already own because of pretty packaging. Shelves and drawers full of reissues and coffee table books they'll read once and never again. Streamers are hardcore. Just give us the music. You can keep your memorabilia.

 

He makes up his own "facts". The only known example of "disc rot" that I know of was discs manufactured by PDO in the U.K. between 1988-93 and it was due to a manufacturing error on PDO's part.

But "facts" never get in the way of him making stuff up.

 

Stop right there. I don't know what streaming service you use or how niche your tiny collection of indie artists may be, but for the rest of us who pick the right streaming partner and enjoy somewhat mainstream bands, that comment is 100% false.

The people who run Streaming aren't concerned with the bottom line the way you think they are. AT&T doesn't care about the content on HBO. They just need it as a sweetener to give away with cellphone dataplans. T-Mobile, same thing, their interest in Netflix has nothing to do with content, it's just a giveaway with a cellphone contract. Amazon, Google, and Apple run the Streaming Music industry. It helps them sell things like smart speakers, computers, headphones, and clicks. It's not going anywhere.

 

Do people who rent air/stream really care about music? I don't think they do. I think they are superficial listeners who listen to music as "background noise" while doing the dishes. In fact the major renting/streaming proponent on this forum has stated as much. I guess when you use music as "background noise" it's ok to rent it, since if it disappears tomorrow, as it's likely to do, you won't really care, will you? Superficial listeners don't care about physical collections. They just care about filling the silence in their abode with the latest disposable pop product.

 

But if you aren't renting air, what are you doing? You have nothing to show for your monthly rental fee. You have no music collection. It's all just "air" that could disappear at any moment.

 

I have to......
I LOVE 'MASH-UPS' !
During the mash-up hey-day, I collected all my faves...
yeah, they're in my old '06 iMac...but, that's MY collection!

 

IIRC, an artist like Taylor Swift once pulled her music off of streaming. If she does that, then to my understanding I would suddenly lose access to songs of hers that I had put in my collection or library. My monthly payment to Spotify or Apple wouldn't prevent that from happening.

In contrast, if I go to Amazon Music right now and pay $1.29 and download one of her songs on MP3, then two weeks from now Swift could have a hissy fit and pull all of her songs off Amazon's MP3 website, and .... that wouldn't impact my ownership of that particular MP3 at all. It would legally be on my computer, and I would not be required to delete it or send it back to her or Amazon or whatever. It's mine, just like if I buy a copy of a CD or Cassette or LP at a record store.

To me, that's the critical difference between whether something is "mine" or not. With streaming, ultimately, you're "renting" access to the music, and it can be yanked at any time. So to me, that's not part of "my" collection the way these other things are.

 

If someone goes to a live show and wants to get an album signed by their favorite artist, but they only rent/stream music, do they have the artist sign their phone?

 

If that's your thing, sure!

 

I use Amazon music and Spotify. I've lost songs/albums by bands as big as Saxon, hypnosis sleep aids, and many an indie band. Hendrix is pretty mainstream. You're in no danger of losing him.

 

I own the largest music collection on SHF. I can post pictures of my library and everything. Even rarities like these. See?

 

That is totally 100 per cent incorrect as to me. I own over 20,000 CDs and LPs. Streaming takes my hard core music exploration and listening to an even deeper and higher level. With streaming I can explore the other 25 albums of an artist that I already own 55 albums by. If I want to explore the music of Schubert very deeply I can immediately do it with streaming. I did that earlier this year. I use streaming to explore the music of other nations which are simply not in my 20,000+ CD and LP collection. When I stream I listen with total attention, as deeply as I ever do with a CD or LP.

 

If someone only rents/streams music, and believes everyone else should also, instead of giving an LP or CD as a gift, do they give an empty box full of air?

 

That may be true for you but it seems most renters/streamers are superficial listeners with next to no attention span, who skip through most of what they listen to, which proves my theory that renters/streamers are superficial listeners who use music as "background noise."

• 24.14% likelihood of skipping to the next song in the first 5 seconds.
• 28.97% in the first 10 seconds
• 35.05% in the first 30 seconds
• 48.6% skip before the song finishes

Spotify Song Skip Rates Tell Us A Lot About Our Attention Span

 

Same here. One thing I like to do is remember some of the songs from my youth that I haven't heard since then. And I can just sing a few lines to Siri and boom, on it comes, my kids find it fun. It's awesome having the biggest music collection on SHF. There's nothing I don't own.