Owned physical media and/or downloaded music vs streaming services.

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Price.pittsburgh, Oct 28, 2017.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. sunking101

    sunking101 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Yorkshire, England
    If this hypothetical end of streaming became reality then people could just go on Ebay or to record fairs/market stalls and buy the CD or vinyl. It wouldn't be the end of times....
     
  2. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    Oh everything...at a price. Go try to find Friday the 13th Complete Collection on bluray. Just don't forget, one arm and one leg.

    Meanwhile outside the USA where people are buying digital only, physical copies are getting much much better releases. There are a lot of people that think, oh it will just be there. Not if you don't support it.

    Streaming is killing the very thing you love because there is no accountability. We have traded fast food mentality for quality. Of course it doesn't bother me that much because those that know, know, and those that don't...will rent. ;)
     
  3. Price.pittsburgh

    Price.pittsburgh Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Florida
    I very seldom listen to my hundreds of cds any longer as I have them imported to iTunes for cloud stream or synched to my iPod which I use with an aux chord for play on systems or headphones.
    But the greatest thing for me in the stream world also relates to the physical and that's the cloud.
    Not sure about other companies but with iTunes the iCloud is a miracle worker.
    My desktop which stored my iTunes library, stopped working.
    Of course I had it backed up on an external hard drive, but before I ever had to upload my music to my laptop, which was taking the place of my desktop, the cloud brought my entire library to the laptop in seconds, unique versions and all and with the option to download every album from the cloud.
     
  4. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    I rip mine to my HD and listen on my home system...best of both worlds for as I always have my master CD to play as well...
     
    SandAndGlass likes this.
  5. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    ...they do now and sometimes even better! no need to wait! enjoy them now they won't wear out...isn't that cool?
     
  6. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    You know despite my preaching, I truly love to hear how much people enjoy music no matter how they get it. It is wonderful to have choices.

    Streaming/physical/digital....whatever.... the public decide what stays and goes and the facts are that more unique things have came to physical since the streaming craze and for that I am very happy.
     
  7. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    I have digital files going back to about 1988.
     
    Malina likes this.
  8. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    In my own memory, many people were still getting on the Internet in the early 1990s ... to do tape trees.

    Although, in corners of the web I had not yet found, people surely had already figured out ripping, burning, encoding, and whatnot. I remember my very first "anonymous download files" (a live Prince track, a Nirvana outtake, both MP3, both superseded by better versions) and the appearance of the Winamp skin onscreen as they magically played as vividly as I remember my first CD purchases (Stones, Prince, and U2, 1986) and player (a dedicated Technics deck). (Vinyl is a deep part of my DNA, preceding my knowing how to read or going to school. No way to figure that out.)

    Obviously, if Winamp was out and about when I was first getting my feet wet, others were already immersed. My earliest optical burns - which I started doing about 1995 - have all yielded their booty to me with one exception in recent years. But I follow some pretty basic rules (slow burns, quality media, jewelboxes where possible, out of sunlight, etc.)
     
  9. Solaris

    Solaris a bullet in flight

    Location:
    New Orleans, LA
    Pardon me for wading into philosophical waters, but the fixation on owning things is problematic for me. What's the line from Fight Club? "The things you own end up owning you." Or if you prefer John Lennon: "Possession is 9/10 of the problem." And a thousand Buddhist quotes if I tried. I think about this every day because as I get older I want fewer *things* in my life.

    Having said that, there are good reasons listed in this thread for physical media over streaming. The music you like not going away at the whim of a licensing agreement, the experience of looking at the artwork in your hands, better sound, etc. I personally have no desire anymore to have a large record/CD collection. Do I enjoy playing an LP from time to time? Sure do. But I can't say if objectively that's any better than the contentment and convenience of having a hard drive full of lossless music at my fingertips. Streaming is good for sampling but I have wide ranging and often odd tastes, so streaming alone isn't really going to work for me full time.
     
    HenryFly likes this.
  10. HenryFly

    HenryFly Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    This is the first thread on this topic I've truly enjoyed. Thanks for the considered, cultivated and invective-free contributions so far. I've always been a complete libertarian omnivore of musical sourcing so it's always interesting to read how other music nuts tick differently.
     
    Price.pittsburgh likes this.
  11. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    As do I, and I also have found files that don't play correctly. You haven't? Never ever had this happen? Had one just glitch out? If a CD's doesn't play, you can resurface it. A bluray or DVD is trickier, because of way more information, but on the other hand, unless there is a manufacturing error, the issue should be less because of stronger surface protection.

    A chip set and magnet by definition have a design to fail. Master tapes were different, because at least you didn't have to have the whole thing to work. If a hard drive fails in the right place, you file (s) are just gone.


    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

    I thought of that movie for sure with all this talk, as for John Lennon's quote, not for me. The more stuff I can pad around me the better. It reminds me that I am like the dog with a voracious appetite. Gotta have it for a nice amount of security. I look at it like an investment, and I have seen in many many cases that physical media retains a good amount of value. Will most of my physical media be low worth...yes. Is low worth still worth YES. But like that stray comic book, you play your cards right, the few will pay for the others in time.

    Meanwhile, unlike streaming, when I watch or listen to what I own, I am enjoying in highest quality. All I ever need, and I will get something back in the end. Streaming...it is just gone.
     
  12. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    For streaming, you need a different mindset. It's a browsing medium, where you browse for what's on the menu, rather than wanting a specific thing (which may or may not be available). Secondly, it's a service that you can sample at any time, all the time. It's fundamentally different to the ownership model that people are familiar with.
     
    bherbert, Solaris and HenryFly like this.
  13. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    You see and there you have it. Here are examples of issues I have. I know what I want, and if I don't... I like messageboards or reviewers to tell me...even magazines or just flat out advertising that is paid for by a third party....not the holding party.

    People far better and wiser know the material, so why waste time with interfaces made by bots that have no connection to true human touch. Kind of like listening to local radio DJ's that have a vested interest in their immediate community.

    Next, I have to surf past utter garbage to get what I want. Youtube is typical with this. You click on amateur reviewer....after you get through the wasted time because people don't know how to film or edit, but worse they are selling their mistakes just to get air time. What is more annoying, the bot equivalent on Netflix where the "suggestions" are about as close to my taste as the moon. And IF I do finally get to what I truly want, it will garbage quality or worse, not even accurate because there is no peer reviewed save state.

    Time is precious and I would rather seek out the heavies that put out great material than support mediocre crap that will be gone after one album because of lack of marketing or true talent.

    Of couse the irony is that I would also waste pecious time ranting about it. :laugh:

    There is good stuff on streaming, there us far better available on physical, despite interface companies trying to think they should own the content entirely and artists from advertisers to local marketers having no say so.
     
  14. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    As were movie-theater presentations and television shows for years and years. As is still true of plays, ballets, drawing-room performances, etc.
     
  15. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    Floppy disks of mine eventually were replaced with ZIP drives, then CDR's, then DVDR's and now large hard drives. But I always had the critical files backed up in some fashion. Tape backups early on and today I just have redundant hard drives as backups. If anything else, I still have old CDR backups that I probably no longer need and can probably toss. But amazingly 20 years later they all seem to work. Go figure.

    Obviously the con here is that I've had to migrate this data to larger/ more modern storage, over time. An audio CD, as a comparison, still works as-is on a modern CD player, and obviously vinyl has a few more decades on CD's. But that's not a deal-breaker for me and, in 2017, keeping cheap redundant backups are much easier than it was in the tape backup days.
     
    shaboo likes this.
  16. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    My oldest digital files were from my college days, so papers I created at the time. No real need for them anymore but, similar to a number of college books I still have in my attic I keep them around as a VM floppy image now, mainly for nostalgia reasons.

    The oldest music files than I still use go back to around 1997 - early days of Winamp most likely. Many were eventually replaced with newer CD or vinyl rips, but I still have a few files that I have never gotten a better version of. And they all still work. So far.
     
    TonyCzar likes this.
  17. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    Yeah, and that is a bummer. In lots of way, I am not completely putting down things like Youtube, because without it, I think so much more we would be lost forever. Mass distribution takes things out of people's houses without question.

    xxxxxxxxxxxx

    Gaslight,

    Oh I am not saying the world is falling in regards to old formats. Floppy discs are quite nice at keeping old papers around. Home video tape doesn't get the credit it deserves for preserving history.

    Do I say any of this replaces what top companies did to produce broadcast quality quad tapes or nowadays factory pressed blurays. Heck no. The new model of "on demand" burned copies are obscene and something I will not support, just like the rental mentality of Netflix that are trying their best to remove physical support.

    It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

    Make no mistake, your post brought back memories. I backup so much stuff, but hardly ever look back. When I do, it sure brings a smile to my face...like back when the internet was like the wild west where people would host things directly on their websites. So much creativity, there is nothing like it now. It was fun while it lasted.
     
  18. HiredGoon

    HiredGoon Forum Resident

    ... which is why I also convert my downloads to WAV files and burn to CD as just one part of my backup process. Download + physical media!

    --Geoff
     
  19. pdxway

    pdxway Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oregon, USA
    Any of you actually enjoying youtube videos in your quality home system?
     
  20. uofmtiger

    uofmtiger Forum Resident

    Location:
    Memphis, TN
    I am a Gen Xer,too. However, I prefer streaming. I can see your point, but the ability to access a majority of commercial albums in the world in seconds is something I dreamed of. I watched the Jetsons when I was a kid, so I was always wanting the tech they had.

    I do own my own large (by conventional standards) library, but music isn't about the format to me. I don't own live performances either, but I can still appreciate them.
     
    Price.pittsburgh likes this.
  21. shaboo

    shaboo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bonn, Germany
    A medium like an M-DISC should provide sufficient archival longevity for your valuable digital goods, especially combined with additional backups on HDs/SSDs.
    Apart from that, the content of a bit-identical CD-R is as much a "peer reviewed save state" as the original CD.
     
  22. shaboo

    shaboo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bonn, Germany
    Resurfacing won't help you when the reflective layer is damaged by degradation or scratches, meaning your data is lost forever.

    In contrast, when data in my music library gets corrupted, I simply restore the uncorrupted version from one of my backups.
     
  23. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    I think people are severely misunderstanding my point.

    Take Einstein publishing a theory. It made it to a physics journal under scrutiny by a standard.

    The same is true of say a record company like Capitol, putting their money up, putting an catalog number, and standing by that what has been "published" is consistent to their reputation.

    That is what I mean by peer reviewed vs Joe Schmoe

    A burned CD-R is not in the same universe. Also organic dyes are not as stable as elements like aluminum. Big difference.

    Although I have to say that BD-R's are quite excellent and far more scratch proof than CD-R's and of course the capacity that is hundreds times more.

    M-Disc's are even better of course and yes it is hard to argue against them, though quite expensive.

    And that is why I take care of optical copies. A backed up hard drive can also be lost forever simply by an environmental change. It is a magnet. Any kind of static can knock it out. The funny thing is that there are millions of instances that you don't know have changed or not.

    An M-Disc or BD-R with scratch resistance. Nope, it ain't going nowhere.

    A hard drive is powered by a motor which can and does fail too. A M-Disc, no moving part.
     
  24. shaboo

    shaboo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bonn, Germany
    That's why, for example, FLAC has a built-in MD5 checksum: to easily detect any corrupted/changed data
    There's hardly a need for scratch resistance for a medium that is exclusively used for archival purposes and thus handled only once or twice per year.
    That's the reason why you should a) keep more than one backup, and b) combine HDD/SSD with physical media like M-DISC.

    No one's expecting a HDD to last forever; of course you have to replace it at some point.
     
  25. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    I do believe in multiple backups because hard drives are cheap. But a burned disc (lets say two) is way more efficient and cheaper.

    A spindle of blurays 25gb is about 20 bucks (~1 terrabyte). A terrabyte harddrive will cost you 2 times that and is far less reliable. Each to his own, but most of this is about convenience vs the physics of what is actually more reliable for the long term. Blurays cost nothing to manufacture so they are going to get even cheaper while maintaining their reliability (again if one is afraid, burn 2 discs).

    Terrabyte blurays are around the corner. They are already at 100 gig on 4K format. While a bluray cannot compete with a dedicated server like Apple who licenses so much, who truly cares? I like that the art is split up for improvement. The Apple model is to control everything while not leaving the freedom for true growth.

    Though this is veering off, it is still about two states of mind. The owners and the renters, and neither will really go away. Though there are a lot of renters that want to believe the owners will go away, this ignores the several 100,000 years of the natural hording tendency of nature.

    Been nice chatting about this. Only time will tell.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine