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

Hence bluray. Full resolution of Elvis entire career on 1 disc. That is a reduction of 80 or so CD's, and I could easily get more on.

 

HDD's even more so.

My entire collection of music, 38+ years now, can fit on something about the size of a small paperback book.

 

I hear the convenience, but I also look at the playing in the car option and the permanent save state and access. We are probably going in circles, but just curious, do you take the hard drive in the car or do you use thumb drive?

 

Oh I know we're probably going in circles by now. But that's OK, it's just a discussion in the end.

I can't play a Bluray in my car (does that even exist, or do you mean a portable device?). I do agree that a HDD in a car is not really feasible although I could use a phone / portable HDD combo if I put my my mind to it it. Thumb drives or phone+BT is a better option for me in the car anyway.

You want the permanent aspect of optical media, and that's fine. I don't desire that nor do I need it. Again, my collection is fluid in nature.

 

External HDD + phone would actually work, piqued my interest to see if this was feasible. Mine's a 500GB HDD but I know that there are 2TB models out there.

Below shows my phone playing an album from that HDD. Split cable for the HDD, one part to the phone of course (which has an OTG cable on it) and the other to the powerbank to actually power the external drive:

 

CDs might be almost worthless but you could still make money off of your cds and for relatively little effort. Stick to listing locally though, e.g. on craigslist or another local classified type service.

I had to get rid of about 2200 cds from our storage at work. I priced to sell at $500 for the lot, no picking, all or nothing. It was listed, sold and picked up in about 90 mins. I received quite a few replies before I took it down and a few buyers and based on my experience I probably could've got a bit more.

There are people out there still looking for large collections. The lower the price the faster the sale, but if you want to be a bit more patient you could get more than what I got out of them per cd. So, unless you have 15,000 copies of just Alanis Morissette cds you'll make some money.

 

Thanks for the positive thoughts.

 

There are exactly 2 bluray players for the car. lol Sad, yes, but true. I use it like a super CD and it is great. As for your option, I knew it was possible, just wondered if that is what you personally did.

Pleasure debating with you. There is no right or wrong answers when it comes to personal preference.

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For people wondering about CD selling options, there is always trading. You get it quick and easy and actually get more than a hard sell.

 

Buy and shelf all media.

 

I totally understand this, and that is how I felt about LPs: a nice procession in your hands.

From day one, I've never felt the same about CDs, and apart from a few signed ones, have no real affinity to them.

Yes, I still buy the (forum approved pressing!) CD, rip it losslessly with dBpoweramp, and then store them. I own the ripped files, and the backups, and the backups.

LPs, I can still read with my glasses, without additional magnification! A gatefold album is an item of beauty, a double CD, is a pile of............ plastic, or tight cardboard, the sole purpose of which appears to be to scratch, the item it is supposed to be protecting!

Most of my friends now use Spotify, or Tidal.

 

You have stated many examples of the way technology has taken over. I don't know if he was the first, but Jacques Ellul was the major force in illustrating how technology would go from being created by man to controlling man (one of the most constant themes in sci-fi). You point out one of the major factors: the ease which technology creates. Humans seem to crave easier and adopt it w/o ever considering what effects it may have beyond making something easier. I've heard it said that there's two ways to do anything: the easy way and the hard way. The only thing good about the easy way is that it's easy.

It's very ironic that as modernity has progressed and every generation gets more and more "time-saving devices," as humans we don't relax and enjoy the extra time, we actually feel more hurried.

I can't imagine anyone taking an honest look at our modern culture and not seeing how technology has made humans less social, more isolated and more distrustful; IOW, technology is having the effect of de-humanizing us. It didn't start that way, but is an inevitable consequence.

 

Sorry for the side-track.. A little more germane:

I see a pattern of youth enthusiastically embracing new tech, but as we age, our enthusiasm gradually wanes. At a certain point in our later years, we become suspicious of new tech and very critical of it. But since we are no longer the target audience, our doubts mean little. Then, we reach a point where we can no longer even understand and/or operate new tech.

I think some of the objections to streaming come from most of us being in our later years, being less accepting of new tech and more critical (i.e. recognizing what we're losing).

 

I hear all this talk about depression about having "too many" CD's, LP's, or whatever. I have way more than most quoted and I am a happy camper. I want MORE not less. When the time comes, I will sell them or not..it won't matter. Close to death, I won't care who gets them. May even give them away. Makes no difference to me. The point is that I enjoy them now and don't worry about the future. Though the future isn't as bleak for physical media as some would like to have everyone believe. Matter of fact, it isn't bleak at all.

I do think that social media has isolated simple interactions that have real meaning, and that is sad.

 

I see streaming/downloading as the perfect format for listening on ear buds. I suspect this is why I never see any music systems in any of my friends houses. I have my digital collection (CD) ripped to iTunes and synced to my phone so I can listen on the subway or at work or at the gym. It's convenient, but it's not the same. I don't know if that will make sense to anyone.

At home I have ~350 lp's (and actively gathering more) and I actually listen to the music. I sit on the couch, with a coffee or cocktail, and listen. It's a hobby - not just consumption, not just background music. And the discs themselves are a really big part of it. It's not easy to explain - even to myself!

 

That is exactly how I view my collection. I have a bigger collection than most even on this music lovers' site and owning a huge collection has never bothered me. As I get older, my favorite music has proven more and more reliable in providing me the simple pleasures in life. I feel sorry for those that get into music and suddenly decide to downsize its presence in their lives.

 

Reminds me of a Boogie Nights quote..."I'm a simple man...lollipops in my mouth...butter in my...."

I gotta tell you (and ladies and gentlemen I am not necessarily speaking about anyone here), I have taken a lot of people that have downsized as being kind of posers to begin with. Now let me elaborate on that.

I have seen people post up on youtube with their supposed massive collections, and yet I look at much of what they have bought as being littered with complete and utter swag as opposed to the value of the actual material within.

While I like a few trinkets here and there, I also value the actual art. I feel those people will be selling with great disappointment as well.

Case in point. I see these two older guys talking and surmising in a trade store and stopping and saying look at that.... The guy turns and said, oh boy, if I still collected, I would be all over that. I look up and see 3 box sets. A best of the westerns which is a collection of open sources crap budget movies, that 70's show on DVD, and The Wizard of Oz 3D bluray box set. As I am scratching my head, I then listen to the guy saying how he had box sets and sold them and didn't get much for them. Not anything in particular...just "box sets". Anyway, he says he just doesn't see the need to collect.

This is what I think of the whole situation. Baby boomers are retiring, and now that they are not collecting anymore they have decided that nothing is worth collecting, and you shouldn't either! Yeah I could go on a little more, and it isn't just baby boomers (a lot of grand children of that group get this stuff funneled into their heads constantly), but facts are facts, it is generational blindness that isn't based on real case studies that go back even further. Examples of this are the greatest generation or even the dark ages. Take it for what it is, but no the sky is not falling just because some popular trends say so.

But hey, lets all keep dreaming that Netflix is the answer...as the House of Cards teeters. I know I will continue to have my presents wrapped up and opened as opposed to thin air that is sold off as "better".

Not that I discourage anyone that supports streaming and all that. Renters are important, make no mistake. I put them in line with Joe Public that bought those upteenth Christmas compilations or Tyler Perry fart joke Madea movies. They move a lot of units, no question.

Back to the original thing. You want to sell your stuff, sell it. Nothing to feel bad about. You want more money, promote it and spend some time letting your babies go. You don't want to bother with it, there are tons of ways to just send them off and not be bothered.

Never ever could understand what the big deal. If it ever depresses you to have a lot of stuff, just maybe you didn't appreciate it all that much to begin with? With everything I have bought, I knew where I was, and why I bought it. If I didn't appreciate it or was disappointed, I trade it or sell it for an upgrade. No biggie. Most of what I have I keep watching or listening over and over again. I think I have listened to the first 10 or so KISS albums at least 100 times, likely more. All my movies, at least twice, but most are up to 10 times. Can't imagine a day where I will go..you know why do I have this? Uh no, I can honestly say On the Waterfront will likely be played well into my golden days. Just can't imagine a time where I won't get a kick out of Marlon Brando saying "....without the bird seed" or "one way ticket to..".

 

I have found that many people opposed to streaming are older, and have an almost visceral aversion to streaming, without being able to say why.

 

As they say, "walk a mile in my shoes."

You are generalizing about entire generations when individual situations differ greatly within the generations. Also, I am not reading any posts on this thread where anyone is saying that owning a collection of CDs and LPs is always bad, and that only streaming is good.

However, to give this some perspective based on my experience as a 61 year old. I do not see downsizers as posers. I have noticed that it seems to be quite common that when you are young, ages 20 to 50 let's say, and you are energetically pursuing your career, it is fairly common to buy a lot of stuff. If you are married or live with a significant other, that process is often emphasized. A nice big house, lots of furniture, décor items, clothes, jewelry, nice cars, yard or garden items, hobby items.

At some point, maybe in your 50s or 60s, you look around and say, why do we have and store all this stuff? Why do we want to have it? The children have moved out of the house. We would like to travel more. But we are still paying off some of this stuff, and our home mortgage and taxes and insurance are high. Let's have a different life, in which we stop buying stuff just because we have always bought stuff and we continue to buy stuff out of inertia. Let's cut off that buying stuff mentality. Where will we put it anyway? Let's travel or visit old friends and distant family members instead.

Also, sometimes a life event happens. You lose your job in the career you worked so hard at, and end up taking a lower paying job because not that many employers want to hire someone in their 50s or 60s. You or your significant other becomes quite ill, with a chronic or serious disease. You or your significant other is in a serious car accident or other injury causing incident. It happens, more often than someone in their 20s or 30s might think. When you are younger, you feel invincible and only lame people have those problems. Not so.

When you either decide to stop the buy stuff cycle, or you have to stop because of a job loss, illness or injury, the reality of having all the stuff really hits you. You either don't want to, or cannot, afford the bigger house with the high mortgage and taxes and insurance. You either really want to, or absolutely have to, sell your big house and move into an apartment or small, much less expensive house. Then what do you do with all the stuff? There is literally no place to store it.

What I did in this situation was to move my CD and LP collection, my book collection, and some other items, into an underground climate controlled storage area, while I moved into a small apartment. About 90 per cent of the stuff we accumulated over 30 years got sold by an antique/art/estate sale company, for depressingly low prices. The alternative was to spend a small fortune on a huge area in the storage facility while I sold thousands of items on ebay and other sites, which would have taken most of my time for over ten years. I did not want to spend my years from 60 t0 70 selling stuff on ebay and doing little else.

I will also comment that a great deal of stuff is very heavy to move, just from a physical standpoint. Moving 15,000 LPs and CDs, and a large book library, into a storage area, was quite exhausting. You can hire people to do it, but it is very expensive. Try finding good friends with a van or truck to help you move thousands of items, a whole housefull of items, and watch them have other commitments that day.

Nothing poser about all that for me.

 

I have found that many older people often have a knee-jerk reaction against "new" things- and I have seen that in myself at times. I think part of it is a natural aversion to seeing what we enjoyed/used/understood being replaced. But part of it comes from many years of seeing "new and improved" prove to be merely new- w/ no improvement and sometimes degradation.

Another factor is related to one of the points in your following message: that by a certain age, we want life to be simpler. We don't want to have to constantly learn new ways to do things we've always done pretty easily. And as technology gets entwined deeper into everyday processes, the appearance of the "ghost in the machine" rears it's head more often. I never had to reset rabbit ears b/c I lost a TV picture. I never had to reboot my turntable b/c it froze up, etc.

With all the many advances and conveniences we enjoy, my experience has been that frustrating events occur more frequently. At some point, we say "Enough! I'm happy with what I have and I don't need any more complications.

 

You make many good points (as you are wont to do IME) about factors that shape our later years. We see better the negative effects of technology and lose our blind faith in "the next big thing." We also see the futility of our materialism and seek deeper pleasures, generally centered on social rather than material goals.

Down-sizing is a must at some point in our later years- if we live long enough- unless you're very rich. This generally happens slowly at first- and naturally- when the kids leave the nest, then slowly until the big one, when we move to a smaller house/apt. or into a retirement community. This is when the futility of materialism becomes most evident, as much of the stuff we spent good money for we can't even give away- or it fetches pennies on the dollar.

 

What you have said is very true.

 

And nothing wrong with that. Where I draw the line is the ones that cry about change to the point of saying that a downsize is actually better! It is like mediocrity is applauded, and people use their greater numbers (like a whole generation) to somehow dictate what the future should be based on the "simpler" ideal.

Now this is where I get annoyed. It is like poor planning is supposed to be the rule rather than the very obvious exception. I will tackle this in the next reply.

But I do want to say, when I hit that retirement community, I want to line the walls around me to keep the annoying people away. Screw activities!

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You can't accuse me of generalizing and then go on to generalize and distort my words as if that were my ideas to begin with?

Did I saw all baby boomers? Did I say "anyone" that owns a collection of CD's or LP'S?

I am going to state again, I am not even being specific to the collectors here or the baby boomers here or anywhere else. Obviously not everyone from a generation is cut or made the same way (thank goodness).

But as for your specific experience (and I am not all that younger from you, remember Generation X ers are now in their 50's...fact).

I never said said "downsizers". I named specific examples. Please do not put this all together as if they are one and the same. Hell I have downsized, that would make me a "poser". lol

Actually I find the opposite true. If I was just "buying lots of stuff" I would lean more toward my early youth way back when I got a job at 16 and could buy anything I could get my hands on. I would call this my wreckless years akin to a lot of baby boomers who did this as adults. It is a fact that Baby Boomers had more disposable income and they so too follow that when they downsize....hence not taking the time to save/or pay for someone to actually sell their stuff if they are too lazy or incapable to do it themselves. Not judging, just pointing out some obvious examples. Give someone 10% of your earnings, instead of just giving it away, and you get the point. That and you both will make more money...if you care.

Why wait until then? I have a living breathing collection that gets shuffled, upgraded, disposed of as needed. That is difference between "collecting" and actually using. Though anymore it just keeps growing and I am fine with this. My generation has lived before the technology and after the technology. Gen X understands that despite being the most educated and racially diverse, we still don't get the most rewards or will see the most stability. The need to "downsize" comes out of necessity of every day, not just when the emergency happens. Selling stuff to survive, been there done that, bought a warehouse of T-Shirts. Made money actually, because I planned for it.

Nor should they? Again back to Gen X. The first generation that made less because baby boomers didn't retire. Not to take this to the political avenue at all, but just an explanation. Yes Walk a Mile in all of our shoes.

Some of us didn't have insurance because again...some people were permanent workers making their own wealth based on ailing countries riddled from war. If Baby Boomers had issues...make that thrice as bad for those that came after.

You see this is where we differ. I couldn't care less about swag. You could put all my entertainment in one room and the rest you can stuff. I choose to expand my mind not just collect to possess. If there was a way to just limit everything down to a few stable discs or rocks...or whatever, I would, as long as I don't lose quality. Thankfully with blurays space, it is becoming more and more possible. How much room does it take to store even 10,000 albums. Never saw the big deal in that.

Again, pay someone handsomely, and problems solved. Of course I never saw the issue with that either. I sold a large household of stuff for a friend. It took me a few weeks, but big deal. The money made was quite nice indeed. If you are spending more than a few months selling the biggest collection, than something is wrong. Shipping is so easy now. I just print out labels 50 at a time... slap it up, send it out, slap it up, send it out...yada yada.

Again more distortions. I never once said a situation like yours was "poser". I named the example and I can name hundreds more. It is the people that "collect" just to collect as opposed to enjoying what they do. If you don't prepare for the future it will eat you alive. I have sold stuff my whole life and will continue to do that. This isn't me being cocky, it is just a fact. People from my generation cannot afford to wait and see what happens. You don't get it today you will lose tomorrow. The poser is the one that cries about it, of which there are many...

 

Thank you for your thoughtful post.

 

Sorry I edited. If you could re-quote please to reflect my final version. Sorry.

Hey it is all just opinions. I see the other sides without question. Believe it or not, I really do looked forward to retirement. I really really do. I don't think I will see it though. I will keel over working in a production environment of some kind.

 

I'm unclear on your intent here. Obviously to me, downsizing is better- for some. If what you're talking about is folks who say downsizing is better for everyone, then I'd agree. Individual situations vary vastly, obviously. And I don't think down-sizing necessarily leads to mediocrity. You lose the chaff and keep the best, so overall quality is increased.

What exactly annoys you? I don't see it as poor planning. I see it as being the consumers we were created by modern society to be, then eventually seeing the folly of it.