Streaming: why is it so unsatisfying?

I am 63 years old. I love streaming and find it satisfying. I wish it had been around when I was young.

I have listened to a great deal of music which I completely love only on streaming.

 

I don't know what you're talking about. I stream music while I'm at work, and I'm satisfied.

 

Spotify is not like a library at all. A library, public or private, is curated by definition and lets you peruse the credits, handle the materials, be clear about the editions used etc. Spotify is more like a used-books yard sale you're wading through (at least one of those mercifully alphabetised ones) which was put up by the stuff owner's offspring that don't seem interested or invested in that stuff at all.

 

I have 500 records and over 1,000 CDs, but I also listen to satellite radio. I haven't jumped on the Spotify bandwagon yet, which is not to say that I won't, I just haven't yet. I am in the process of moving my digital collection to SD cards in a lossless format. I know and accept that it isn't the same experience as physical media, but I am maxed out as far as space goes, and my collection is pretty meger compared to others out there. My plan is to store my physical media away in totes and invest in a streamer that either takes SD cards or will take a USB adapter. When I buy music, I am still going to buy it physically, but my plan after the purchase is to rip it and store it. It's not the same as streaming, but I look at as my personal stream.

 

I've only got brief experience in public libraries in UK, so more as a user, but I'm pretty confident in saying that the curation going on there, generally, is about as meaningful as throwing pins at a dartboard. " let's buy this one because I've heard of that author." and "I like the look of that cover" are both phrases I've actually heard, so .... it's fine, it actually works in a weird way but let's not pretend you're looking at much other than a random selection of stuff. As a fan of graphic novels I can't tell you how often I've walked into a public library and groaned in despair at the obvious lack of knowledge and passion for the area going on behind the scenes. I still do, though I've mostly moved on ... these people absolutely have zero knowledge of what they're supposedly "curating". (NB absolutely not the case in the Barbican's CD and music library btw. Props to whoever built that up before funding ran dry and it decayed like all the rest of them)

Spotify on the other hand ... on the face of it is a jumble sale but you're ignoring the fact that it's organised if you want it to be. Literally search under any genre and you'll get playlists galore made by people who know their subjects and want to help you out. Delve into any artists catalogue and you'll get lists of related artists. Ask spotify to choose and you'll get them to play you music based on what it thinks you likes. Essentially you've got a whole lot more people with knowledge of their subject helping you out than I ever did with finding good quality graphic novels in a library.

 

Some days I thoroughly enjoy the tactile sense of putting on a record: removing the album from the stack, reading the info, looking at the art, feeling the vinyl in my hands, placing it on the turntable...just fantastic.
But man, there are other times where the simplicity of streaming from Quboz on the Squeezebox Touch is just what the doctor ordered.
(Right now I’m recovering from hip replacement so spinning vinyl is almost impossible!)

 

I feel exactly the opposite. After decades and decades of buying LPs and CDs and amassing 6 or 7 thousand of them, I find them to be kind of a burden. It's also become enormously costly to hear new music when I have to buy and hold a new piece of hard copy every time I want to hear something new.

Streaming has liberated and excited me in a way that I haven't felt about music access in 25 years. I hear more new and new to me music these days than I have since I was in my early 20s. I'm not tied to stuff I have to find room for or schlep around to listen to in the car or in the kitchen not just the music room, or get rid of if I don't care for the music. And the sound is great. The last couple of nights I've been listening to Andrew Cyrille's Labroba and Mario Pavone Dialect Trio's Philosophy and the new Ethan Iverson live at the Vanguard recording streaming from Qobuz via USB Audio Player Pro through an inexpensive V90 DAC in my home hifi, and its some of the best, most electrifying, you-are-there sound I've ever gotten out of my home hifi.

I didn't have the same experience buying downloads. I never warmed to that format. That was always a pain in the ass to me. You had to configure players, and concern yourself that the meta data was there, and correct, and in a consistent format with other meta data from other titles, and you had to move the files from one device to another if you wanted to listen to the music here or there. I only buy music via download if it's the only available or affordable way to get the music. But streaming from a service I find really fabulous. In fact, I wind up very disappointed when music I want to hear is not available on one of the streaming platforms I subscribe to, and I hear far, far less music that's only available on hard copy.

Why do you think it's not satisfying to you? Is it just because you're used to interacting with music playback in a different way? I know when personal computers were new, having a graphical metaphor -- desktop, file folders, etc -- was seemingly necessary for people to be able to more easily interact with the device. I'm not sure today's people under 30 need that kind of visual metaphor anymore.

 

I think it's a matter of your personal psychology and sensory apparatus and conditioning. Owning a CD and streaming feel like two very different experiences. I understand it perfectly. I attribute it to the fact that I grew up venerating the physical media, starting with 45 records, then LP records et cetera. When I was a kid a new LP by a good band was a thrilling thing to look at and hold, without even hearing it!

 

It's a bitch to navigate the application while driving.

 

If it's unsatisfying, it's most likely because one is so used to the whole buying-music-object paradigm that anything else seems less than satisfactory. If one has always acquired music by buying objects such as LPs, tapes and CDs, then leaving the physical object out of the experience is going to seem to make it deficient. I know this is the case for me: whenever I discover something I really like on Spotify, my first instinct is to shop for it.

Another reason might be the resolution, but I suspect that the lure of the object is the more powerful factor for those who are disappointed by streaming. And some services such as Quobuz, Tidal and Amazon HD have more than adequate sound from a technical standpoint, but I bet that doesn't solve the problem for those who are truly disappointed in streaming.

 

Someone will be along to introduce you to Siri very shortly.

 

Spotify is curated -- it offers curated playlists, it delivers information about new releases, it categorizes and catalogs the titles. You may find it's cataloging inadequate, but it's not non-existent. And there are plenty of electronic libraries where you don't physically handle any materials. Lexis will sell you access to a law library without physical materials to handle.

 

I feel that the only way to come to this conclusion is to have become brainwashed. Imagine - you feel it's different and less satisfying to have the exact same thing, until you spend extra money for that particular thing?

You need to free yourself of this incredibly silly burden.

 

I do derive personal satisfaction from buying, owning and collecting physical copies. I can't fully explain why.

Some people get personal satisfaction from amassing collections of trinkets. My wife likes little ornamental teapots.

 

Honestly, I always feel the most satisfied when I get something for free, and then in second place would be when I get it relatively cheaply. I'm not someone who likes to spend a lot of money on stuff, even if I can afford it. No matter how rich I'd be, I'd never spend (in today's dollars) $100 on a meal (and frankly, I still feel uncomfortable spending over $20 for a meal), I'd never spend much more than $100 for any single item of clothing except for some jackets (like a leather jacket, say), etc.

And now I'm also someone who doesn't like clutter at home. I've streamlined everything I can. I'd be happy if everything I needed could fit into one suitcase. It can't--especially with owning musical instruments (maybe I can switch to harmonica?), but that would be an ideal.

 

There's no question that some people derive satisfaction from owning and/or collecting and/or even the act of buying. But hearing music played back over an identical system from a streaming platform or from a CD, is pretty much identical (assuming the same master, same res file, etc.) -- the sound in the air, it's the same; you're sitting in your music room or wherever, listening, it's the same.

 

Because hitting the play button is not as satisfying as watching the neelde drop onto your favorite record.

 

Agreed, the listening experience is the same.

 

I'm not into streaming yet, but I certainly don't miss the physical product in my hand.

I was quite happy to sell off my CDs when I did, and never looked back. Same with when I sold the LPs, but for whatever reason, they hold a certain nostalgia.

 

I often think it's to do with how we evolved as a species; as hunter-gatherers, going out and getting something, bringing it home and owning it.

Grrr.

 

When high-quality DACs are standard equipment on smartphones, we'll see an upsurge of praise for streaming. Why? Because until Qobuz, Amazon HD Music, and Neil Young Archives...real sound quality was not obtainable for audiophiles.

Now it is. But my LPs still rate higher than 24/192 for SQ...............................because analog.

 

But it's not the exact same thing. The exact same thing would be two identical streaming services with different prices. Streaming, downloads, CDs and vinyl are all quite different in how the user interacts with them.

Now, the sound of a CD, 320kbps mp3, Hi-Res download or streaming service might well be identical; not disagreeing with that. But there's more to the enjoyment of music (or just about anything else) than purely its sound, its basic function.

In other words, just because driving my old banger is a perfectly sensible way for me to get around town, that doesn't mean anyone with a more stylish or high-maintenance car has an "incredibly silly burden" (or vice versa!).

 

I'm currently listening to every single Neil Young album in order of release on my Spotify Premium account. I pay about $15 a month for my family account, which my husband also uses. Every single NY album is available.

When I wanted to hear every Neil Young album when I was in high school, I would have had to purchase a copy of every single one of them on CD (this was the mid-2000s and I did not have a turntable or records). Some of them were very hard to find and cost upwards of $30. Some of them (On the Beach) were not even available on CD, and thus inaccessible to me. I would have had to spend literally hundreds of dollars to hear albums, without even knowing if I would like them or not. I didn't have any money and wouldn't have spent it on that even if I did. I obviously didn't do any of that and I remained ignorant of large swaths of the work of Young, despite wanting to hear the music very much.

Spotify sounds pretty satisfying to me. Access and affordability alone have made it a vital tool.

 

I put money over the counter of my local record emporium for new releases and reissues every week.
I listen to Spotify in my car every day.
It's the best of both worlds.

 

The music is kick@$$ or it isn't.