The importance of Owning Media

[JackD201]

It was old MB to external. External to new MB Bill.

Shame. The new MBP is the best MB I've owned by far. Fast as all heck and great battery time. It seems this won't suffer from the old one's butterfly keyboard getting stuck either.

 

[BillK]

Time Machine will back up and restore downloaded music if your Library is on the drive being backed up as it just sees them as files.

 

[facten]

I still buy CDs , I only stream via youtube to listen to tracks of new albums to gauge my interest in making the CD purchase.

 

[hopkins]

Here's a recent New York Times article with a different take on the topic:

Want to Enjoy Music More? Stop Streaming It. (Published 2023)

Build a real music collection. Reintroduce intimacy to the songs you care about.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Daverich4]

Here's a recent New York Times article with a different take on the topic:

Want to Enjoy Music More? Stop Streaming It. (Published 2023)

Build a real music collection. Reintroduce intimacy to the songs you care about.

www.nytimes.com

Behind a paywall

 

[Solartiger]

I started collecting LPs 45 years ago. At some point I crossed the 3.000 mark. Then CDs, buying music I had as an LP again as a CD. All new music was bought as a CD. Grateful Dead tape trading morphed to CD-A burning. I was constantly leaching from Etree and DimeADozen At some point my collection contained nearly 10.000 CDs, with thousands of hours of Grateful Dead, Phish, Zappa, Miles Davis …

To prevent this to get out of hand and after increasing complains from my lovely wife, I first got rid of my LPs and bought a music server (Aurender). I consolidated my collection and moved a lot to digital files. I am nearly done but there are still 2.000 Phish CDs to process.

I still want every music in my collection to be mine. I have a Qobuz account with the high resolution streaming option. I stream to explore new music. What I like, I buy and download.

I am a collector after all.

 

[Ron Resnick]

I started collecting LPs 45 years ago. At some point I crossed the 3.000 mark.

I first got rid of my LPs

 

[hopkins]

Behind a paywall

Sorry about that. The jist of it is in this paragraph:

"When everyone has access to everything, nothing is stamped with the personal memories — the particulars that hold our experience of music together. I don’t need the entirety of recorded music at my fingertips. I just need the few curated albums that I cared enough about to collect. Having my own library means I can distinctly remember the context of every find, and that makes my intimacy with the songs I care about — the ones I can mentally fill in when one earbud falls out as I’m tying my shoes — feel especially rich."

I chose "ownership" in order to curate my digital collection (adding credits, liner notes, etc..), yet I am not sure I would agree with the author that ownership always enhances our "intimacy" with the songs. Personal memories can be formed by the context in which you listen to the albums. Anyway, all options are available to us, so everyone is free to do as they please.

 

[Lee]

Though it's not the majority of our listening pleasure, we do enjoy streaming. It can be very relaxing. To be clear, in this context what I mean by "streaming" refers to listening to Qobuz and Tidal, etc. I'm not here referring to streaming ripped CDs and Vinyl.

Big surprise a few weeks ago Qobuz removed many albums we really enjoy. These files appear as "greyed out" on your Playlists. I contacted Qobuz and there was no reason given. They said they are waiting on Feedback from someone who controls this area. Since then Crickets!

IMO, the streaming companies need to deal better with this issue. Some suggestions:

(1) A computer program could be written that would automatically notify us when - for whatever reason - they are removing a song or album from our Playlists.

(2) Perhaps the song they are removing is available by the same artist on a different album. IMO, they could supply a link to these other sources in their notification to us. We could press a link in our email and just add it to our Playlist. Or they could make a pop-up on their website to do the same thing.

(3) When deleted (greyed out) songs appear in your Playlists, it can effect playing the entire Playlist. At times, the Playlist goes into kind of a stall and begins repeating songs at random - at least it did for us. To repair this the greyed out songs had to be deleted from our Playlists. On our Nikki Parrot Playlists removing 5 albums of songs took about 20 minutes. Listening time was shortened. I ended just playing CDs.

Why can't this be automated for us? If Qobuz removed a song or album then they should also remove it from all our Playlists. They could transfer all these files automatically into another Non-Playable Playlist of songs. This way we could followup with them later on these songs ... and ask for them back.

This said, IMO there's no substitute for owning media. I own a lots of CDs and have just begun a vinyl collection (only 350-400 so far). While I like the numerous titles and convenience of streaming, owning media is the only way to know we will have music on demand. When we own the media, it can’t be taken away when rights run out or when it becomes unprofitable to keep in circulation. Yes, streaming is the current - ever changing - wave of the future. But we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water.

This may just be an age thing; I still like reading a real book too!

Great post Joe. I own two large music collections: 6,000+ CDs and SACDs and 5,000 LPs which I just spent a month organizing and putting MFSL Ultraclear sleeves on.

In my opinion, media ownership is the only way to go for most audiophiles for the following reasons:

1. You control the mastering purchased which is often the key determinant of sound quality with pressing quality second In the case of LPs. Also the resolution of the original recording matters as well.

2. You get artwork and notes that are almost always missing from the streaming services.

3. Nobody can take it away from you. I remember paying for Beck’s e-Pro track for my ipod many years ago and Apple deleted it and would not give it back despite my back and forth with customer service. I quit iTunes downloads at that point. Very frustrating.

 

[Lee]

Sorry about that. The jist of it is in this paragraph:

"When everyone has access to everything, nothing is stamped with the personal memories — the particulars that hold our experience of music together. I don’t need the entirety of recorded music at my fingertips. I just need the few curated albums that I cared enough about to collect. Having my own library means I can distinctly remember the context of every find, and that makes my intimacy with the songs I care about — the ones I can mentally fill in when one earbud falls out as I’m tying my shoes — feel especially rich."

I chose "ownership" in order to curate my digital collection (adding credits, liner notes, etc..), yet I am not sure I would agree with the author that ownership always enhances our "intimacy" with the songs. Personal memories can be formed by the context in which you listen to the albums. Anyway, all options are available to us, so everyone is free to do as they please.

Very well said.

I started collecting CDs from Japan in late 1982 for my Dad. In 1984 I started collecting Mofi silver discs and later gold discs then later still certain mastering engineers like Steve Hoffman, Bernie Grundman, Dennis Drake, Glenn Meadows, etc. Eventually I got into buying Classic Records Gold CDs, the most valuable CDs out there. I am still missing a few.

I remember many of the purchases because finding rare masterings was such a fun part of the journey just like finding a rare LP pressing.

I love the convenience of streaming but it’s not a journey and is therefore a bit empty feeling.

 

[hopkins]

Great post Joe. I own two large music collections: 6,000+ CDs and SACDs and 5,000 LPs which I just spent a month organizing and putting MFSL Ultraclear sleeves on.

In my opinion, media ownership is the only way to go for most audiophiles for the following reasons:

1. You control the mastering purchased which is often the key determinant of sound quality with pressing quality second In the case of LPs. Also the resolution of the original recording matters as well.

2. You get artwork and notes that are almost always missing from the streaming services.

3. Nobody can take it away from you. I remember paying for Beck’s e-Pro track for my ipod many years ago and Apple deleted it and would not give it back despite my back and forth with customer service. I quit iTunes downloads at that point. Very frustrating.

I chose ownership for the same reason. I do like the convenience of streaming in order to explore and check albums before I purchase them. There are also, surprisingly, some albums which are only available on streaming.

I would be happy to pay a premium for a streaming service that offers a large selection of albums from good quality labels only (not the many dodgy labels that are there only to increase the services' stats), with accurate credits and liner notes. But I don't see that as something that will ever happen.

There is also the issue of albums not available in digital format.

An alternative approach is to have your personal collection but share the metada/liner notes with others. One recently developed application allows to do just that:

Tonal - Collective Music Collection Building

ton.al