Is there any future for CDs?

[boilk]

Those services were free, to get a share of the market, but of course that isn't a sustainable business model, so at some point, money has to be earned and at that moment they want money from you, or give you advertisements. In a way it seems to be the way of operating in internetdays. First we try to get a large share of the market even if we are making losses and as soon as people are hooked to our product, we try to cover those losses by making things more expensive, taking a larger share from the businesses we work with, shower you with adds, or ask delivery-costs, depending of what kind of business we own. In the past Amazon offered free delivery if one ordered over a certain amount of money, then they asked deliverycosts and now the deliverycosts have gotten higher.

All good points, although of course, streaming services were never free from the outset. And youtube had other ways of making money initially, that didn't involve the user.

Anyways, I've said all that I have to say on the matter. Back to the viability of CDs, ha!

Neil

[JKL2000]

We're never going to win the revolution with that attitude Steve, lol.

A key point here, is that a lot of these sites, and this is in parallel with streaming services, started offering their product for years without ads, or in the case of streaming services low, loss-leader, unsustainable prices. I find that highly unethical.

And the other gigantic issue, that I'm frankly not well-versed enough in, is the legality of using ad blockers. And it seems to be a huge grey area. For example, ad blockers are not illegal in Canada, the US, Germany, etc. and that includes on youtube, as well. And yet:

"YouTube's Terms of Service do not explicitly disallow ad blocking extensions, which remain legal in the US [PDF], in Germany, and elsewhere. But the language says users may not "circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage with, or otherwise interfere with any part of the Service" – which probably includes the ads.Oct 26, 2023"

But how can one 'fraudently engage with...' something, if using it is not illegal?

I get that you are a label owner and have a more acute interest than most on these matters. And I use bandcamp to pay artists, include many on the cuneiform label, full price for their music. However, I stand by my point that the vast majority of big corporations have become so engrossed in profit and have their head so far up their asses, when it comes to consumer service and ethics vs. the bottom line, that they have gone way too far and have pushed people into pushing back. And if you think that makes me a 'whining, unrealistic shit', then so be it. My mileage very much does vary on this one.

Neil

I close my eyes when ads run, which may be illegal in some states.

[Steve F.]

We're never going to win the revolution with that attitude Steve, lol.

and you don't get something for nothing either. That's not how the world works.

NOT YMMV.

[moecurlythanu]

We're inundated with ads everywhere in everyday life. It's beyond annoying, and has reached a point where we're all learning to tune out the actual message of the ad in favor of the reaction to being interrupted. The ads have absolutely no effect at all, anymore, aside from maybe turning us off to a product that is in our face every day.

This.

When I go to a news article from my feed on my phone, and get jumped by 3 pop-up ads at once, I don't even close the ads anymore. I just close the whole page. There's nothing I need to know that badly.

And on a related tangent...Is anyone else absolutely sick of Kevin Hart? I have nothing personally against the man or his career, but talk about overexposed! You can't get away from the man if you tried! I almost expect to come home one day and find him under my bed.

[Jerjo]

Those services were free, to get a share of the market, but of course that isn't a sustainable business model, so at some point, money has to be earned and at that moment they want money from you, or give you advertisements. In a way it seems to be the way of operating in internetdays. First we try to get a large share of the market even if we are making losses and as soon as people are hooked to our product, we try to cover those losses by making things more expensive, taking a larger share from the businesses we work with, shower you with adds, or ask delivery-costs, depending of what kind of business we own. In the past Amazon offered free delivery if one ordered over a certain amount of money, then they asked deliverycosts and now the deliverycosts have gotten higher.

This business model/scam has been defined as enshittification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

[Vic2012]

We're inundated with ads everywhere in everyday life.

You can't even pump gas without some stupid commercial on the screen on the pump.

[pb2015]

You can't even pump gas without some stupid commercial on the screen on the pump.

One time for me not long ago the commercial was Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey hyping an upcoming Who tour. That was sort of fun at least.

[Scott Bails]

You can't even pump gas without some stupid commercial on the screen on the pump.

Exactly. They're everywhere. Annoying af.

[battema]

Exactly. They're everywhere. Annoying af.

Random fun fact: most gas terminals utilize a common interface. It's not marked but the 2nd button down on the right often mutes the audio (sometimes I hit every button just to be safe and to fuel my OCD lust ).

That doesn't do anything about the video of course, but I figured out a pretty cool hack where I just turn and face the other way while I pump gas

[wilcox660]

CDs are tasty. I love them. They will never leave my dome.

[yesstiles]

Reading some of these posts, I can’t imagine not only cataloguing my collection, but downloading it all onto my computer. That would be an absolutely herculean task. I have at least 10,000 LPs and CDs. I can’t imagine the time it would take to do that, let alone the time it would take away from just enjoying my collection.

[Rarebird]

Reading some of these posts, I can’t imagine not only cataloguing my collection, but downloading it all onto my computer. That would be an absolutely herculean task. I have at least 10,000 LPs and CDs. I can’t imagine the time it would take to do that, let alone the time it would take away from just enjoying my collection.

Well, I allready catalogued my collection, so now I only have to catalogue the new additions.

[battema]

Reading some of these posts, I can’t imagine not only cataloguing my collection, but downloading it all onto my computer. That would be an absolutely herculean task. I have at least 10,000 LPs and CDs. I can’t imagine the time it would take to do that, let alone the time it would take away from just enjoying my collection.

Honest answer: it was never going to be a quick weekend task, and I never treated it as such. In fact, the process has taken years. For CDs I simply grabbed "blocks" of albums at a time, typically based on a particular artist or genre that was on my mind at that point. I'd get them organized, tagged and cataloged, and then move on. I'm now at a place where my existing collection is accounted for, and I only need to address newly-obtained items (which arrive at a vastly slower frequency than previously).

Also honest: it wasn't tedious or painful for me. Rather, it became a pleasurable hobby. Not like there was a timetable; if I got weary of the exercise I simply stopped for a while. If I got a craving to listen to an artist who wasn't already digitized from my collection, I'd "get them in" and resume the process.

It also became an opportunity to revisit some less-frequented corners of my collection, reconnect with old favorites or maybe even discover a new hidden gem that was just "ok" previously.

LPs of course are trickier because you can't rip them at 8x speed into a computer. But again...that's OK. The time taken to play each record, record the audio into my computer and then tag the resulting files wasn't exactly lost time ("oh the horrors of sitting and listening to all my records over a period of months").

The end results are pretty cool TBH. Not long ago there was a thread here on PE that was asking about "all time favorite albums" from post 2010 or something like that (maybe it was "modern classics, can't recall). Anyway, it was very easy for me to quickly scan my collection by year and even genre. There were the easy obvious desert island picks but I also came across a few that had slipped just off my radar, and it was an excellent excuse to revisit and rediscover some awesome tunes. Can you do that with a wall of physical albums? Sure...but I doubt it could be done as swiftly as I did it with a cataloged digital collection. (Unless of course you don't digitize the audio but simply catalog your library in a computer...which I'd agree would give some folks their proverbial best of both worlds).

Last honesty, I have casual (not clinical) OCD and find organizing to be a bit of a relaxing/rewarding exercise (the strict medical term would be "weirdo" ). So this project has been a source of pleasure for me. That's obviously extremely subjective and YMMV.

[Man In The Mountain]

Can I ask, what is the point or reason of digitizing (ripping the files of) your entire collection? Including vinyl, which to me seems like the entire point of vinyl is the experience of playing it with a diamond needle on your turntable.

[battema]

Can I ask, what is the point or reason of digitizing (ripping the files of) your entire collection? Including vinyl, which to me seems like the entire point of vinyl is the experience of playing it with a diamond needle on your turntable.

Availability/portability: the majority of my free time to listen to music happens in transit or away from home. I take 60-90 minute walks daily and it turns out bringing my record player along really crimps my steps/minute. And fumbling with the needle on I-95 is just a smidge tricky to pull off.

While some folks like/relish the whole "experience" of picking a record, putting it on, and browsing a gatefold for 45-60 minutes....ultimately, the point is the music.

[EdWiser]

As a crazy record collector I moved on from physical media 15 years ago. I have iTunes match so I match all my physical media that included boots and live recordings. I now have all access to the whole world music. If someone talks about an artist I switch to Apple Music and search and listen to the artist in a few seconds. I star the artist for later listening.

[bigbassdrum]

We're inundated with ads everywhere in everyday life.

Ads..... and tip requests

[Man In The Mountain]

Availability/portability: I take 60-90 minute walks daily and it turns out bringing my record player along really crimps my steps/minute. And fumbling with the needle on I-95 is just a smidge tricky to pull off.

What do you take with you, an external hard-drive, files in full res? Seriously asking. I'm a jogger, I take my iPhone and really MP3's are I would need for a run, along with my a great big selection. My entire collection would not fit. Same goes for car driving.

While some folks like/relish the whole "experience" of picking a record, putting it on, and browsing a gatefold for 45-60 minutes....ultimately, the point is the music.

Not for me, good stereo equipment, format, and medium is all apart of the listening experience to enhance the music. If it's just the music, then yea, I stick it on my iPhone. Or I would lookin into streaming, which I don't.

[NogbadTheBad]

I took around 6 months to catalog my collection of >2500 albums, essentially doing it when I had spare time. It was fun. Now I'm just cataloging new additions. As everything is also on Gnosis there's a whole buy it, catalog it, listen to it sufficient times to rate to process.

[battema]

What do you take with you, an external hard-drive, files in full res? Seriously asking. I'm a jogger, I take my iPhone and really MP3's are I would need for a run, along with my a great big selection. My entire collection would not fit. Same goes for car driving.

Serious answers for serious questions then

- General: I don't bring EVERYTHING with me in my digital collection. I rotate things in and out depending on my listening tastes and the situation: for example, I don't bring a ton of deep ambient music for listening in the car (I also actually have to throttle my metal in the car because in DC traffic, that stuff really does amp up my aggression a bit ). I find that at any given time, I'm paying attention to maybe 5% of my collection, with a definite bias for newly-acquired stuff. But that 5% is frequently rotating; sometimes I'm all in for prog, other times it's metal or post rock. Or maybe it's Genesis 24/7 for a couple of weeks, and then I want nothing but Ulver for a stretch.

- Walking (closest to your jogging): I find my phone takes care of it all. The Bandcamp app lets me stream easily and probably 90% of my newer music is from BC. For older stuff or stuff that was ripped from CD or vinyl, I allocated maybe 3-5 GB of the storage on my phone and installed the free Musicolet app. Between those two, I have probably 4-6 hours of music that I can rotate through, which is more than enough to keep me happy for weeks at a time. As I get tired of certain albums, I just delete them from my phone and put others on.

- Driving: I don't like to stream too much from my phone while driving simply because I think it gets a little distracting. So I just keep a 32 GB thumb drive in my car loaded with tons of music (again, I rotate stuff in and our as my tastes change).

Regarding the whole ritual of physical vinyl: I actually do understand what you're going for, in my case it's just a different form. For example, for me the full ritual isn't the needle and sitting to listen...it's pulling up the right album for the right weather on a nice walk. For example, epic45 or Helios is a perfect match for walking under the fall trees and slightly-cooling weather. I have albums that are favorites for long road trips on a clear sunny summer day, with the right sort of energy to keep me engaged but not distracted from the road. Hell, I even get excited about loading up synthwave when I'm in Manhattan for a weekend

[Poisoned Youth]

1. Ripped my entire collection (several thousand titles) between 2007-2009. (There goes my Hoffman cred)
2. Ripped future CD purchases as I got them. (Heresy)
3. Started buying downloads eventually. (Lost my Luddite cred)
4. Got a Spotify account in 2020. (Became the Anti-Christ)

As John put it, portability and accessibility is the primary reason (and payoff). I have 100gb on my phone, some in my cloud space, and the rest on hard drives and backup discs.

With the old way, I had more music than I could ever consume, and could only do so one disc at a time. Once I went “digital”, I was rediscovering my otherwise neglected collection for years to come.

Spotify fills in the rest. I have made massive playlists prog and otherwise (a few that Meidad might envy ). And a vast majority of new releases discussed here end up on the platform. So I can listen to those that pique my interest without having to purchase the ones I am fairly certain I will only hear once (which, of course, makes me pure evil).

Having recently moved, all my CDs are in boxes and I have yet to unpack them. Considering their primary purpose was to prevent the shelves they were on from getting dusty, I have no reason to take them out. (And he was summarily kicked off PE)

[boilk]

and you don't get something for nothing either. That's not how the world works.

NOT YMMV.

I'm not asking to get something for nothing. That's not what this is about. I'm asking big corporations to not need to make 800 million a quarter, when 700 million will do. They have been, and are getting, greedier and greedier and filling sites with as many ads as they can possibly get away with, beyond what is reasonable, whether you choose to acknowledge it, or not. Would you charge $40 a CD, just because you thought that you could get away with it? No, you try and charge a fair price to make money for the artists and your label, while still being fair to the consumer.

Neil

[boilk]

Man, I can't put it any better, than Scott Bails has:

"We're inundated with ads everywhere in everyday life. It's beyond annoying, and has reached a point where we're all learning to tune out the actual message of the ad in favor of the reaction to being interrupted. The ads have absolutely no effect at all, anymore, aside from maybe turning us off to a product that is in our face every day."

Also, this perfectly stated sentiment from Moe:

"When I go to a news article from my feed on my phone, and get jumped by 3 pop-up ads at once, I don't even close the ads anymore. I just close the whole page. There's nothing I need to know that badly."

Things have gotten way out of hand, so there is no way that you can blame the consumer for pushing back.

Neil

[boilk]

Random fun fact: most gas terminals utilize a common interface. It's not marked but the 2nd button down on the right often mutes the audio (sometimes I hit every button just to be safe and to fuel my OCD lust ).

That doesn't do anything about the video of course, but I figured out a pretty cool hack where I just turn and face the other way while I pump gas

Wow, thanks for that. Beyond annoying, as you say.

Neil

[Splicer]

When it comes to ads, I agree with the sentiment that I've been utterly desensitized to them. Then again, I'm 60 years old, so the advertisers know that I'm outside the demographic their aiming for. I'm set in my buying ways already. When it comes to streaming music, I pay for the Amazon Unlimited package for my wife and me to use because hearing ads annoys me more than seeing ads. That's why my Peacock subscription (yearly) was the one with ads so I could watch all of Yellowstone and the crapload of Law & Order series. Having a commercial pop up for 60-90 seconds on the TV is less of a problem because sometimes there's a cute woman to look at or it's an occasion for me to mock the woman singing about Jardiance again.

Listening is a whole other thing. I'm in my 35th year of working in radio producing commercials. If I never hear another ad that doesn't have my voice on it it'll be too soon. The ones with me I love.