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>The dominance of digital and streaming services has stolen this experience from us, and we are fighting to get it back. I used to collect books. It was a big
by SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
>The dominance of digital and streaming services has stolen this experience from us, and we are fighting to get it back.
I used to collect books. It was a big part of my life.
Now I pretty much only buy books on Kindle. I almost sort-of miss buying books. But only in theory. In practice I much prefer having my current library in my pocket at all times.
Same with music. I have my entire library on my hard drive, and I can copy large portions of it onto my phone and/or the USB flash drive I keep in my pocket. I don't touch the physical CDs unless I think a rip didn't work right, and then only long enough to re-rip the music. When I buy new music I don't even get physical CDs any more.
Mix tapes? I could potentially just stick that same USB drive into a friend's computer and copy all the music he thinks I might want to try out. Many hours of music, in a few seconds of transfer. Try that on tapes.
Not that I'd do that, of course, since it would be illegal, and I certainly wouldn't post about doing illegal things on HN. :P
Playlists also do exist, and I use them. I do miss the ability to transfer a playlist to someone else -- they don't transfer very well, given their dependency on paths to the music -- but not enough to wish for tapes back into my life. Besides, when I make a playlist today, my "mix" often has many hours of music in it; I've had playlists with over 40 hours of music, and I enjoy hitting "shuffle" and listening to all the songs in a different order.
But the point is, while I believe you that "people" want do interact with physical objects, I think it is a minority of people who want that. A very small minority. Because the digital experience is just strictly better. And most people, especially people who've been stuck using tapes because they were the only option at the time, realize that tapes in fact suck.
- guitarbill 10y ago> In practice I much prefer having my current library in my pocket at all times. This. Once I got a Kindle, I actually read more. Because you know it's convenient and has a build in light. Spotify let's you publish/share playlists, so that's also sorted. The only issue I have is that you don't really own anything. I just de-DRM Kindle books and assume that the availability of songs I like to listen to will increase in the future because royalties will cost less for older songs. Who knows what I'll be listening to in 10 years time? I'd also say not having a collection of <x> as a proxy for <personality trait y> has made my house more welcoming, less pretentious and makes moving easy. Not saying that you can't have a collection for pure enjoyment, or that everybody who has one is compensating, but if you think your collections "says something about you", it probably does but not in the way you want.
- Paul_S 10y agoBuild NAS, run mpd.
- SomeCallMeTim 10y agoI've been on Pandora forever, but not Spotify. Maybe I should defect.
- boobsbr 10y ago> I used to collect books. It was a big part of my life. I used to collect stamps, comics, books, CDs, video games. I believe it's was a compulsive behavior of mine. Then I had to move to another city and leave all of it behind, stored in my parents' house. Then I started collecting digital music to replace my physical library, and had tons of music I never listened to. One day my external drive crashed and I lost it all. I then realised collecting physical and digital stuff was hampering me. Physical stuff is hard to drag with you anytime you have to move. Digital stuff ends up taking space as well, because you start to collect physical media to store the digital stuff in it. Nowadays I just listen to whatever is available on Youtube and read books on an e-reader.
- SomeCallMeTim 10y agoI collected stamps as a kid too, though I did eventually quit. And I still have binders of my old CDs and some of my truly ancient video games. I should probably ditch the lot of it, but we haven't moved in quite a long time and probably won't for years, so the total impact is a few bookshelves and a couple of boxes in the storage room. Not so bad. I keep my music in my computer which I regularly back up to two different external drives in a rotating manner. Not because I'm specifically worried about losing my music, but because I just do regular backups in case any of my drives fail and/or I finally get stung by a ransomware trojan (thus TWO external drives; they're never both plugged in at the same time).