5 ms·

As someone who has given away a couple thousand dollars worth of crappy music from the 80s and 90s, I can say for certain that I am glad I don't own it anymore.

As someone who has given away a couple thousand dollars worth of crappy music from the 80s and 90s, I can say for certain that I am glad I don't own it anymore. A Spotify subscription that allows me to listen to practically any song that was ever recorded is of far more utility than a pathetically limited personal music collection.

ghaff 8y ago
I'm glad it's all on a hard disc these days rather than having to flip through CDs or vinyl all the time, but I still like knowing that the bits are under my control. Ongoing availability is a lot better with music than video to be sure. And I might feel differently if I didn't already own GBs of favored music. But I still wouldn't feel comfortable just flushing all my music and trusting in Apple, Spotify, or Amazon to permanently provide me with everything I want.
magduf 8y ago
Why on earth would you pay $ per month to have access to music you like, when you can just have it in MP3/Ogg form, stored on multiple devices (PC, phone, backup HD) and be able to listen to it at any time you want for free?
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Assuming you buy it in the first place and you buy the storage/server and you pay for the backup then it isn't free. I just switched to Apple Music so I don't have to deal with all that stuff.
- jonknee 8y ago
  From my point of view, why on Earth would you bother to have music in MP3/Ogg form where you have to manage it and plan what you want to listen to? Spotify is a paradigm shift for music consumption and I would never want to go back to collecting manually.
  - jumelles 8y ago
    Some of us want access to music that's not on Spotify.
  - magduf 8y ago
    I guess if you have unlimited money and don't mind having an expensive unlimited-bandwidth cellular plan, that'll work for you.
- avgDev 8y ago
  Because I don't have time to search for new music, go buy albums, back it up, buy storage etc. Spotify is great. I can listen to charts/viral music from different countries. I can usually find music from other countries as well if I need to.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  Having made the jump, this mentality seems insane to me :) Spotify is $10 / month, the price of one album. For that, I get an essentially infinite [1] library of music that's basically always available to me whenever I want, curated playlists, discovery features, sharing features [2], etc, etc. It all just works, I never have to think about it, etc. By contrast, unless I'm pirating music, what does $10 get me? An album a month? So after a year, I own 12 albums and had to hassle with the files and downloads, whereas with Spotify it just works and I've listened to 10x - 100x that much music. Yes, if / when I stop paying for Spotify, I'll lose access, but so what? I wasn't planning on spending 20 years paying a fortune to accumulate a music library and then stopping cold and never paying again, just listening to that music I bought. I'm happy to just pay $50 - 100 / month until I die for subscriptions to huge and ever-growing libraries of music, movies, TV shows, books, etc. Seems like a fantastic deal. 1. I don't have niche tastes or a deep attachment to any particular artist that I simply MUST have, so their selection is far beyond anything I really need. 2. I don't use these, but still.
  - magduf 8y ago
    You're forgetting the price of your cellular data plan. Bandwidth isn't free.
    - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
      Mine is! I signed up for an insane promo with Sprint in December where we switched from Verizon and got 13 months of unlimited everything (except 4G tethering, I think that's capped at 10gb per month) for free. Honestly though, we don't use all that much bandwidth anyway. I'm usually on wifi and for the times that I'm not going to be, my playlists and podcasts download in the background when I am.

ghaff 8y ago

I'm glad it's all on a hard disc these days rather than having to flip through CDs or vinyl all the time, but I still like knowing that the bits are under my control. Ongoing availability is a lot better with music than video to be sure. And I might feel differently if I didn't already own GBs of favored music. But I still wouldn't feel comfortable just flushing all my music and trusting in Apple, Spotify, or Amazon to permanently provide me with everything I want.

magduf 8y ago

Why on earth would you pay $ per month to have access to music you like, when you can just have it in MP3/Ogg form, stored on multiple devices (PC, phone, backup HD) and be able to listen to it at any time you want for free?

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Assuming you buy it in the first place and you buy the storage/server and you pay for the backup then it isn't free. I just switched to Apple Music so I don't have to deal with all that stuff.
jonknee 8y ago
From my point of view, why on Earth would you bother to have music in MP3/Ogg form where you have to manage it and plan what you want to listen to? Spotify is a paradigm shift for music consumption and I would never want to go back to collecting manually.
- jumelles 8y ago
  Some of us want access to music that's not on Spotify.
- magduf 8y ago
  I guess if you have unlimited money and don't mind having an expensive unlimited-bandwidth cellular plan, that'll work for you.
avgDev 8y ago
Because I don't have time to search for new music, go buy albums, back it up, buy storage etc. Spotify is great. I can listen to charts/viral music from different countries. I can usually find music from other countries as well if I need to.
ryanwaggoner 8y ago
Having made the jump, this mentality seems insane to me :) Spotify is $10 / month, the price of one album. For that, I get an essentially infinite [1] library of music that's basically always available to me whenever I want, curated playlists, discovery features, sharing features [2], etc, etc. It all just works, I never have to think about it, etc. By contrast, unless I'm pirating music, what does $10 get me? An album a month? So after a year, I own 12 albums and had to hassle with the files and downloads, whereas with Spotify it just works and I've listened to 10x - 100x that much music. Yes, if / when I stop paying for Spotify, I'll lose access, but so what? I wasn't planning on spending 20 years paying a fortune to accumulate a music library and then stopping cold and never paying again, just listening to that music I bought. I'm happy to just pay $50 - 100 / month until I die for subscriptions to huge and ever-growing libraries of music, movies, TV shows, books, etc. Seems like a fantastic deal. 1. I don't have niche tastes or a deep attachment to any particular artist that I simply MUST have, so their selection is far beyond anything I really need. 2. I don't use these, but still.
- magduf 8y ago
  You're forgetting the price of your cellular data plan. Bandwidth isn't free.
  - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
    Mine is! I signed up for an insane promo with Sprint in December where we switched from Verizon and got 13 months of unlimited everything (except 4G tethering, I think that's capped at 10gb per month) for free. Honestly though, we don't use all that much bandwidth anyway. I'm usually on wifi and for the times that I'm not going to be, my playlists and podcasts download in the background when I am.