7 ms·

Honestly, I think you inadvertedly prove the OP's point. Given that you used a piped command in the terminal to search your Linux distribution for mp3s, I'd say

by NamTaf 6y ago

Honestly, I think you inadvertedly prove the OP's point. Given that you used a piped command in the terminal to search your Linux distribution for mp3s, I'd say you're in fact one of the very Silicon-Valley types you mention. I can't think of anyone in their 20s with whom I interact who don't use Spotify, personally. It's all I see amongst the younger colleagues at work. Of that age group outside of work, everyone's 'year in review' music summaries on social media are spotify-generated, and everyone who sends me 'hey check out this song' links are sending them for Spotify (with a few youtube videos I guess). I'm sure there are people, don't get me wrong, but Spotify seems so ubiquitous amongst everyone I know who is in their 20s (even at arm's length) that I definitely believe my library of mp3s and player make me a product of my age and the odd one out.

h2odragon 6y ago
Another anecdata point in your support: my search was for '*.flac' and the number was 3,318. My wife and I are both 40s+; she has access to that library on her machine, but prefers Spotify for many reasons. Only weirdos want to own their own (music, video, text) libraries, most others would rather have someone else be responsible for the curation of that portion of their mental space.
- SPBS 6y ago
  Why is it such a weirdo thing? I don't want to bleed money every month just to listen to music. Or put up with ads. Owning mp3s is the most straightforward way to achieve that.
  - benhurmarcel 6y ago
    Music subscriptions are dramatically cheaper than buying music. Unless you prefer to listen to the same songs for a long time, but that's not representative of most people nowadays.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    Owning thousands of mp3s is only really cheaper if you obtained them via pirating. CDs in the 90s and 00s (I haven't seen a CD in a store since then) retailed for $15 and would probably have around 10 songs. A 3000 song library would run you $4500. That's like 40 years of Spotify subscriptions.
bobsil1 6y ago
Spotify is missing a lot of Hindi and rare tracks. Works if you’re into pop, I guess.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  There is enough music on Spotify outside pop to not bother with music that is not on Spotify.
  - Spearchucker 6y ago
    Disagree. No idea if it's there now or not, I haven't checked in years but they had no Alien Sex Fiend, Damned or Jesus and Mary Chain. Oh and no Soft Cell either although that might have been because of a song called Sex Dwarf. This was formative stuff for me and I still listen to it pretty regularly.
    - vel0city 6y ago
      Maybe its because you haven't checked in years, because most of those artists you listed are there. I'm not sure about Damned, did you mean The Damned? If so, every artist you claimed as missing is available. Alien Sex Fiend: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6WVnBgqJfj9Iw9gpBed9fJ?si=zd8zAPjoTteBUvrZOmh-Xg https://open.spotify.com/artist/6WVnBgqJfj9Iw9gpBed9fJ?si=zd... The Jesus and Mary Chain https://open.spotify.com/artist/4rjlerN21ygkIhmUv55irs?si=-yQhM6JGTyaiiwaDvjykfA https://open.spotify.com/artist/4rjlerN21ygkIhmUv55irs?si=-y... The Damned: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6VeL8VhaMjHTPc5uovFl3h?si=q9SGHj0oS3q5n2b3eY6NTw https://open.spotify.com/artist/6VeL8VhaMjHTPc5uovFl3h?si=q9... Soft Cell https://open.spotify.com/artist/6aq8T2RcspxVOGgMrTzjWc?si=va72aW1fR3aoflM7ujw5mw https://open.spotify.com/artist/6aq8T2RcspxVOGgMrTzjWc?si=va... Sex Dwarf - Original by Soft Cell https://open.spotify.com/track/7A5qOucdF0zyXo2x7vAoCO?si=nnogeUeVQsWAVGYuOaD1WA https://open.spotify.com/track/7A5qOucdF0zyXo2x7vAoCO?si=nno... Sex Dwarf - Remastered by Soft Cell https://open.spotify.com/track/6TaHShmHB955lxcJ92V0gs?si=cXomJ7wCShq8zzqW012aOA https://open.spotify.com/track/6TaHShmHB955lxcJ92V0gs?si=cXo... Sex Dwarf - Original, Deluxe Edition by Soft Cell https://open.spotify.com/track/7bt41cmNUkjCP8CQekIwBO?si=0tlst1JQT-y0bfu1u-UwKQ https://open.spotify.com/track/7bt41cmNUkjCP8CQekIwBO?si=0tl...
irrational 6y ago
I tried using Spotify, but after every song there was an advertisement. Is everyone actually paying for Spotify? Why would I want to do that when I could just listen to my mp3s for free?
- augustt 6y ago
  Pretty much everyone I know pays. College students split the family plan so its $2.50/mo. Pretty good considering that would only get you two songs on iTunes.
- zeusk 6y ago
  The ads are only for free users
- flyinghamster 6y ago
  I'd think mostly for the radio-like experience: new music coming into rotation, deep cuts from classic albums, possibly a DJ, etc. I used Google Music for this, for a while at least, but gave up on it when it became clear that it was inevitably heading for the Google Graveyard. I'm not sure I want to bother with Spotify, and I transcoded my FLACs to Opus to put on my phone's SD card. Foobar2000 for Android takes care of music playing now.
- NamTaf 6y ago
  Music discovery and a curated-by-not-yourself playlists are the two big things in my experience. The aim of the game is for spotify to play you music that you didn't realise you wanted to hear, and even better if it's from an artist you don't know.
- Anthony-G 6y ago
  I'm old-school. I pay so that I can download a whole album on to my phone and listen to it while I'm out walking and not worry about having a good Internet connection. I also hate ads so I'd pay to not have any. I also listen to my own music files ripped from CD. For that, the Sansa Clip used to be great until the headphone connection broke.
- baq 6y ago
Cloudef 6y ago
Being in 20s myself, I mostly only use terminal for everything? Why? It's efficient and faster. And of course, I don't use streaming or subscribing services. Not sure why people think only millennial do this. I personally think people just fall for marketing and tech hype too easily.
- edjrage 6y ago
  > Being in 20s myself Uhh... Sorry to break it to you, but... I... I think that makes you a millennial.
  - Cloudef 6y ago
    >Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years, with 1981 to 1996 a widely accepted defining range for the generation. Seems so. The original post saying "anyone in their 20s" confused me. I'm not really familiar with all this generation and millennial talk. But it does annoy me when people shoehorn generations into certain behavioral patterns stripping out their individuality.
  - fogihujy 6y ago
    "Millenials" is a somewhat vague term. It's been used for everything from the XY-generation from the late 70's/early 80's, to Generation Y, to the people born after the year 2000. It's usually better to talk about Generations X, XY, Y and Z rather than millenials because of that.
jjav 6y ago
I have to wonder if going through the experience of their favorite music (+book +movie +game etc) disappear on them online due to $(random reason outside their control) enough times will sour them by the time they're in their 30s? Or will that generation grow with an acceptance that everything is ephemeral subject to the whim of corporate licensing? That seems a bit sad.
- grishka 6y ago
  There's apparently already an entire generation who hasn't ever used a computer-like device that isn't locked down. I mean all those kids with iPads. They are simply unaware that there could be something better, something more empowering.
- least 6y ago
  Back when oink.me.uk was a thing, I had amassed a (what I considered to be) massive collection of music. Tens of thousands of songs, 500gb hard drive entirely filled with music. It had everything and I downloaded every new thing that looked remotely interesting. It was wonderful until that hard drive failed. I didn't have a backup (because of course I didn't, that hard drive was expensive and the cloud didn't exist). After that, I never did amass another massive collection of music like that. So in a sense, yes, I kind of do now treat most media as ephemeral and don't place too much value on maintaining copies of them. There's always interesting music to listen to and books to read and video games to play. Having a physical or digital copy of it hoarded away in a hard disk locally simply isn't that important to me.
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  If something that matters to me disappears from whatever service I use, I'll just download it after the fact. If I don't care enough to do that, it wasn't that important.
grishka 6y ago
I'm in my (late) 20s and I have a big local collection of music, mp3 and lossless. I still occasionally torrent entire discographies. I pay for exactly zero subscriptions. Many people I know do the same. Some pay for Spotify since it recently became available. Some pay for Apple Music. Some are foolish enough to pay for VK music despite the ability to use ad blockers and modded apps. In other words, it very much depends on the country.
- NamTaf 6y ago
  I tried to head this point off by specifying English-speaking countries (and specifically I meant the anglosphere). I can totally see how spotify is far less of a value proposition outside of that.
matkoniecz 6y ago
> everyone's 'year in review' music summaries on social media are spotify-generated What about selection bias and people who are not posting 'year in review' music summaries?
- NamTaf 6y ago
  This is a fair call-out and I did anticipate it, but I couldn't think of any better examples to quantify what is definitely a feeling that spotify has ubiquity amongst the age bracket I discuss. It's no one thing, but a tonne of small examples that don't come to mind. That's why I ended up using that example even though I knew someone would call out the selection bias (that is real, don't get me wrong).
detaro 6y ago
Using Spotify and having local media is not either/or.
drilldrive 6y ago
An odd one out here myself (I don't listen to music), but as a young adult I use my 20 dollar mp3 player for most audio needs. Though I also do not own a smartphone, so for a mobile player I am forced to an mp3 player, I would still use the mp3 player if I had a smartphone since the disjoint is quite helpful here. Never used spotify before.

by NamTaf 6y ago

h2odragon 6y ago

Another anecdata point in your support: my search was for '*.flac' and the number was 3,318. My wife and I are both 40s+; she has access to that library on her machine, but prefers Spotify for many reasons. Only weirdos want to own their own (music, video, text) libraries, most others would rather have someone else be responsible for the curation of that portion of their mental space.

SPBS 6y ago
Why is it such a weirdo thing? I don't want to bleed money every month just to listen to music. Or put up with ads. Owning mp3s is the most straightforward way to achieve that.
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  Music subscriptions are dramatically cheaper than buying music. Unless you prefer to listen to the same songs for a long time, but that's not representative of most people nowadays.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  Owning thousands of mp3s is only really cheaper if you obtained them via pirating. CDs in the 90s and 00s (I haven't seen a CD in a store since then) retailed for $15 and would probably have around 10 songs. A 3000 song library would run you $4500. That's like 40 years of Spotify subscriptions.

bobsil1 6y ago

Spotify is missing a lot of Hindi and rare tracks. Works if you’re into pop, I guess.

speedgoose 6y ago
There is enough music on Spotify outside pop to not bother with music that is not on Spotify.
- Spearchucker 6y ago
  Disagree. No idea if it's there now or not, I haven't checked in years but they had no Alien Sex Fiend, Damned or Jesus and Mary Chain. Oh and no Soft Cell either although that might have been because of a song called Sex Dwarf. This was formative stuff for me and I still listen to it pretty regularly.
  - vel0city 6y ago
    Maybe its because you haven't checked in years, because most of those artists you listed are there. I'm not sure about Damned, did you mean The Damned? If so, every artist you claimed as missing is available. Alien Sex Fiend: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6WVnBgqJfj9Iw9gpBed9fJ?si=zd8zAPjoTteBUvrZOmh-Xg https://open.spotify.com/artist/6WVnBgqJfj9Iw9gpBed9fJ?si=zd... The Jesus and Mary Chain https://open.spotify.com/artist/4rjlerN21ygkIhmUv55irs?si=-yQhM6JGTyaiiwaDvjykfA https://open.spotify.com/artist/4rjlerN21ygkIhmUv55irs?si=-y... The Damned: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6VeL8VhaMjHTPc5uovFl3h?si=q9SGHj0oS3q5n2b3eY6NTw https://open.spotify.com/artist/6VeL8VhaMjHTPc5uovFl3h?si=q9... Soft Cell https://open.spotify.com/artist/6aq8T2RcspxVOGgMrTzjWc?si=va72aW1fR3aoflM7ujw5mw https://open.spotify.com/artist/6aq8T2RcspxVOGgMrTzjWc?si=va... Sex Dwarf - Original by Soft Cell https://open.spotify.com/track/7A5qOucdF0zyXo2x7vAoCO?si=nnogeUeVQsWAVGYuOaD1WA https://open.spotify.com/track/7A5qOucdF0zyXo2x7vAoCO?si=nno... Sex Dwarf - Remastered by Soft Cell https://open.spotify.com/track/6TaHShmHB955lxcJ92V0gs?si=cXomJ7wCShq8zzqW012aOA https://open.spotify.com/track/6TaHShmHB955lxcJ92V0gs?si=cXo... Sex Dwarf - Original, Deluxe Edition by Soft Cell https://open.spotify.com/track/7bt41cmNUkjCP8CQekIwBO?si=0tlst1JQT-y0bfu1u-UwKQ https://open.spotify.com/track/7bt41cmNUkjCP8CQekIwBO?si=0tl...

irrational 6y ago

I tried using Spotify, but after every song there was an advertisement. Is everyone actually paying for Spotify? Why would I want to do that when I could just listen to my mp3s for free?

augustt 6y ago
Pretty much everyone I know pays. College students split the family plan so its $2.50/mo. Pretty good considering that would only get you two songs on iTunes.
zeusk 6y ago
The ads are only for free users
flyinghamster 6y ago
I'd think mostly for the radio-like experience: new music coming into rotation, deep cuts from classic albums, possibly a DJ, etc. I used Google Music for this, for a while at least, but gave up on it when it became clear that it was inevitably heading for the Google Graveyard. I'm not sure I want to bother with Spotify, and I transcoded my FLACs to Opus to put on my phone's SD card. Foobar2000 for Android takes care of music playing now.
NamTaf 6y ago
Music discovery and a curated-by-not-yourself playlists are the two big things in my experience. The aim of the game is for spotify to play you music that you didn't realise you wanted to hear, and even better if it's from an artist you don't know.
Anthony-G 6y ago
I'm old-school. I pay so that I can download a whole album on to my phone and listen to it while I'm out walking and not worry about having a good Internet connection. I also hate ads so I'd pay to not have any. I also listen to my own music files ripped from CD. For that, the Sansa Clip used to be great until the headphone connection broke.
baq 6y ago

Cloudef 6y ago

Being in 20s myself, I mostly only use terminal for everything? Why? It's efficient and faster. And of course, I don't use streaming or subscribing services. Not sure why people think only millennial do this. I personally think people just fall for marketing and tech hype too easily.

edjrage 6y ago
> Being in 20s myself Uhh... Sorry to break it to you, but... I... I think that makes you a millennial.
- Cloudef 6y ago
  >Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years, with 1981 to 1996 a widely accepted defining range for the generation. Seems so. The original post saying "anyone in their 20s" confused me. I'm not really familiar with all this generation and millennial talk. But it does annoy me when people shoehorn generations into certain behavioral patterns stripping out their individuality.
- fogihujy 6y ago
  "Millenials" is a somewhat vague term. It's been used for everything from the XY-generation from the late 70's/early 80's, to Generation Y, to the people born after the year 2000. It's usually better to talk about Generations X, XY, Y and Z rather than millenials because of that.

jjav 6y ago

I have to wonder if going through the experience of their favorite music (+book +movie +game etc) disappear on them online due to $(random reason outside their control) enough times will sour them by the time they're in their 30s? Or will that generation grow with an acceptance that everything is ephemeral subject to the whim of corporate licensing? That seems a bit sad.

grishka 6y ago
There's apparently already an entire generation who hasn't ever used a computer-like device that isn't locked down. I mean all those kids with iPads. They are simply unaware that there could be something better, something more empowering.
least 6y ago
Back when oink.me.uk was a thing, I had amassed a (what I considered to be) massive collection of music. Tens of thousands of songs, 500gb hard drive entirely filled with music. It had everything and I downloaded every new thing that looked remotely interesting. It was wonderful until that hard drive failed. I didn't have a backup (because of course I didn't, that hard drive was expensive and the cloud didn't exist). After that, I never did amass another massive collection of music like that. So in a sense, yes, I kind of do now treat most media as ephemeral and don't place too much value on maintaining copies of them. There's always interesting music to listen to and books to read and video games to play. Having a physical or digital copy of it hoarded away in a hard disk locally simply isn't that important to me.
benhurmarcel 6y ago
If something that matters to me disappears from whatever service I use, I'll just download it after the fact. If I don't care enough to do that, it wasn't that important.

grishka 6y ago

I'm in my (late) 20s and I have a big local collection of music, mp3 and lossless. I still occasionally torrent entire discographies. I pay for exactly zero subscriptions. Many people I know do the same. Some pay for Spotify since it recently became available. Some pay for Apple Music. Some are foolish enough to pay for VK music despite the ability to use ad blockers and modded apps. In other words, it very much depends on the country.

NamTaf 6y ago
I tried to head this point off by specifying English-speaking countries (and specifically I meant the anglosphere). I can totally see how spotify is far less of a value proposition outside of that.

matkoniecz 6y ago

> everyone's 'year in review' music summaries on social media are spotify-generated What about selection bias and people who are not posting 'year in review' music summaries?

NamTaf 6y ago
This is a fair call-out and I did anticipate it, but I couldn't think of any better examples to quantify what is definitely a feeling that spotify has ubiquity amongst the age bracket I discuss. It's no one thing, but a tonne of small examples that don't come to mind. That's why I ended up using that example even though I knew someone would call out the selection bias (that is real, don't get me wrong).

detaro 6y ago

Using Spotify and having local media is not either/or.

drilldrive 6y ago

An odd one out here myself (I don't listen to music), but as a young adult I use my 20 dollar mp3 player for most audio needs. Though I also do not own a smartphone, so for a mobile player I am forced to an mp3 player, I would still use the mp3 player if I had a smartphone since the disjoint is quite helpful here. Never used spotify before.