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Streaming music sucks. It might seem weird but I don't like it. The first music I ever 'owned' myself personally were songs I taped off the radio. After that I

Streaming music sucks. It might seem weird but I don't like it. The first music I ever 'owned' myself personally were songs I taped off the radio. After that I started pirating music the same way I would collect songs on the radio, after that I started buying CD's, today I buy songs and albums from artists and producers directly. Building playlists on a streaming service is not the same as building a music collection. Music discovery is easy, relying on a streaming service for discovery is lazy. What's hard is commitment. Taking time to explore the back catalogue of artists you like and taking the time to get to know music. When all you had was physical media, you listened to albums over and over got to know them, relished the new albums you purchased and had to take the time to decide between one or the other. When you heard a new song on the radio or through a friend, there was anticipation. You had to wait before you could listen on your own. Whether it was a slow download on icewire or that wait until you could go buy an album, acquiring music gave you something streaming music doesn't. It gave you forced limitation, which in turn I feel like led to a greater appreciation towards music. It wasn't just something tou consumed, it was something you waited for, finally acquired and then got to enjoy and became part of the rest of 'your music.'

harlanji 6y ago
I worked on a chat app where we designed in some limitations that emulated the feel of an older era. Maybe the next MySpace will be kinda slow. SD Cards, PO Boxes, eventual consistency, widely adopted formats? Oh my.
amznthrwaway 6y ago
Streaming has been incredible for me, and my love of music. I know and love music today that I never would’ve even heard in the old days because it wasn’t on the radio, and I had a limited budget for experimental purchases. I used to have to spend $15 to try an album which would have 2 good tracks if I was lucky. Most times it was entirely mediocre. As a kid, that was a big investment, so I got stuck listening narrowly, and buying things that were very likely to be hits (the same bands; the same labels; etc) Now my friends send me Spotify and YouTube links every day. I’ve found new genres and artists. It’s been wonderful. I know that your ignorant, judgmental, and elitist opinion doesn’t matter; streaming is here to stay. But it’s absurd that your whining that kids today don’t enjoy music the right way is near the top of the page. Your arrogance should be dead, like my comment surely will be.
josephg 6y ago
I hear what you’re saying, but Spotify solves a problem I never managed to solve with CDs: it solves discovery. I used to go to music shops and browse albums, and I had no idea which CD would be worth my money because I couldn’t listen to them and find out! Even from a band I like I would often buy their other albums then get home and be disappointed because they didn’t work for me. In comparison, spotify will find and play hundreds of fresh songs similar to any song I like. And lots of songs I don’t like - but that’s fine, because more music I’ve never heard before is a click away. I miss owning my music collection, and I’m very frustrated whenever spotify is missing some of my favourite music. But any scarcity of musical variety you feel is entirely artificial, self imposed and ridiculous.
- cinquemb 6y ago
  Soundcloud solves discovery for me. Every week I look through their search for words i filter on and sample all the songs (40-100 songs, maybe takes 1-2 hours at most) and download them if I like them (some weeks none, some weeks more than others), follow the artist if I like more than a couple (and what they are liking and re-posting), and occasionally pay the artist directly for files even if I already downloaded it. I stream from my computer to my phone when I'm at home over the local network in the browser and thru a cheap vpn from my computer when I'm not (and/or just copy a random sample to my phone when I don't wanna pay for the bandwidth) if I know long enough a head of time. Deff wont show up in billboards stats… nor have to deal with the misalignment of incentives when listening to music on the soundcloud trying to push a song from their algos an artist/agency paid them to do (or ads).
  - temp0826 6y ago
    I agree with you. SoundCloud is a breath of fresh air pending you don’t mind the underproduction. I’m relatively new to it (and didn’t understand the social aspects of it until recently), but it was pleasant to see this whole world of artists just doing their thing, as opposed to listening to the same regurgitated stuff we’re all used to. I still get a hankering for my old favorites and use spotify often when I’m in that mood- and do find it strange that I consider “that stuff” “old”.
galuggus 6y ago
I feel the same way about books. I much preferred scrolls.
ramraj07 6y ago
Just sounds like a whole load of "these kids are ruining what used to be the good old times". Of course, I also think music from back in the day was better, but I am also aware that its just a matter of taste and our tastes are molded by prevailing business-social pressures as ours was back in the day. If music appreciation sucks today it can be blamed more on the music industry and their idol manufacturing pipeline than streaming. This rot started well before any of these internet era breakthroughs anyway. The only difference I see in the Spotify era is that if I want to listen to the Beatles or the beach boys, I can. I might not be able to find the exact bootleg recording of Dylan from some concert but whatever, the internet probably has a forum where you can find it if that's what tickles you. Don't blame streaming for what is fundamentally a music industry problem.
- ianai 6y ago
  I used to think music from back in the day was better. Then I washed my predilections out and did a clean take on modern music. There are some real gems there. They’re also ... new.
- raspyberr 6y ago
  The person you're replying to doesn't say anything about "music from back in the day was better" though. They're talking about the "consumption" of music. And in a way I agree, I generally lean towards limitations being important. Humans aren't good when everything is given to them easily.
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- gcpwnd 6y ago
  Reread your and the previous post. You make hardly a point towards it. What is new with streaming is that music is much faster produced, consumed and forgotten. Streaming is part of the Problem. You cannot expect capitalist in the industry to step back and prefer quality over quantity and the streaming industry neither. As long there is cash on the table some one will grab it. Actually everyone is part of the problem from consumer to artist. It's just the question whether you perceive it as problem or not.
juststeve 6y ago
Agree with all of that except the last paragraph - streaming album/LP's suck, and I've had spotify and apple accounts for years. As an alternative, I'd kindly recommend (to anyone) finding a few independent radio stations in genres you like or are new to. I feel that a good DJ and/or announcer is a godsend in an environment where the music alternatives feel endless and the social environment is complex. I just don't think that 'AI' or any SQL implemented 'playlist generator' will match a good DJ set with commentary.
- juststeve 6y ago
  tl;dr, curation and commentary (with insight) are also essential skills like musicianship, where music supply feels endless.
oarabbus_ 6y ago
I completely agree with your poignant "getting to know an album" statement, but I fundamentally disagree with your general point of your issues with streaming; I think it's a boon to have such a wide selection of music at your fingertips. An asymptotically infinite, for practical purposes, amount of music. That being said, I really appreciate your perspective, and everything you said about physical media, the radio, torrent services, and ultimately limitations to music selection, is all absolutely true and completely resonates, even if I prefer the modern "more music than you could care about" availability. It somewhat saddens me that anyone under the age of 25 (this is arbitrary, maybe a few years younger) never experienced the sensation of really getting to know every song of an album by an artist who's album you purchased, _even the songs you didn't like_. This really can't be emphasized enough. The younger generation has no concept of listening to a song you "don't like" 50 times, simply because you listened to the album you purchased 100 times. It's like actually getting to know a friend extremely well that you've spent countless days with, vs. an acquaintance whom you always have a blast with but only meet at parties once every couple months.
- i_cannot_hack 6y ago
  > This really can't be emphasized enough. The younger generation has no concept of listening to a song you "don't like" 50 times, simply because you listened to the album you purchased 100 times. Not necessarily true. When Spotify reaches the end of one of my playlists, it automatically starts playing a radio of "recommended songs" based on the playlist. However, these recommended songs are usually the same, with only minor changes over time. As a consequence, I can think of several songs that I don't like that I have listened to more than 50 times, simply because they tend to be the among the first recommended songs to play when I've finished one of my regular playlists.
  - antfarm 6y ago
    You can turn this off in the settings, it's called Autoplay.
    - i_cannot_hack 6y ago
goatinaboat 6y ago
When all you had was physical media, you listened to albums over and over got to know them, relished the new albums you purchased and had to take the time to decide between one or the other. Yes, it's a totally different experience now, I don't know how old you are but I suspect we are both of the generation that straddles both models. On the one hand, I do love the convenience, my phone can identify a song and I can have the artist's latest album a minute or so later. Amazing! But on the other hand music used to be a visual and tactile experience too, enormous amounts of effort went into creating album art and inlays (especially with records), you might study it as you played the music, run your fingers over the sleeves as you chose the next album to play, display your music collection in your living room for guests to browse, etc. Or you keep an old album that reminds you of a time or a place or a person. Or the hours spent with friends traveling to and trawling through record shops in the nearest big town looking for something. Nowadays that activity would be considered a complete waste of time but actually as a teenager those were some halcyon days. I'm not going to say for anyone else if the new way is better or worse, but for me, something has definitely been lost in the rush to streaming.
- ghaff 6y ago
  You sound like me. Streaming in general has changed a lot of things. Probably for the better but can't make an omelette without cracking eggs and all that. Video is the same way. We've mostly lost the collective cultural experience of Must See TV Thursday (or whatever). Or not. I haven't watched the series yet but Baby Yoda certainly made the rounds. Though there is a definitely increased cultural fragmentation of which at least some of the consequences are a clear negative. In general it's all mostly a positive but some things get lost along the way. Time to play some Apple Music playlist :-/
dag11 6y ago
> Taking time to explore the back catalogue of artists you like and taking the time to get to know music. This complaint confuses me, as an avid Spotify user. A few times a week when I discover an artist I like, it's one click to look at their entire back catalog, listen to it sequentially, browse the artist bio, click through to the artist's social media to see what projects they're up to, right click and view who produced the tracks to find similarly-produced tracks, etc! > it was something you waited for I follow many artists and look forward to their upcoming albums. Why should my wait be extended by manufacturing, supply chains, my schedule to go to a shop, or my own budget to own physical media? And I say all this as both a heavy Spotify user and a listener of vinyl records. I always get the albums I enjoy most on vinyl for higher fidelity active listening and the physical visual artwork that accompanies the disk.
- kortilla 6y ago
  > I enjoy most on vinyl for higher fidelity active listening Vinyl is not “higher fidelity” than what you pay for on Spotify, at least not in the audio quality sense.
  - dag11 6y ago
    It's higher fidelity than 320 kbps. Not remotely higher fidelity than FM or CD quality audio. But I've A/B tested songs I know inside and out on the same equipment using both vinyl and 320 kbps mp3 and I can hear the difference night and day. But the main reason I listen to it is not that it's better than Spotify, but that it's a physically beautiful medium with artwork and is still high quality while promoting active, intimate listening.
    - Kye 6y ago
      Vinyl seems higher quality because it's such an unforgiving medium. The mastering has to be done well or it'll sound terrible. The MP3, CD, and vinyl are not necessarily done by the same person, or someone with equal skill in each. FM has someone in a sound booth who knows what they're doing.
    - 6y ago
justatdotin 6y ago
are you saying you appreciate music less now? or are you policing others' appreciation?
arcturus17 6y ago
Except maybe vinyl, I've gone through it all: taping songs off the radio, burning minidiscs and CDs, Napster, eMule, Pandora, iTunes, etc. I love Spotify and the actual way of consuming and discovering music. Some say that music taste stagnates as we age but I come from a metal and rock background and I have been making escapades into electronic music (including EDM), funk, soul, and more in my late twenties and early thirties, and I expect this trend to continue into old age. None of this ever happened when I was in my teens, where I would just buy the metal magazines, go to the metal record store, and speak only to metalheads. Part may be me, but another part is certainly Spotify / music streaming. My only criticism is that Spotify's music recommendation algorithms are really subpar. When I like a new song, I tap "Go to Radio" and it shows a playlist of related songs, but it seems like it relies too much on the preferences of other users and on obvious connections between artists. Pandora in the mid-2000's already blew it out of the water in this regard - I remember going through a personal golden age of music discovery thanks to it. I could not believe how spot-on the recommendations felt and how they could dig out superobscure stuff that resonated with me. I don't know what the state of the service is right now but if it was just as good as in the 2000's and it was available in Europe I would pay for it without a doubt. What's surprising is that Spotify's recommendation tech is so far behind, and that they don't seem to care. Other than that, I can't think of a single non-essential service in my life providing more value than "$9.99 a month for unlimited music". The utility to cost ratio is off the charts since I use it for six or eight hours daily and it costs peanuts. If there was a nuclear apocalypse and I had to listen to cassettes on my pipboy, I'd surely be nostalgic about the good old days of music streaming.
- morlockabove 6y ago
  Just download all the music onto your home (bunker) server and stream from that!
friendlybus 6y ago
Yeah I agree there's a barrier between the endless eight ball of streaming songs and the music you've downloaded onto your computer. Once you've plucked a song from the internet and put it into your collection it becomes reliable, you know why you saved it and what playlist it belongs and what activity you want to pair with it and what frame of mind you were in when you saved it. Streaming/youtube is so ephemeral, even with history and playlists it's difficult to remember what you found so groovy about a piece when it could all be gone tomorrow. I rarely develop a fixed memory of a song until I've saved it.
holri 6y ago
The Best thing to do with music is play or sing it for yourself. That is hard, but also very rewarding, because it takes time, patience and love.
yoz-y 6y ago
> Music discovery is easy, relying on a streaming service for discovery is lazy. People are lazy. Automatic discovery works well enough so why bother unless music is something really important in your life?
- oblio 6y ago
  Or in other words: Expert in field X disappointed that regular people are not experts in field X :-)
gitowiec 6y ago
I agree with everything what you said. My collection of MP3 is huge. And collecting this music gave me so much fun. Discovery in Spotify is much less fun. There is no friend with similar taste, no DJ you know from gigs you party, no radio editor which voice you love, it is just an algorithm. And serving content right away fast without searching and waiting makes that one does not listen repeatedly songs just discovered. Just jumping from one to next. This destroys the ritual, which is very important as rituals keep and enforce identity of the listener. When I was listening Goa trance I felt connected to gigs I was partying. When I switched to Legendary Pink Dots or Radio Head I was connected to my inner sorrow and so on and on... It all became more mechanical with streaming, soulless...
randomsearch 6y ago
You’re projecting your free time / dedication to discovery on other people and that’s unfair. Spotify’s discovery tools for example are a real boon to many. That said, I do feel the same as you about the “good old days”. Owning music was a very different experience. It doesn’t help that streaming apps haven’t worked out the UX yet (god knows why, they’ve had long enough). But... flip side... if I could time travel back to being a teenager and say “for £10 a month (even in that money) you can have access to pretty much all music commercially released” I would have cried with joy at the thought of it. There are so many bands I probably wouldn’t have worked through the catalogue of because they weren’t on my radar or popular within my social circles - even major artists like Bowie or Queen - and Spotify has enabled me to work through most of the great 20th century pop/rock/indie music, plus explore a lot of dance and electro I wouldn’t have. Problem is I think it’s (the?) jam today and bread tomorrow... I think popular music peaked just before the internet arrived. A good tell is the many festival line ups full of very old bands. If you make a list of the greatest bands/artists of the latest 10 years and compare it to any decade since pop music got going, it doesn’t compare. I don’t think that’s the commercialisation of music (that hasn’t changed so much) rather the financial incentives are no longer there. Appropriately for HN, a lot of kids dream of a building a startup instead of making music.
- jon-wood 6y ago
  The cynic in me thinks that the abundance of old bands on festival line ups is probably more focused on targeting people with disposable income, rather than a young audience who may be very enthusiastic, but are also broke.
- ubercow13 6y ago
  >If you make a list of the greatest bands/artists of the latest 10 years and compare it to any decade since pop music got going, it doesn’t compare Ah, a classic meme: https://old.reddit.com/r/lewronggeneration/ https://old.reddit.com/r/lewronggeneration/
  - deleted 6y ago
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tomjen3 6y ago
>Music discovery is easy, relying on a streaming service for discovery is lazy. What's hard is commitment. Taking time to explore the back catalogue of artists you like and taking the time to get to know music. That is only true if you only use the Radio feature and never notice the suggested artists. Otherwise everything you listed is literally easier than it has ever been. If you want to complain that other people are doing things wrong, then please stop. You have no control over other people.
mhh__ 6y ago
> [Back in my day xyz] There is nothing stopping you listening to the full albums, and platforms like streaming have allowed some unbelievably niche artists and albums to happen that would've never ever made it out of the studio in a traditional record label.
maxerickson 6y ago
Now do one about live music vs recordings and then after that do one about making music vs listening to music.
toper-centage 6y ago
I don't want to scavange the Internet for music and I don't want to own a bunch of music files that I'll forget about in an aging drive. I'm totally fine with music as a service. But I totally agree that we can't let go of the possibility of owning music files.
UncleMeat 6y ago
> Building playlists on a streaming service is not the same as building a music collection. If you aren't pirating, it is a lot cheaper. Whenever this topic comes up, somebody boasts about their 2000 album collection or whatever and simple math demonstrates that you'd get like 100 years of streaming services for that price. > When all you had was physical media, you listened to albums over and over got to know them, relished the new albums you purchased and had to take the time to decide between one or the other. This feels like "yells at cloud" to me. I don't buy the "worse product forces appreciation" argument in any circumstance. I am far more able to appreciate a wider range of music now than ever before, in large part because it isn't a $15 dollar commitment to listen to an album and decide if I like it.
hedora 6y ago
I like Tidal’s browsing features, though the featured artists are never for me. Almost every album in my collection has a linked artist bio or album review that lists influences. On top of that, there’s a list of “similar artists for each band, and it’s usually surprising and spot on. I’m starting to branch out into more of their curated playlists too. It’s basically everything I wanted a music store to be back in the day.
bamboleo 6y ago
Classic "old man yells at cloud." Nobody is stopping you from picking an album and setting it on repeat. Everything you could do before, you can still do, just without heading out nor opening your wallet. The only thing that concerns me about streaming is that music might disappear in the future. Everything else is just your own nostalgia, I don't miss having to listen to my father's tapes on repeat.

harlanji 6y ago

I worked on a chat app where we designed in some limitations that emulated the feel of an older era. Maybe the next MySpace will be kinda slow. SD Cards, PO Boxes, eventual consistency, widely adopted formats? Oh my.

amznthrwaway 6y ago

Streaming has been incredible for me, and my love of music. I know and love music today that I never would’ve even heard in the old days because it wasn’t on the radio, and I had a limited budget for experimental purchases. I used to have to spend $15 to try an album which would have 2 good tracks if I was lucky. Most times it was entirely mediocre. As a kid, that was a big investment, so I got stuck listening narrowly, and buying things that were very likely to be hits (the same bands; the same labels; etc) Now my friends send me Spotify and YouTube links every day. I’ve found new genres and artists. It’s been wonderful. I know that your ignorant, judgmental, and elitist opinion doesn’t matter; streaming is here to stay. But it’s absurd that your whining that kids today don’t enjoy music the right way is near the top of the page. Your arrogance should be dead, like my comment surely will be.

josephg 6y ago

I hear what you’re saying, but Spotify solves a problem I never managed to solve with CDs: it solves discovery. I used to go to music shops and browse albums, and I had no idea which CD would be worth my money because I couldn’t listen to them and find out! Even from a band I like I would often buy their other albums then get home and be disappointed because they didn’t work for me. In comparison, spotify will find and play hundreds of fresh songs similar to any song I like. And lots of songs I don’t like - but that’s fine, because more music I’ve never heard before is a click away. I miss owning my music collection, and I’m very frustrated whenever spotify is missing some of my favourite music. But any scarcity of musical variety you feel is entirely artificial, self imposed and ridiculous.

cinquemb 6y ago
Soundcloud solves discovery for me. Every week I look through their search for words i filter on and sample all the songs (40-100 songs, maybe takes 1-2 hours at most) and download them if I like them (some weeks none, some weeks more than others), follow the artist if I like more than a couple (and what they are liking and re-posting), and occasionally pay the artist directly for files even if I already downloaded it. I stream from my computer to my phone when I'm at home over the local network in the browser and thru a cheap vpn from my computer when I'm not (and/or just copy a random sample to my phone when I don't wanna pay for the bandwidth) if I know long enough a head of time. Deff wont show up in billboards stats… nor have to deal with the misalignment of incentives when listening to music on the soundcloud trying to push a song from their algos an artist/agency paid them to do (or ads).
- temp0826 6y ago
  I agree with you. SoundCloud is a breath of fresh air pending you don’t mind the underproduction. I’m relatively new to it (and didn’t understand the social aspects of it until recently), but it was pleasant to see this whole world of artists just doing their thing, as opposed to listening to the same regurgitated stuff we’re all used to. I still get a hankering for my old favorites and use spotify often when I’m in that mood- and do find it strange that I consider “that stuff” “old”.

galuggus 6y ago

I feel the same way about books. I much preferred scrolls.

ramraj07 6y ago

Just sounds like a whole load of "these kids are ruining what used to be the good old times". Of course, I also think music from back in the day was better, but I am also aware that its just a matter of taste and our tastes are molded by prevailing business-social pressures as ours was back in the day. If music appreciation sucks today it can be blamed more on the music industry and their idol manufacturing pipeline than streaming. This rot started well before any of these internet era breakthroughs anyway. The only difference I see in the Spotify era is that if I want to listen to the Beatles or the beach boys, I can. I might not be able to find the exact bootleg recording of Dylan from some concert but whatever, the internet probably has a forum where you can find it if that's what tickles you. Don't blame streaming for what is fundamentally a music industry problem.

ianai 6y ago
I used to think music from back in the day was better. Then I washed my predilections out and did a clean take on modern music. There are some real gems there. They’re also ... new.
raspyberr 6y ago
The person you're replying to doesn't say anything about "music from back in the day was better" though. They're talking about the "consumption" of music. And in a way I agree, I generally lean towards limitations being important. Humans aren't good when everything is given to them easily.
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gcpwnd 6y ago
Reread your and the previous post. You make hardly a point towards it. What is new with streaming is that music is much faster produced, consumed and forgotten. Streaming is part of the Problem. You cannot expect capitalist in the industry to step back and prefer quality over quantity and the streaming industry neither. As long there is cash on the table some one will grab it. Actually everyone is part of the problem from consumer to artist. It's just the question whether you perceive it as problem or not.

juststeve 6y ago

Agree with all of that except the last paragraph - streaming album/LP's suck, and I've had spotify and apple accounts for years. As an alternative, I'd kindly recommend (to anyone) finding a few independent radio stations in genres you like or are new to. I feel that a good DJ and/or announcer is a godsend in an environment where the music alternatives feel endless and the social environment is complex. I just don't think that 'AI' or any SQL implemented 'playlist generator' will match a good DJ set with commentary.

juststeve 6y ago
tl;dr, curation and commentary (with insight) are also essential skills like musicianship, where music supply feels endless.

oarabbus_ 6y ago

I completely agree with your poignant "getting to know an album" statement, but I fundamentally disagree with your general point of your issues with streaming; I think it's a boon to have such a wide selection of music at your fingertips. An asymptotically infinite, for practical purposes, amount of music. That being said, I really appreciate your perspective, and everything you said about physical media, the radio, torrent services, and ultimately limitations to music selection, is all absolutely true and completely resonates, even if I prefer the modern "more music than you could care about" availability. It somewhat saddens me that anyone under the age of 25 (this is arbitrary, maybe a few years younger) never experienced the sensation of really getting to know every song of an album by an artist who's album you purchased, _even the songs you didn't like_. This really can't be emphasized enough. The younger generation has no concept of listening to a song you "don't like" 50 times, simply because you listened to the album you purchased 100 times. It's like actually getting to know a friend extremely well that you've spent countless days with, vs. an acquaintance whom you always have a blast with but only meet at parties once every couple months.

i_cannot_hack 6y ago
> This really can't be emphasized enough. The younger generation has no concept of listening to a song you "don't like" 50 times, simply because you listened to the album you purchased 100 times. Not necessarily true. When Spotify reaches the end of one of my playlists, it automatically starts playing a radio of "recommended songs" based on the playlist. However, these recommended songs are usually the same, with only minor changes over time. As a consequence, I can think of several songs that I don't like that I have listened to more than 50 times, simply because they tend to be the among the first recommended songs to play when I've finished one of my regular playlists.
- antfarm 6y ago
  You can turn this off in the settings, it's called Autoplay.
  - i_cannot_hack 6y ago

goatinaboat 6y ago

When all you had was physical media, you listened to albums over and over got to know them, relished the new albums you purchased and had to take the time to decide between one or the other. Yes, it's a totally different experience now, I don't know how old you are but I suspect we are both of the generation that straddles both models. On the one hand, I do love the convenience, my phone can identify a song and I can have the artist's latest album a minute or so later. Amazing! But on the other hand music used to be a visual and tactile experience too, enormous amounts of effort went into creating album art and inlays (especially with records), you might study it as you played the music, run your fingers over the sleeves as you chose the next album to play, display your music collection in your living room for guests to browse, etc. Or you keep an old album that reminds you of a time or a place or a person. Or the hours spent with friends traveling to and trawling through record shops in the nearest big town looking for something. Nowadays that activity would be considered a complete waste of time but actually as a teenager those were some halcyon days. I'm not going to say for anyone else if the new way is better or worse, but for me, something has definitely been lost in the rush to streaming.

ghaff 6y ago
You sound like me. Streaming in general has changed a lot of things. Probably for the better but can't make an omelette without cracking eggs and all that. Video is the same way. We've mostly lost the collective cultural experience of Must See TV Thursday (or whatever). Or not. I haven't watched the series yet but Baby Yoda certainly made the rounds. Though there is a definitely increased cultural fragmentation of which at least some of the consequences are a clear negative. In general it's all mostly a positive but some things get lost along the way. Time to play some Apple Music playlist :-/

dag11 6y ago

> Taking time to explore the back catalogue of artists you like and taking the time to get to know music. This complaint confuses me, as an avid Spotify user. A few times a week when I discover an artist I like, it's one click to look at their entire back catalog, listen to it sequentially, browse the artist bio, click through to the artist's social media to see what projects they're up to, right click and view who produced the tracks to find similarly-produced tracks, etc! > it was something you waited for I follow many artists and look forward to their upcoming albums. Why should my wait be extended by manufacturing, supply chains, my schedule to go to a shop, or my own budget to own physical media? And I say all this as both a heavy Spotify user and a listener of vinyl records. I always get the albums I enjoy most on vinyl for higher fidelity active listening and the physical visual artwork that accompanies the disk.

kortilla 6y ago
> I enjoy most on vinyl for higher fidelity active listening Vinyl is not “higher fidelity” than what you pay for on Spotify, at least not in the audio quality sense.
- dag11 6y ago
  It's higher fidelity than 320 kbps. Not remotely higher fidelity than FM or CD quality audio. But I've A/B tested songs I know inside and out on the same equipment using both vinyl and 320 kbps mp3 and I can hear the difference night and day. But the main reason I listen to it is not that it's better than Spotify, but that it's a physically beautiful medium with artwork and is still high quality while promoting active, intimate listening.
  - Kye 6y ago
    Vinyl seems higher quality because it's such an unforgiving medium. The mastering has to be done well or it'll sound terrible. The MP3, CD, and vinyl are not necessarily done by the same person, or someone with equal skill in each. FM has someone in a sound booth who knows what they're doing.
  - 6y ago

justatdotin 6y ago

are you saying you appreciate music less now? or are you policing others' appreciation?

arcturus17 6y ago

Except maybe vinyl, I've gone through it all: taping songs off the radio, burning minidiscs and CDs, Napster, eMule, Pandora, iTunes, etc. I love Spotify and the actual way of consuming and discovering music. Some say that music taste stagnates as we age but I come from a metal and rock background and I have been making escapades into electronic music (including EDM), funk, soul, and more in my late twenties and early thirties, and I expect this trend to continue into old age. None of this ever happened when I was in my teens, where I would just buy the metal magazines, go to the metal record store, and speak only to metalheads. Part may be me, but another part is certainly Spotify / music streaming. My only criticism is that Spotify's music recommendation algorithms are really subpar. When I like a new song, I tap "Go to Radio" and it shows a playlist of related songs, but it seems like it relies too much on the preferences of other users and on obvious connections between artists. Pandora in the mid-2000's already blew it out of the water in this regard - I remember going through a personal golden age of music discovery thanks to it. I could not believe how spot-on the recommendations felt and how they could dig out superobscure stuff that resonated with me. I don't know what the state of the service is right now but if it was just as good as in the 2000's and it was available in Europe I would pay for it without a doubt. What's surprising is that Spotify's recommendation tech is so far behind, and that they don't seem to care. Other than that, I can't think of a single non-essential service in my life providing more value than "$9.99 a month for unlimited music". The utility to cost ratio is off the charts since I use it for six or eight hours daily and it costs peanuts. If there was a nuclear apocalypse and I had to listen to cassettes on my pipboy, I'd surely be nostalgic about the good old days of music streaming.

morlockabove 6y ago
Just download all the music onto your home (bunker) server and stream from that!

friendlybus 6y ago

Yeah I agree there's a barrier between the endless eight ball of streaming songs and the music you've downloaded onto your computer. Once you've plucked a song from the internet and put it into your collection it becomes reliable, you know why you saved it and what playlist it belongs and what activity you want to pair with it and what frame of mind you were in when you saved it. Streaming/youtube is so ephemeral, even with history and playlists it's difficult to remember what you found so groovy about a piece when it could all be gone tomorrow. I rarely develop a fixed memory of a song until I've saved it.

holri 6y ago

The Best thing to do with music is play or sing it for yourself. That is hard, but also very rewarding, because it takes time, patience and love.

yoz-y 6y ago

> Music discovery is easy, relying on a streaming service for discovery is lazy. People are lazy. Automatic discovery works well enough so why bother unless music is something really important in your life?

oblio 6y ago
Or in other words: Expert in field X disappointed that regular people are not experts in field X :-)

gitowiec 6y ago

I agree with everything what you said. My collection of MP3 is huge. And collecting this music gave me so much fun. Discovery in Spotify is much less fun. There is no friend with similar taste, no DJ you know from gigs you party, no radio editor which voice you love, it is just an algorithm. And serving content right away fast without searching and waiting makes that one does not listen repeatedly songs just discovered. Just jumping from one to next. This destroys the ritual, which is very important as rituals keep and enforce identity of the listener. When I was listening Goa trance I felt connected to gigs I was partying. When I switched to Legendary Pink Dots or Radio Head I was connected to my inner sorrow and so on and on... It all became more mechanical with streaming, soulless...

randomsearch 6y ago

You’re projecting your free time / dedication to discovery on other people and that’s unfair. Spotify’s discovery tools for example are a real boon to many. That said, I do feel the same as you about the “good old days”. Owning music was a very different experience. It doesn’t help that streaming apps haven’t worked out the UX yet (god knows why, they’ve had long enough). But... flip side... if I could time travel back to being a teenager and say “for £10 a month (even in that money) you can have access to pretty much all music commercially released” I would have cried with joy at the thought of it. There are so many bands I probably wouldn’t have worked through the catalogue of because they weren’t on my radar or popular within my social circles - even major artists like Bowie or Queen - and Spotify has enabled me to work through most of the great 20th century pop/rock/indie music, plus explore a lot of dance and electro I wouldn’t have. Problem is I think it’s (the?) jam today and bread tomorrow... I think popular music peaked just before the internet arrived. A good tell is the many festival line ups full of very old bands. If you make a list of the greatest bands/artists of the latest 10 years and compare it to any decade since pop music got going, it doesn’t compare. I don’t think that’s the commercialisation of music (that hasn’t changed so much) rather the financial incentives are no longer there. Appropriately for HN, a lot of kids dream of a building a startup instead of making music.

jon-wood 6y ago
The cynic in me thinks that the abundance of old bands on festival line ups is probably more focused on targeting people with disposable income, rather than a young audience who may be very enthusiastic, but are also broke.
ubercow13 6y ago
>If you make a list of the greatest bands/artists of the latest 10 years and compare it to any decade since pop music got going, it doesn’t compare Ah, a classic meme: https://old.reddit.com/r/lewronggeneration/ https://old.reddit.com/r/lewronggeneration/
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tomjen3 6y ago

>Music discovery is easy, relying on a streaming service for discovery is lazy. What's hard is commitment. Taking time to explore the back catalogue of artists you like and taking the time to get to know music. That is only true if you only use the Radio feature and never notice the suggested artists. Otherwise everything you listed is literally easier than it has ever been. If you want to complain that other people are doing things wrong, then please stop. You have no control over other people.

mhh__ 6y ago

> [Back in my day xyz] There is nothing stopping you listening to the full albums, and platforms like streaming have allowed some unbelievably niche artists and albums to happen that would've never ever made it out of the studio in a traditional record label.

maxerickson 6y ago

Now do one about live music vs recordings and then after that do one about making music vs listening to music.

toper-centage 6y ago

I don't want to scavange the Internet for music and I don't want to own a bunch of music files that I'll forget about in an aging drive. I'm totally fine with music as a service. But I totally agree that we can't let go of the possibility of owning music files.

UncleMeat 6y ago

> Building playlists on a streaming service is not the same as building a music collection. If you aren't pirating, it is a lot cheaper. Whenever this topic comes up, somebody boasts about their 2000 album collection or whatever and simple math demonstrates that you'd get like 100 years of streaming services for that price. > When all you had was physical media, you listened to albums over and over got to know them, relished the new albums you purchased and had to take the time to decide between one or the other. This feels like "yells at cloud" to me. I don't buy the "worse product forces appreciation" argument in any circumstance. I am far more able to appreciate a wider range of music now than ever before, in large part because it isn't a $15 dollar commitment to listen to an album and decide if I like it.

hedora 6y ago

I like Tidal’s browsing features, though the featured artists are never for me. Almost every album in my collection has a linked artist bio or album review that lists influences. On top of that, there’s a list of “similar artists for each band, and it’s usually surprising and spot on. I’m starting to branch out into more of their curated playlists too. It’s basically everything I wanted a music store to be back in the day.

bamboleo 6y ago

Classic "old man yells at cloud." Nobody is stopping you from picking an album and setting it on repeat. Everything you could do before, you can still do, just without heading out nor opening your wallet. The only thing that concerns me about streaming is that music might disappear in the future. Everything else is just your own nostalgia, I don't miss having to listen to my father's tapes on repeat.