8 ms·

The forgotten pleasures of analog media

89 points by axiomdata316 5y ago

oneforty4 5y ago
This is an interesting read and I find the author's observations rather relatable. Some of my friends really, really prefer streaming and that's great! But it never quite agreed with me for some of the reasons I think are given here. I often find that there's a tendency to endlessly navigate a streaming service just to find something to watch. Maybe it's an overabundance of choice or maybe its just that algorithms and infinitely scrollable pages are a dark pattern. Blu-rays, CD's, and vinyl make me more particular and emphatic with my choices. I don't put something on just to watch or have background, I usually pick something specifically because I want to watch it.
- propertymagnate 5y ago
  We (my partner and I) do enjoy streaming media to a degree, but I prefer physical like yourself. I also find a kind of (likely pretentious) comfort in having control over the media, as in knowing the version I am watching hasn't been edited or changed like airplane movies used to be. In general though I recommend separating the acts of curating media (i.e finding it and cataloguing it) and watching or consuming it. I started doing this years back when RSS was a thing and I found myself doomscrolling through hundreds of articles, not able to remember what I had read (and sincerely enjoyed) a few hours earlier. I strongly recommend it to anyone who finds themself doing something similar. Also unrelated, but Netflix's interface actively discourages searching for additional information on their content, as normally none of the titles, cast, etc, are text and highlightable/cut and pastable.
- shuntress 5y ago
  The "infinite browsing" still happened in physical stores though, of course, not quite to the same scale and it's a different sort of experience because you had to leave your house. I more-or-less agree with the point in the article. Knowing you have less access to something can help make you more conscious about your decision.
  - nomel 5y ago
    The biggest problem with browsing at a music store is that the only way to guess what it sounded like was by looking at the song names, cover art, and which section it was in in the ridiculously imprecise categorization for the "genre" it was in. I spent way too much money on terrible music with this game. With Spotify, I can actually find new music and artists, without going broke, and without relying on the, usually fairly limited, suggestions from others. I have zero interest in artificially limiting the music I'll be exposed to, just to make that limited, and potentially undesirable, selection seem better than it actually is. I love music. I definitely don't want to get stuck with a few albums on repeat.
- l8rpeace 5y ago
  "I often find that there's a tendency to endlessly navigate a streaming service just to find something to watch." I miss in person product discovery and wayfinding mechanisms, even if I know they themselves are (were?) curated (toy stores, record stores, book stores). I have diligently tried to adapt well to digital discovery, but it hasn't been the same for me. Part of it is haptic, but another part is that digital seems overwhelming. I also get discouraged when I know exactly what I want to find digitally and I'm given myriad other options except the one I want. I look forward to constant evolution in the space and I actually think that AR/VR scenarios can help there.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Yeah. I'm not sure it was a "good" use of time (whatever that means) but I do miss browsing book stores and record stores--especially used ones. I still do it from time to time but, to be honest, it's mostly a "for old time's sake" sort of thing. The music is almost certainly available streaming and there's an almost infinite number of books available for purchase/download (with reviews) online as well.
xdennis 5y ago
I got back into analog media for a little while but stopped because the prices are just so ridiculous. A single Burzum tape costs more than £30.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Realize that in current dollars that's probably about what vinyl LPs cost when they were the primary way that people bought music.
- spacemadness 5y ago
  Tape is fetishized like crazy right now so that’s not surprising. I see runs of 500 tapes on Bandcamp sold out immediately all the time for not-so-well-known artists.
  - stryan 5y ago
    I think the vinyl shortage is contributing a lot to this. Right now if you want a physical copy that's not a CD or by a major act (Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran both released vinyl albums that supposedly took up the majority of the worlds music vinyl production), you're stuck with tapes. And very few people seem to want CDs. I remember only a couple years ago that tapes were the dirt cheap option of getting something physical. At least by me it still is if you're buying in person; most of the punk bands and electronic artists are just recording over old tapes they've found so you can buy em for five to ten bucks a pop at the show.
    - spacemadness 5y ago
      That is interesting as vinyl can have an audiophile component to it depending on the release but tape is exactly the opposite and often purposefully so. Then there is the ease of skipping around with vinyl. I get the appeal either way, just find it interesting people are being forced to do with tape when it’s not their first choice.
    - madengr 5y ago
Koshkin 5y ago
Going on a tangent, one advantage of the analog TV was that often one could watch a channel even in the presence of interference or a weak signal, whereas with the digital this is no longer possible.
- primis 5y ago
  This is actually a misnomer for the most part. While it is true that analog TV degrades gracefully to static and digital cuts out, Digital actually requires a lot less signal to noise to display. When digital cuts out it's actually at much lower signal levels then when analog tv is basically static. I will concede that the analog audio inside the signal is more robust, humans are very good at picking out sound from static.
- clktmr 5y ago
  There are codecs which support this. I don't know if it's used anywhere because it certainly only makes sense for terrestrial broadcasting.
  - anthk 5y ago
    Yet, AM/FM radio is much better on remote, isolated places than DAB. I woudn't trust DAB on a emergency.
    - clktmr 5y ago
      At the cost of a much higher bandwidth. I don't disagree, just wan't to clarify it's not a issue of digital encoding.
      - hulitu 5y ago
        The lower bandwidth of DAB results in lower quality. My car radio stays on FM because DAB is horrible.
        clktmr 5y ago
agumonkey 5y ago
I cannot suffer the binge era. It's mind boggling. The constant discussions about watching 100 things without never moving [0].. sometimes at 1.25x speed. It's just insane. [0] I consider moving out of your house a massive indicator of value.
dekhn 5y ago
I have bid fond farewell to (audio and video) cassettes, records, CDs, etc. Just threw out the last few of my actual spinning rust hard drives, too. I love it.
999900000999 5y ago
Another thing not mentioned is the fun in finding media itself. I went out with a girl I met at a record store once, and I’ve met several musicians when I’m out buying music. When you can get everything beamed directly to your house, you miss out on so many adventures. I imagine many marriages originated from chance encounters at Blockbuster. Instead of some cool college student suggesting an old 80’s film, Netflix tells you to watch it’s new 50 million dollar movie. While I love the internet , the world feels less fun now. So many multi billion dollar companies nudging me in this direction or that direction…
- pengaru 5y ago
  Spending entire days in used book/cd stores has previously been the sole reason I'd visit some towns. They've nearly all vanished, often replaced with hipster bars and coffee shops where everyone's buried in their personal mobile devices. It's no longer worth even paying for the parking, which coincidentally also used to be free.
- WalterSear 5y ago
  > Instead of some cool college student suggesting an old 80’s film, Netflix tells you to watch it’s new 50 million dollar movie. While I love the internet , the world feels less fun now. Netflix isn't the internet. Those cool 80's films are still out there.
- Loughla 5y ago
  >Instead of some cool college student suggesting an old 80’s film, Netflix tells you to watch it’s new 50 million dollar movie. While I love the internet , the world feels less fun now. So many multi billion dollar companies nudging me in this direction or that direction… This is exactly what I haven't been able to put into words without sounding and feeling like a giant hipster douche. It's not about finding smaller, unknown songs/bands/films. It's about the experience of sharing. I know that the guy at the record store has nothing invested in suggesting this weird little indie band to me outside of being a fan and wanting to spread the word. Whereas I know that Netflix is going to suggest to me what will keep me hooked and what they need to see a return on their investment. The internet has 100% made the world less fun. More accessible, sure, but way less fun now that it's mostly corporate (or at least seems that way).
camtarn 5y ago
It doesn't even need to be physical media. I switched from buying CDs and ripping them to MP3, to just buying MP3, once I realised that the bit that I value most is simply having a finite music collection that I know well. I take my music collection with me by running a Plex server on a Raspberry Pi at home - some of it isn't available on streaming services. (A couple of albums aren't even available to buy any more, in any format.) I wouldn't say I know every single album in it like the back of my hand - but I'm at least familiar with them all, and that gives me a lot of satisfaction. I do still use streaming services occasionally when I want something my library doesn't cover - say I'm really in the mood to explore UK grime music one day, or 90s dubstep the next. But I find it a very different experience to listening to old familiar songs.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  I could buy an album on MP3 for $10+ now, oooor I could go to the local Good Will regularly and pick up any CDs that look interesting for $1 apiece and rip those, then return them to Good Will when I don't want to hang on to them anymore. This doesn't really work if you want new releases or something specific of course, but I've rediscovered some great music from late 80s to early 2000s artists by browsing it periodically. And for $1 a CD, it's much easier to justify taking a risk on something.
  - camtarn 5y ago
    Heh, yeah, that's actually what used to motivate me to buy things on CD. Nowadays, I'm very fortunate to have a decent bit more disposable income than I used to, so I'm happy to put some directly towards the artist. I prefer to buy from Bandcamp where I can, which seems to have the largest artist share (up to 100% on promo days!)
    - cableshaft 5y ago
      I still buy digital albums as well, and I've bought a decent number of albums on Bandcamp over the years. But I also enjoy getting older albums cheap when I can.
- 5y ago
twofornone 5y ago
There's also something to be said for physically coming across old analog media and being reminded of its existence, sparked to revisit the memories kept in old home recordings or ancient photographs; I don't think there's any equivalent for digital data stored on some social media site. Digital data is perfect for our throwaway consumerist culture and I lament that this also applies to memories of our own lives.
- pjerem 5y ago
  tbf, this something also works with digital data as long as it’s stored on some physical media you own. I have a hard disk on which I throw random stuff since mostly a decade. There is nothing really important on there. It’s mostly unorganized junk that is probably 99% available on the internet. No files I would ever really need. But I like to sometimes browse it because a lot of those files are connected to memories. There are some music files on it, some pirated movies that a university friend copied on it. And those dirty xvid and wma files feels like they are really mine.
310260 5y ago
It's gotten to the point where I always feel like I'm "behind" on good movies or TV because it's become so accessible and everyone around me seems to have managed to watch it all. I can't stand it though and often find myself repeating shows out of convenience and comfort. When I do find new shows I like, they end up feeling more special as well.
a-dub 5y ago
i feel the same way about spotify. it's great having access to everything, but it ultimately kinda destroyed my music hobby. the version of me from 10 or 20 years ago would be ashamed of what i listen to now... but that could also just be the natural effects of aging.
- pjerem 5y ago
  I’m younger than you and as a teen with no money, I used to listen free music on Jamendo. There were a lot of crap on it but also a good number of very authentic, very nice albums. They were hard to found but it was so good once you discovered some new thing like. It was like the music was made for me. Waiting for me to discover it and listening it in loop. Spotify is full of music I like. But it’s probably because it’s full of music that was intentionally made to be liked by most humans. It’s like industrial food. Sure I like it and I could probably eat that everyday (health issues aside). But it’s boring. All these feels like being a spoiled kid. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t be more happy just going back to piracy. « Owning » those movies, that music library on this hard drive. I don’t really miss the physical mediums (ok, a little) but what I miss is owning the stuff. Even if it’s files. I am absurdly irritated when things just disappear on Netflix or when Season $x it’s not available there whereas I’m paying every month to access those things. It really feels like the industry disrespects me. At this point, I think the only reason why I’m still paying is that I’m sharing my account with other people.
nickt 5y ago
I recently bought an old Technics cassette deck, identical to the one I had in the early 90s while on a retro computer hunt. It’s nice but not top of the range, but I’ve been blown away by the quality of the first generation recordings onto Type II cassettes. The Type I seem to be as meh as I remember them. TASCAM has just announced the 424, the first new Type II cassette in years. Cobalt, not Chrome Dioxide, which I can only imagine was pretty environmentally unfriendly. https://tascam.com/us/product/424/top https://tascam.com/us/product/424/top
smm11 5y ago
I love starting my car with the hand crank that extends from beneath the front bumper.
- h9n 5y ago
  I’m sure this comment is facetious, but as many motorcyclists will attest, something absolutely was lost in the 80s with the transition to electric starter motors. Kickstarting a motorcycle is a truly pleasurable experience (at least for smaller displacements). And the loss is not just aesthetic, but practical too; you needn’t worry about your battery going flat — on some bikes you don’t even need the battery installed at all to start it!
blackbrokkoli 5y ago
Reminds me of the Hedonistic Treadmill - whatever your environment, your brain adapts as the baseline and everything slightly below it is now disappointing while everything above it slightly elating. Usually this concept is used to explain why lottery winners do not seem to be all that much happier than the rest of the populace, but it applies here to: Whatever is required to get media is the normal: You build little rituals around it, you have tiny little traditions in the friend group. For some guy this is "getting into the old family beater to drive to the VHS-rental", for another gal it's "the Netflix ba-doom sound while settling into the couch" and I am sure they both could write a nostalgic blog post about it 15 years later. On the one hand, this is aligned with the articles premise that we maybe have not actually moved forward in an emotional sense, but I also like the other, maybe Stoic side of this - the outside world and its offers matter way less than what you make of it in your head and heart :)
- ghaff 5y ago
  In general, you adjust to what is available and what is relatively easy. This is true in a lot of contexts. If some activity isn't available to you or is a big hassle--say you don't have enough room in your apartment to store some outdoor activity gear or a ready way to transport it--you probably just do something that's easier most of the time. And you probably adapt to that rather than banging your head against the wall.
  - MiddleEndian 5y ago
    >say you don't have enough room in your apartment It's all good until you disagree with your roommate/SO on what fits into your apartment... then the head-wall-banging can be indefinite!
adrianmonk 5y ago
> In that Age of Browsing, you had fewer choices and you had to navigate them carefully. Even in today's buffet world, you still CAN navigate them carefully. And it's a good mental habit to have. I consciously watch myself and try to notice when I've failed to do this. For example, suppose I'm looking for an answer to some question on Google, and I enter my query. I can then either: (1) look at the first 10 and judiciously choose which are worth my time to read/skim and ctrl-click to open a tab for (say) 3 of them, or (2) aimlessly ctrl-click all and get 10 tabs to look at. #2 feels good in a way because I'm getting more info. But #1 gives superior results. Not just because I have less to wade through, but also because somehow my mind is in a more focused, active state. #2 is a sign that my mind has checked out and is not really engaged in this part of whatever I'm doing. This happens more in the digital/streaming world because the buffets are larger. But it's not exclusive to that. I can still fall into the trap with physical stuff. I can still go into a store and try on 10 shirts without thinking carefully about whether I like them, and since I entered the changing room in the wrong frame of mind to choose a good shirt to buy, I'm probably still in the wrong frame of mind after trying on 10 shirts.
pmarreck 5y ago
I play Christmas records at Christmas for the aesthetics. The most annoying thing actually (other than that records scratch easily and literally degrade a bit every time you play them) is that each side of a 33 1/3 RPM record only has a few songs... but perhaps that's part of the charm
slackfan 5y ago
I tried the whole streaming thing, it ended up not being for me. I still buy physical media, often on formats that are long dead because partially, it's fun to tool around with dead formats, and no silly copyright dispute is going to suddenly pull my ability to watch the original Star Wars cut on laserdisc. Digital files are as ephemeral as the storage they reside on. Piling more ephemeral storage into the equation does little to help.
shmde 5y ago
I could resonate with OP watching Netflix solely because he paid for it. I pay for Netflix, Disney+ and Prime. The only way for me to NOT get the most of them and waste my time (watching the generic netflix shows) is to browse a few minutes of IMDB beforehand, keep a note of all the movies which fits my interests and search them up on netflix/dinsey+/prime. I know this is still a waste of time, but atleast this was I get the satisfaction of watching what I selected and not what was selected for me. PS: Even though I subscribe to three different streaming platform, 1/3 of the time I don't find it and have to go the pirate way.
ganzuul 5y ago
No encoding issues or micro-stutter in analog. Gotta love that.
jelliclesfarm 5y ago
I love half price books stores..I have a kindle stash but that feeling of browsing in a bookstore cannot compare. You can’t read comics and graphic novels digitally. They also carry records and first editions. I don’t care much about first editions but I want to support them in small ways. I gift books to my friends children for Xmas and New Years.
charles_f 5y ago
> There’s great pleasure in repetition and ritual. My family came to know a lot of dialogue by heart. That bit resonates a lot with me. We had a rotation of regular movies that we would watch with my family and it was a pleasure every time. I remember the cheer comfort that came out of this, when someone proposed to watch a classic. We keep quoting some of these to this day.
leokennis 5y ago
I don’t know. Sure, the current state of affairs isn’t perfect. But being able to search for any music anywhere in the world (not limited to the physical media you have on you), having it beamed in pristine digital quality (no worn out cassette) to a pair of wireless earbuds (no half bent wires resulting in only the left earbud working) that also block outside noise (so you can actually hear the music) sure is pleasurable to me.
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  Now the question is: Does pleasurable equal good? I've heard that Heroin is really pleasurable while you are still high on it. ^_^ Also, my personal experience with Deezer was that their app is so horribly buggy that copying MP3s to an old player and physically connecting the cinch cable turned out to be much more reliable.
  - leokennis 5y ago
    It might depend on the person. When I was 14 with a Minidisc I had around 15 discs I’d regularly listen to. Couldn’t afford any more. Later I expanded to a ~300 CD collection which I also put on my iPod. Now I have access to a gazillion songs, but my Apple Music “library” is still less than 500 albums. I spend 95% of my listening time with those 500 albums. I have never asked for or sought any “suggestion” from the Apple Music app. However in case there’s something new I want to listen to (I read a review, I heard a song on TV I’m interested in) I have it right there, legally in perfect quality. Don’t need to buy a CD and rip it to iTunes and send it to my iPod or worse, record it in real-time to a Minidisc. So I’m still not convinced I’m currently “missing out” on anything from the 90’s/00’s.
hellisothers 5y ago
Man this hits hard, over the last several years I’ve been experiencing a growing ennui about not having “a people” or “a place”, no anchors that define me and I can lean on for support. I have a loving family, a handful of close friends, and a nice house in a nice neighborhood but that’s not the same; I would uproot my family and move (and have considered it), I have no roots here. This article evokes similar feelings, wishing I had a bookshelf instead of 100’s of kindle books, CDs/records, and video discs on shelves instead of Spotify and Netflix so my son could see what I prefer more easily, so I could group, remember, and recommend. Sigh

89 points by axiomdata316 5y ago

This is an interesting read and I find the author's observations rather relatable. Some of my friends really, really prefer streaming and that's great! But it never quite agreed with me for some of the reasons I think are given here. I often find that there's a tendency to endlessly navigate a streaming service just to find something to watch. Maybe it's an overabundance of choice or maybe its just that algorithms and infinitely scrollable pages are a dark pattern. Blu-rays, CD's, and vinyl make me more particular and emphatic with my choices. I don't put something on just to watch or have background, I usually pick something specifically because I want to watch it.

propertymagnate 5y ago
We (my partner and I) do enjoy streaming media to a degree, but I prefer physical like yourself. I also find a kind of (likely pretentious) comfort in having control over the media, as in knowing the version I am watching hasn't been edited or changed like airplane movies used to be. In general though I recommend separating the acts of curating media (i.e finding it and cataloguing it) and watching or consuming it. I started doing this years back when RSS was a thing and I found myself doomscrolling through hundreds of articles, not able to remember what I had read (and sincerely enjoyed) a few hours earlier. I strongly recommend it to anyone who finds themself doing something similar. Also unrelated, but Netflix's interface actively discourages searching for additional information on their content, as normally none of the titles, cast, etc, are text and highlightable/cut and pastable.
shuntress 5y ago
The "infinite browsing" still happened in physical stores though, of course, not quite to the same scale and it's a different sort of experience because you had to leave your house. I more-or-less agree with the point in the article. Knowing you have less access to something can help make you more conscious about your decision.
- nomel 5y ago
  The biggest problem with browsing at a music store is that the only way to guess what it sounded like was by looking at the song names, cover art, and which section it was in in the ridiculously imprecise categorization for the "genre" it was in. I spent way too much money on terrible music with this game. With Spotify, I can actually find new music and artists, without going broke, and without relying on the, usually fairly limited, suggestions from others. I have zero interest in artificially limiting the music I'll be exposed to, just to make that limited, and potentially undesirable, selection seem better than it actually is. I love music. I definitely don't want to get stuck with a few albums on repeat.
l8rpeace 5y ago
"I often find that there's a tendency to endlessly navigate a streaming service just to find something to watch." I miss in person product discovery and wayfinding mechanisms, even if I know they themselves are (were?) curated (toy stores, record stores, book stores). I have diligently tried to adapt well to digital discovery, but it hasn't been the same for me. Part of it is haptic, but another part is that digital seems overwhelming. I also get discouraged when I know exactly what I want to find digitally and I'm given myriad other options except the one I want. I look forward to constant evolution in the space and I actually think that AR/VR scenarios can help there.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Yeah. I'm not sure it was a "good" use of time (whatever that means) but I do miss browsing book stores and record stores--especially used ones. I still do it from time to time but, to be honest, it's mostly a "for old time's sake" sort of thing. The music is almost certainly available streaming and there's an almost infinite number of books available for purchase/download (with reviews) online as well.

xdennis 5y ago

I got back into analog media for a little while but stopped because the prices are just so ridiculous. A single Burzum tape costs more than £30.

ghaff 5y ago
Realize that in current dollars that's probably about what vinyl LPs cost when they were the primary way that people bought music.
spacemadness 5y ago
Tape is fetishized like crazy right now so that’s not surprising. I see runs of 500 tapes on Bandcamp sold out immediately all the time for not-so-well-known artists.
- stryan 5y ago
  I think the vinyl shortage is contributing a lot to this. Right now if you want a physical copy that's not a CD or by a major act (Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran both released vinyl albums that supposedly took up the majority of the worlds music vinyl production), you're stuck with tapes. And very few people seem to want CDs. I remember only a couple years ago that tapes were the dirt cheap option of getting something physical. At least by me it still is if you're buying in person; most of the punk bands and electronic artists are just recording over old tapes they've found so you can buy em for five to ten bucks a pop at the show.
  - spacemadness 5y ago
    That is interesting as vinyl can have an audiophile component to it depending on the release but tape is exactly the opposite and often purposefully so. Then there is the ease of skipping around with vinyl. I get the appeal either way, just find it interesting people are being forced to do with tape when it’s not their first choice.
  - madengr 5y ago

Koshkin 5y ago

Going on a tangent, one advantage of the analog TV was that often one could watch a channel even in the presence of interference or a weak signal, whereas with the digital this is no longer possible.

primis 5y ago
This is actually a misnomer for the most part. While it is true that analog TV degrades gracefully to static and digital cuts out, Digital actually requires a lot less signal to noise to display. When digital cuts out it's actually at much lower signal levels then when analog tv is basically static. I will concede that the analog audio inside the signal is more robust, humans are very good at picking out sound from static.
clktmr 5y ago
There are codecs which support this. I don't know if it's used anywhere because it certainly only makes sense for terrestrial broadcasting.
- anthk 5y ago
  Yet, AM/FM radio is much better on remote, isolated places than DAB. I woudn't trust DAB on a emergency.
  - clktmr 5y ago
    At the cost of a much higher bandwidth. I don't disagree, just wan't to clarify it's not a issue of digital encoding.
    - hulitu 5y ago
      The lower bandwidth of DAB results in lower quality. My car radio stays on FM because DAB is horrible.
      - clktmr 5y ago

agumonkey 5y ago

I cannot suffer the binge era. It's mind boggling. The constant discussions about watching 100 things without never moving [0].. sometimes at 1.25x speed. It's just insane. [0] I consider moving out of your house a massive indicator of value.

dekhn 5y ago

I have bid fond farewell to (audio and video) cassettes, records, CDs, etc. Just threw out the last few of my actual spinning rust hard drives, too. I love it.

999900000999 5y ago

Another thing not mentioned is the fun in finding media itself. I went out with a girl I met at a record store once, and I’ve met several musicians when I’m out buying music. When you can get everything beamed directly to your house, you miss out on so many adventures. I imagine many marriages originated from chance encounters at Blockbuster. Instead of some cool college student suggesting an old 80’s film, Netflix tells you to watch it’s new 50 million dollar movie. While I love the internet , the world feels less fun now. So many multi billion dollar companies nudging me in this direction or that direction…

pengaru 5y ago
Spending entire days in used book/cd stores has previously been the sole reason I'd visit some towns. They've nearly all vanished, often replaced with hipster bars and coffee shops where everyone's buried in their personal mobile devices. It's no longer worth even paying for the parking, which coincidentally also used to be free.
WalterSear 5y ago
> Instead of some cool college student suggesting an old 80’s film, Netflix tells you to watch it’s new 50 million dollar movie. While I love the internet , the world feels less fun now. Netflix isn't the internet. Those cool 80's films are still out there.
Loughla 5y ago
>Instead of some cool college student suggesting an old 80’s film, Netflix tells you to watch it’s new 50 million dollar movie. While I love the internet , the world feels less fun now. So many multi billion dollar companies nudging me in this direction or that direction… This is exactly what I haven't been able to put into words without sounding and feeling like a giant hipster douche. It's not about finding smaller, unknown songs/bands/films. It's about the experience of sharing. I know that the guy at the record store has nothing invested in suggesting this weird little indie band to me outside of being a fan and wanting to spread the word. Whereas I know that Netflix is going to suggest to me what will keep me hooked and what they need to see a return on their investment. The internet has 100% made the world less fun. More accessible, sure, but way less fun now that it's mostly corporate (or at least seems that way).

camtarn 5y ago

It doesn't even need to be physical media. I switched from buying CDs and ripping them to MP3, to just buying MP3, once I realised that the bit that I value most is simply having a finite music collection that I know well. I take my music collection with me by running a Plex server on a Raspberry Pi at home - some of it isn't available on streaming services. (A couple of albums aren't even available to buy any more, in any format.) I wouldn't say I know every single album in it like the back of my hand - but I'm at least familiar with them all, and that gives me a lot of satisfaction. I do still use streaming services occasionally when I want something my library doesn't cover - say I'm really in the mood to explore UK grime music one day, or 90s dubstep the next. But I find it a very different experience to listening to old familiar songs.

cableshaft 5y ago
I could buy an album on MP3 for $10+ now, oooor I could go to the local Good Will regularly and pick up any CDs that look interesting for $1 apiece and rip those, then return them to Good Will when I don't want to hang on to them anymore. This doesn't really work if you want new releases or something specific of course, but I've rediscovered some great music from late 80s to early 2000s artists by browsing it periodically. And for $1 a CD, it's much easier to justify taking a risk on something.
- camtarn 5y ago
  Heh, yeah, that's actually what used to motivate me to buy things on CD. Nowadays, I'm very fortunate to have a decent bit more disposable income than I used to, so I'm happy to put some directly towards the artist. I prefer to buy from Bandcamp where I can, which seems to have the largest artist share (up to 100% on promo days!)
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    I still buy digital albums as well, and I've bought a decent number of albums on Bandcamp over the years. But I also enjoy getting older albums cheap when I can.
5y ago

twofornone 5y ago

There's also something to be said for physically coming across old analog media and being reminded of its existence, sparked to revisit the memories kept in old home recordings or ancient photographs; I don't think there's any equivalent for digital data stored on some social media site. Digital data is perfect for our throwaway consumerist culture and I lament that this also applies to memories of our own lives.

pjerem 5y ago
tbf, this something also works with digital data as long as it’s stored on some physical media you own. I have a hard disk on which I throw random stuff since mostly a decade. There is nothing really important on there. It’s mostly unorganized junk that is probably 99% available on the internet. No files I would ever really need. But I like to sometimes browse it because a lot of those files are connected to memories. There are some music files on it, some pirated movies that a university friend copied on it. And those dirty xvid and wma files feels like they are really mine.

310260 5y ago

It's gotten to the point where I always feel like I'm "behind" on good movies or TV because it's become so accessible and everyone around me seems to have managed to watch it all. I can't stand it though and often find myself repeating shows out of convenience and comfort. When I do find new shows I like, they end up feeling more special as well.

a-dub 5y ago

i feel the same way about spotify. it's great having access to everything, but it ultimately kinda destroyed my music hobby. the version of me from 10 or 20 years ago would be ashamed of what i listen to now... but that could also just be the natural effects of aging.

pjerem 5y ago
I’m younger than you and as a teen with no money, I used to listen free music on Jamendo. There were a lot of crap on it but also a good number of very authentic, very nice albums. They were hard to found but it was so good once you discovered some new thing like. It was like the music was made for me. Waiting for me to discover it and listening it in loop. Spotify is full of music I like. But it’s probably because it’s full of music that was intentionally made to be liked by most humans. It’s like industrial food. Sure I like it and I could probably eat that everyday (health issues aside). But it’s boring. All these feels like being a spoiled kid. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t be more happy just going back to piracy. « Owning » those movies, that music library on this hard drive. I don’t really miss the physical mediums (ok, a little) but what I miss is owning the stuff. Even if it’s files. I am absurdly irritated when things just disappear on Netflix or when Season $x it’s not available there whereas I’m paying every month to access those things. It really feels like the industry disrespects me. At this point, I think the only reason why I’m still paying is that I’m sharing my account with other people.

nickt 5y ago

I recently bought an old Technics cassette deck, identical to the one I had in the early 90s while on a retro computer hunt. It’s nice but not top of the range, but I’ve been blown away by the quality of the first generation recordings onto Type II cassettes. The Type I seem to be as meh as I remember them. TASCAM has just announced the 424, the first new Type II cassette in years. Cobalt, not Chrome Dioxide, which I can only imagine was pretty environmentally unfriendly. https://tascam.com/us/product/424/top https://tascam.com/us/product/424/top

smm11 5y ago

I love starting my car with the hand crank that extends from beneath the front bumper.

h9n 5y ago
I’m sure this comment is facetious, but as many motorcyclists will attest, something absolutely was lost in the 80s with the transition to electric starter motors. Kickstarting a motorcycle is a truly pleasurable experience (at least for smaller displacements). And the loss is not just aesthetic, but practical too; you needn’t worry about your battery going flat — on some bikes you don’t even need the battery installed at all to start it!

blackbrokkoli 5y ago

Reminds me of the Hedonistic Treadmill - whatever your environment, your brain adapts as the baseline and everything slightly below it is now disappointing while everything above it slightly elating. Usually this concept is used to explain why lottery winners do not seem to be all that much happier than the rest of the populace, but it applies here to: Whatever is required to get media is the normal: You build little rituals around it, you have tiny little traditions in the friend group. For some guy this is "getting into the old family beater to drive to the VHS-rental", for another gal it's "the Netflix ba-doom sound while settling into the couch" and I am sure they both could write a nostalgic blog post about it 15 years later. On the one hand, this is aligned with the articles premise that we maybe have not actually moved forward in an emotional sense, but I also like the other, maybe Stoic side of this - the outside world and its offers matter way less than what you make of it in your head and heart :)

ghaff 5y ago
In general, you adjust to what is available and what is relatively easy. This is true in a lot of contexts. If some activity isn't available to you or is a big hassle--say you don't have enough room in your apartment to store some outdoor activity gear or a ready way to transport it--you probably just do something that's easier most of the time. And you probably adapt to that rather than banging your head against the wall.
- MiddleEndian 5y ago
  >say you don't have enough room in your apartment It's all good until you disagree with your roommate/SO on what fits into your apartment... then the head-wall-banging can be indefinite!

adrianmonk 5y ago

> In that Age of Browsing, you had fewer choices and you had to navigate them carefully. Even in today's buffet world, you still CAN navigate them carefully. And it's a good mental habit to have. I consciously watch myself and try to notice when I've failed to do this. For example, suppose I'm looking for an answer to some question on Google, and I enter my query. I can then either: (1) look at the first 10 and judiciously choose which are worth my time to read/skim and ctrl-click to open a tab for (say) 3 of them, or (2) aimlessly ctrl-click all and get 10 tabs to look at. #2 feels good in a way because I'm getting more info. But #1 gives superior results. Not just because I have less to wade through, but also because somehow my mind is in a more focused, active state. #2 is a sign that my mind has checked out and is not really engaged in this part of whatever I'm doing. This happens more in the digital/streaming world because the buffets are larger. But it's not exclusive to that. I can still fall into the trap with physical stuff. I can still go into a store and try on 10 shirts without thinking carefully about whether I like them, and since I entered the changing room in the wrong frame of mind to choose a good shirt to buy, I'm probably still in the wrong frame of mind after trying on 10 shirts.

pmarreck 5y ago

I play Christmas records at Christmas for the aesthetics. The most annoying thing actually (other than that records scratch easily and literally degrade a bit every time you play them) is that each side of a 33 1/3 RPM record only has a few songs... but perhaps that's part of the charm

slackfan 5y ago

I tried the whole streaming thing, it ended up not being for me. I still buy physical media, often on formats that are long dead because partially, it's fun to tool around with dead formats, and no silly copyright dispute is going to suddenly pull my ability to watch the original Star Wars cut on laserdisc. Digital files are as ephemeral as the storage they reside on. Piling more ephemeral storage into the equation does little to help.

shmde 5y ago

I could resonate with OP watching Netflix solely because he paid for it. I pay for Netflix, Disney+ and Prime. The only way for me to NOT get the most of them and waste my time (watching the generic netflix shows) is to browse a few minutes of IMDB beforehand, keep a note of all the movies which fits my interests and search them up on netflix/dinsey+/prime. I know this is still a waste of time, but atleast this was I get the satisfaction of watching what I selected and not what was selected for me. PS: Even though I subscribe to three different streaming platform, 1/3 of the time I don't find it and have to go the pirate way.

ganzuul 5y ago

No encoding issues or micro-stutter in analog. Gotta love that.

jelliclesfarm 5y ago

I love half price books stores..I have a kindle stash but that feeling of browsing in a bookstore cannot compare. You can’t read comics and graphic novels digitally. They also carry records and first editions. I don’t care much about first editions but I want to support them in small ways. I gift books to my friends children for Xmas and New Years.

charles_f 5y ago

> There’s great pleasure in repetition and ritual. My family came to know a lot of dialogue by heart. That bit resonates a lot with me. We had a rotation of regular movies that we would watch with my family and it was a pleasure every time. I remember the cheer comfort that came out of this, when someone proposed to watch a classic. We keep quoting some of these to this day.

leokennis 5y ago

I don’t know. Sure, the current state of affairs isn’t perfect. But being able to search for any music anywhere in the world (not limited to the physical media you have on you), having it beamed in pristine digital quality (no worn out cassette) to a pair of wireless earbuds (no half bent wires resulting in only the left earbud working) that also block outside noise (so you can actually hear the music) sure is pleasurable to me.

fxtentacle 5y ago
Now the question is: Does pleasurable equal good? I've heard that Heroin is really pleasurable while you are still high on it. ^_^ Also, my personal experience with Deezer was that their app is so horribly buggy that copying MP3s to an old player and physically connecting the cinch cable turned out to be much more reliable.
- leokennis 5y ago
  It might depend on the person. When I was 14 with a Minidisc I had around 15 discs I’d regularly listen to. Couldn’t afford any more. Later I expanded to a ~300 CD collection which I also put on my iPod. Now I have access to a gazillion songs, but my Apple Music “library” is still less than 500 albums. I spend 95% of my listening time with those 500 albums. I have never asked for or sought any “suggestion” from the Apple Music app. However in case there’s something new I want to listen to (I read a review, I heard a song on TV I’m interested in) I have it right there, legally in perfect quality. Don’t need to buy a CD and rip it to iTunes and send it to my iPod or worse, record it in real-time to a Minidisc. So I’m still not convinced I’m currently “missing out” on anything from the 90’s/00’s.

hellisothers 5y ago

Man this hits hard, over the last several years I’ve been experiencing a growing ennui about not having “a people” or “a place”, no anchors that define me and I can lean on for support. I have a loving family, a handful of close friends, and a nice house in a nice neighborhood but that’s not the same; I would uproot my family and move (and have considered it), I have no roots here. This article evokes similar feelings, wishing I had a bookshelf instead of 100’s of kindle books, CDs/records, and video discs on shelves instead of Spotify and Netflix so my son could see what I prefer more easily, so I could group, remember, and recommend. Sigh