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Perhaps some consumers are discovering that they really don't like it when an artist they have been listening to on their subscription streaming service suddenl

Perhaps some consumers are discovering that they really don't like it when an artist they have been listening to on their subscription streaming service suddenly disappears because of a label dispute.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
I assume those people would purchase a digital file of the song with a lot less friction than buying and ripping a CD.
- AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
  Probably. But owning the CD allows you to re-rip it at some future date if you decide that storage is cheaper than it was 20 years ago and you'd really prefer to have some of your favorite albums in lossless FLAC format than lossy MP3. Or at the very least, maybe a higher quality mp3 than the 128kbps that was the norm during the Napster era.
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    You're entirely discounting the cost of physical storage. It's a non-zero and non-trivial cost to store and move all those CDs. If you've ripped them with high quality lossless settings you will not get better sound later reripping as FLAC. So unless you only ever ripped them with the old unregistered l3enc (limited to 112kbps and a shitty encoder anyways) there's little reason to rerip them. You may want to keep physical CDs for nostalgia or because you like the physical artifact but if you've ripped them in the past 15 or so years your lossless copy is likely transparent to lossless to the human ear.
    - AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
      I fear you've misunderstood me. I said going from LOSSY to Lossless, not lossless to lossless. Meaning even if your first rip was LAME-encoded VBR MP3 or OGG, you might decide you want to re-rip later as FLAC or APE.
      - giantrobot 5y ago
        And you misunderstood me, if you've got a good LAME rip you will not be able to distinguish it from a FLAC rip off the original CD. You'll be using several times the storage for no perceptible improvement. While disk storage is cheap the physical storage of those CDs is not nor is the time required to handle the CDs to rip.
        Forgeties79 5y ago
        I get what you’re saying, but no one is really arguing that physical storage doesn’t exist as an issue. That being said, CD’s have a pretty small footprint. You can fit several hundred - if not upwards of a thousand - jewel cases + CD’s in a typical book case. As far as hobbies go they’re pretty space-efficient! Plus the whole point of a physical collection is to have it and to be able to hold it/admire it. Everything takes up space. It’s not purely about the utility of having the music available. Go tell any music archive to destroy their physical CD’s if they’ve ripped them (or if they have the masters), if you want to see my point. It’s not just about the music onboard.
  - onemoresoop 5y ago
    What I find is that unless you keep CDs in a very well monitored environment (right humidity and away from light, etc..) they aren't aging very reliably and sometimes they stop working completely.
    - Forgeties79 5y ago
      Burned CD’s, sure. Industry-pressed CD’s? Nah. If you’re keeping them in an even remotely temperature/humidity controlled environment (and obviously they aren’t scratched to hell but even then they often play haha) there’s no reason they shouldn’t play fine today no matter the age.
- midnightclubbed 5y ago
  Over the last 10 years people have been trained to stream digital files. I am curious if the digital sales of artists who disappeared from Spotify went up, or if they saw an increase in physical media sales, or neither. I suspect a small increase in physical sales as people realize the fragility of digital distribution but data may say otherwise. Is that information available? Back when physical sales were the only sales it was easy to track the 'popularity' of any given song or album, with streaming and digital sales those numbers seem to be fire-walled by the various streaming services.
- detaro 5y ago
  Plenty platforms will sell you a CD and give you the download immediately.
ryanmcbride 5y ago
That's what got me to finally set up a little script to tag, convert, and store music files in apple music. I was getting annoyed not only at entire albums or artists being unavailable on apple music, but also sometimes individual songs, which just seems insane to me. Now I drag some flac files into a folder, the script converts them to ALAC, tags them from discogs, and adds them to my apple music library, which auto syncs to icloud so I can listen to them on my phone whenever I want. No more "unavailable". I also back the files up to a second location because one time like 10 years ago I think I heard a rumor of itunes randomly deleting files that were added manually without being purchased through the store. Don't know if that's a real thing or not but storage is so cheap it doesn't really matter.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

I assume those people would purchase a digital file of the song with a lot less friction than buying and ripping a CD.

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
Probably. But owning the CD allows you to re-rip it at some future date if you decide that storage is cheaper than it was 20 years ago and you'd really prefer to have some of your favorite albums in lossless FLAC format than lossy MP3. Or at the very least, maybe a higher quality mp3 than the 128kbps that was the norm during the Napster era.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  You're entirely discounting the cost of physical storage. It's a non-zero and non-trivial cost to store and move all those CDs. If you've ripped them with high quality lossless settings you will not get better sound later reripping as FLAC. So unless you only ever ripped them with the old unregistered l3enc (limited to 112kbps and a shitty encoder anyways) there's little reason to rerip them. You may want to keep physical CDs for nostalgia or because you like the physical artifact but if you've ripped them in the past 15 or so years your lossless copy is likely transparent to lossless to the human ear.
  - AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
    I fear you've misunderstood me. I said going from LOSSY to Lossless, not lossless to lossless. Meaning even if your first rip was LAME-encoded VBR MP3 or OGG, you might decide you want to re-rip later as FLAC or APE.
    - giantrobot 5y ago
      And you misunderstood me, if you've got a good LAME rip you will not be able to distinguish it from a FLAC rip off the original CD. You'll be using several times the storage for no perceptible improvement. While disk storage is cheap the physical storage of those CDs is not nor is the time required to handle the CDs to rip.
      - Forgeties79 5y ago
        I get what you’re saying, but no one is really arguing that physical storage doesn’t exist as an issue. That being said, CD’s have a pretty small footprint. You can fit several hundred - if not upwards of a thousand - jewel cases + CD’s in a typical book case. As far as hobbies go they’re pretty space-efficient! Plus the whole point of a physical collection is to have it and to be able to hold it/admire it. Everything takes up space. It’s not purely about the utility of having the music available. Go tell any music archive to destroy their physical CD’s if they’ve ripped them (or if they have the masters), if you want to see my point. It’s not just about the music onboard.
- onemoresoop 5y ago
  What I find is that unless you keep CDs in a very well monitored environment (right humidity and away from light, etc..) they aren't aging very reliably and sometimes they stop working completely.
  - Forgeties79 5y ago
    Burned CD’s, sure. Industry-pressed CD’s? Nah. If you’re keeping them in an even remotely temperature/humidity controlled environment (and obviously they aren’t scratched to hell but even then they often play haha) there’s no reason they shouldn’t play fine today no matter the age.
midnightclubbed 5y ago
Over the last 10 years people have been trained to stream digital files. I am curious if the digital sales of artists who disappeared from Spotify went up, or if they saw an increase in physical media sales, or neither. I suspect a small increase in physical sales as people realize the fragility of digital distribution but data may say otherwise. Is that information available? Back when physical sales were the only sales it was easy to track the 'popularity' of any given song or album, with streaming and digital sales those numbers seem to be fire-walled by the various streaming services.
detaro 5y ago
Plenty platforms will sell you a CD and give you the download immediately.

ryanmcbride 5y ago

That's what got me to finally set up a little script to tag, convert, and store music files in apple music. I was getting annoyed not only at entire albums or artists being unavailable on apple music, but also sometimes individual songs, which just seems insane to me. Now I drag some flac files into a folder, the script converts them to ALAC, tags them from discogs, and adds them to my apple music library, which auto syncs to icloud so I can listen to them on my phone whenever I want. No more "unavailable". I also back the files up to a second location because one time like 10 years ago I think I heard a rumor of itunes randomly deleting files that were added manually without being purchased through the store. Don't know if that's a real thing or not but storage is so cheap it doesn't really matter.