3 ms·

Not just DVD's but also music CD's. Plenty of music from the 1960's through early 2000's is no longer online for either contractual disputes, or cultural cance

Not just DVD's but also music CD's. Plenty of music from the 1960's through early 2000's is no longer online for either contractual disputes, or cultural cancellation and other reasons I have yet to figure out. I assume some of this transition must be the cost issues of producing physical CD's vs. delivering online or renting the music online. When it is only available as a stream online I call it renting and every day that passes there is a risk that some of the music vanishes. When I moved I compressed my CD collection down from their hard cases to soft cases and kept all the inserts in one of the old hard-case bags minus the hard case plastic holders and I have no regrets. I assume there may be a similar risk in renting e-Books online vs. having a non-DRM copy of it.

adamm255 4y ago
Has this with an album recently. Released in 2012, one day it was just gone from all streaming services.
beej71 4y ago
A friend of mine refuses streaming. He buys CDs in bulk from the flea market and rips them to FLAC. I was just thinking of doing the same for my collection in the attic, assuming the CDs have survived a couple thousand freeze/thaw cycles. :) I like the idea of ditching the hard cases for space.
- ghusto 4y ago
  Yup, I do the same, and can recommend it. You get the benefits of both physical media, and convenience of soft storage availability. That music is mine, and can never be sold to me again. In case some might be wondering what the "benefits" of physical media are; it's my belief that having to _commit_ to listening to a CD (not being able to flick through different albums and artists easily on Spotify, as the whim comes) is psychologically sound, and the alternative is damaging. This goes for films too. Those old enough to remember renting DVDs — or even VHS! — may remember the excitement of getting that film back to their place to watch. The whole thing was an experience, and whether the film was good or bad, you had a good time with whoever you were with, because you had an _experience_. More often than not though, you enjoyed the film, because you wanted to. You invested, so it was worth more to you. Actually this is more than "my belief", but I can't be bothered to find the research.
  - cgh 4y ago
    My personal best example of this is tape-trading (which were mostly CD-Rs, but whatever) underground metal back in the '90s. The sheer amount of work it took to find people to trade with, burn the music, send it through the mail and, best of all, get their package in return made it seem so significant. And it was the best way to find out about new bands. Even bands that eventually became huge, like Metallica after they changed their sound, built their initial fanbase via the trading scene.
- justinlloyd 4y ago
  I did the same thing with DVDs, Blurays and CDs. Everything got pulled out of the hardcase unless the hardcase was a special design or unique in some way. Kept the inserts for each media type in a couple of small shoebox sized storage boxes, put each disc in to a soft sleeve that I bought in bulk for about two cents each, and then put all that into two banker's boxes. Reduced from eight or nine banker's boxes to nothing at all. The digital contents are stored on my local server and I can stream it to any local device or over the internet to my laptop or phone.
- Johnny555 4y ago
  I went the other way… back in the day, I ripped my ~400 cds to MP3’s. I still have them on my file server hard drive, but am happy paying Spotify $10/month for the convenience of having access to pretty much any album I want on any device, so I haven’t listened to my own MP3s in years. I thought by now I’d be doing the same thing with movies, but obviously that hasn’t happened.
56friends 4y ago
I know it doesn’t replace old recordings, but moving forward there is a lot of great music on Bandcamp, usually available to download in several lossless formats like wav and flac.
tomxor 4y ago
Same here, although I no longer have a CD player which is kinda worrying. On my TODO list to convert them all to lossless FLAC or something to replace my previously more conservative lossy settings from when $/GB was far greater. Bookmarked the article posted on HN the other day about doing this in a reliable way. The other thing about music is it has a far higher re-play value than Film/TV... some specific albums I've listened to thousands of times, and there is simply no way I would rely on some streaming service for that. I'm not sure what the younger generations do for their favourites... or maybe it's not like that any-more, maybe their music is more ephemeral and "trending". Pretty much all of my music with replay value is from way before 2000, back to 80s - I'm not even that old.
sexy_seedbox 4y ago
Beautifully done CD and vinyl packaging is worth keeping physically even if they're sitting on the shelf 99% of their lifetime.
steponlego 4y ago
It's just nice to pop a good CD into a nice CD player and play the whole thing. Also, despite what some people may claim, there can be huge variations in sound quality between different DACs and their associated output stages, whether or not the DAC happens to be inside a CD player, your computer, or an outboard USB device and this can easily be measured and heard by people who know the program material well. Many people think the best sounding DACs are the multibit jobbers from Philips which haven't even been made in thirty+ years.

adamm255 4y ago

Has this with an album recently. Released in 2012, one day it was just gone from all streaming services.

beej71 4y ago

A friend of mine refuses streaming. He buys CDs in bulk from the flea market and rips them to FLAC. I was just thinking of doing the same for my collection in the attic, assuming the CDs have survived a couple thousand freeze/thaw cycles. :) I like the idea of ditching the hard cases for space.

ghusto 4y ago
Yup, I do the same, and can recommend it. You get the benefits of both physical media, and convenience of soft storage availability. That music is mine, and can never be sold to me again. In case some might be wondering what the "benefits" of physical media are; it's my belief that having to _commit_ to listening to a CD (not being able to flick through different albums and artists easily on Spotify, as the whim comes) is psychologically sound, and the alternative is damaging. This goes for films too. Those old enough to remember renting DVDs — or even VHS! — may remember the excitement of getting that film back to their place to watch. The whole thing was an experience, and whether the film was good or bad, you had a good time with whoever you were with, because you had an _experience_. More often than not though, you enjoyed the film, because you wanted to. You invested, so it was worth more to you. Actually this is more than "my belief", but I can't be bothered to find the research.
- cgh 4y ago
  My personal best example of this is tape-trading (which were mostly CD-Rs, but whatever) underground metal back in the '90s. The sheer amount of work it took to find people to trade with, burn the music, send it through the mail and, best of all, get their package in return made it seem so significant. And it was the best way to find out about new bands. Even bands that eventually became huge, like Metallica after they changed their sound, built their initial fanbase via the trading scene.
justinlloyd 4y ago
I did the same thing with DVDs, Blurays and CDs. Everything got pulled out of the hardcase unless the hardcase was a special design or unique in some way. Kept the inserts for each media type in a couple of small shoebox sized storage boxes, put each disc in to a soft sleeve that I bought in bulk for about two cents each, and then put all that into two banker's boxes. Reduced from eight or nine banker's boxes to nothing at all. The digital contents are stored on my local server and I can stream it to any local device or over the internet to my laptop or phone.
Johnny555 4y ago
I went the other way… back in the day, I ripped my ~400 cds to MP3’s. I still have them on my file server hard drive, but am happy paying Spotify $10/month for the convenience of having access to pretty much any album I want on any device, so I haven’t listened to my own MP3s in years. I thought by now I’d be doing the same thing with movies, but obviously that hasn’t happened.

56friends 4y ago

I know it doesn’t replace old recordings, but moving forward there is a lot of great music on Bandcamp, usually available to download in several lossless formats like wav and flac.

tomxor 4y ago

Same here, although I no longer have a CD player which is kinda worrying. On my TODO list to convert them all to lossless FLAC or something to replace my previously more conservative lossy settings from when $/GB was far greater. Bookmarked the article posted on HN the other day about doing this in a reliable way. The other thing about music is it has a far higher re-play value than Film/TV... some specific albums I've listened to thousands of times, and there is simply no way I would rely on some streaming service for that. I'm not sure what the younger generations do for their favourites... or maybe it's not like that any-more, maybe their music is more ephemeral and "trending". Pretty much all of my music with replay value is from way before 2000, back to 80s - I'm not even that old.

sexy_seedbox 4y ago

Beautifully done CD and vinyl packaging is worth keeping physically even if they're sitting on the shelf 99% of their lifetime.

steponlego 4y ago

It's just nice to pop a good CD into a nice CD player and play the whole thing. Also, despite what some people may claim, there can be huge variations in sound quality between different DACs and their associated output stages, whether or not the DAC happens to be inside a CD player, your computer, or an outboard USB device and this can easily be measured and heard by people who know the program material well. Many people think the best sounding DACs are the multibit jobbers from Philips which haven't even been made in thirty+ years.