Owning media

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

With ownership of the physical product, I feel I have a tangible experience with the music that you simply don't get by streaming/downloading. The cover art, liner notes --- just the whole package is special to me and in our current time feels like I'm holding some piece of history or some ancient relic. Of course, I don't expect anyone else to uphold these same beliefs or place importance in the same things I do as this would be unrealistic and rather egotistical of me to assume that these things should have the same meaning for everyone.

It does bring a certain feeling of melancholy to me knowing that we seem to be approaching some kind of demise of past ways, which, in turn, makes me cling to my CDs, DVDs and books even more. I'm just thankful I have been afforded the opportunity to have the collection I have and that there are other people in my life who are willing to put up with my madness after all of these years. It can't be easy to live with someone who is obsessed with music 24/7.

[LKB]

With ownership of the physical product, I feel I have a tangible experience with the music that you simply don't get by streaming/downloading. The cover art, liner notes --- just the whole package is special to me and in our current time feels like I'm holding some piece of history or some ancient relic. Of course, I don't expect anyone else to uphold these same beliefs or place importance in the same things I do as this would be unrealistic and rather egotistical of me to assume that these things should have the same meaning for everyone.

It does bring a certain feeling of melancholy to me knowing that we seem to be approaching some kind of demise of past ways, which, in turn, makes me cling to my CDs, DVDs and books even more. I'm just thankful I have been afforded the opportunity to have the collection I have and that there are other people in my life who are willing to put up with my madness after all of these years. It can't be easy to live with someone who is obsessed with music 24/7.

That bolded sentence has defined me since at least 1973. 

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

That bolded sentence has defined me since at least 1973. 

 

[Spotted Horses]

I am reminded that there are some circumstances when I feel a need to possess, and not just stream a recording. The Machonchy String Quartets are very special to me, I consider them on par with the best 20th century string quartet cycles (Shostakovich, Bartok, Martinu, Hindemith, Rubbra, Krenek, Toch, Bacewicz, etc). There is only one cycle, which has been released on several dicy labels (Regis, Unicorn). The CD set I have is labeled Regis and one track has digital defects (a halo of static surrounding the sound in the finale of the 8th quartet). Miraculously I found it on Apple Music free from any defect, but it is on an even more obscure label, Treasure Island. And no lossless download available anywhere I can find. The CDs are offered for sale, but I suspect they are made from the same defective master. If it disappears from Apple Music, I'm screwed!

When something is "important" I feel the need to have the audio data on my hard disk (download or ripped from physical media makes no difference.)

[krummholz]

I haven't bought a physical book in ages - I have very limited shelf space, so I go for e-books only. For audio files, I prefer a physical CD, but will download something and burn a CD of it if that's possible. But I miss getting the liner notes, so I consider that an inferior medium. I don't generally watch movies or even episodes of TV series more than once, so I have very few physical DVDs - but I was an avid Netflix subscriber before they shut down their rental service. Overall I loathe streaming services - especially Hulu, which charges you a subscription fee but then has the chutzpah to insert commercials into their shows. I have their free trial right now to watch The Handmaid's Tale S6, but will definitely drop them as soon as the series is finished, maybe sooner.

[LKB]

I haven't bought a physical book in ages - I have very limited shelf space, so I go for e-books only. For audio files, I prefer a physical CD, but will download something and burn a CD of it if that's possible. But I miss getting the liner notes, so I consider that an inferior medium. I don't generally watch movies or even episodes of TV series more than once, so I have very few physical DVDs - but I was an avid Netflix subscriber before they shut down their rental service. Overall I loathe streaming services - especially Hulu, which charges you a subscription fee but then has the chutzpah to insert commercials into their shows. I have their free trial right now to watch The Handmaid's Tale S6, but will definitely drop them as soon as the series is finished, maybe sooner.

Until recently l was a subscriber to Amazon's Prime Music. This was partly out of curiosity, and partly out of the desire for access to recordings which I'm either a) unfamiliar with or b) own, but the CD is in commercial storage.

Last week l went to the site, selected von Karajan's commercial DG recording of Bruckner's Symphony No. 5, and started the opening movement.

The sound quality was so bad ( even with these old ears ) that l abandoned the experience after less than sixty seconds of listening.

Once again, access to physical media proves unreplacable.

[Holden]

I play a physical CD less and less these days and all my reading is via Epub from my local library. I've even done some digital downloads of music rather than buying the CD though I miss the liner notes which just seem to add to the 'owning experience'. I've even digitised my whole CD and DVD collection as I tend to use my PC a lot and I've got a WiFi streamer attached to my HiFi amplifier which means I can cast to that from my PC or my iPad. That said, I do get real pleasure of taking a CD out of its jacket, placing it into my little Rotel CD11 and pressing play on the remote.

[Karl Henning]

I don't want to be at the mercy of streaming services.

Nor me!

[DavidW]

Funny enough, yesterday evening I went home and my internet was out. I enjoyed listening to some CDs that don't require internet access.

[Florestan]

The internet being out is not a problem. A massive and prolonged blackout, otoh... 

[DavidW]

The internet being out is not a problem. A massive and prolonged blackout, otoh... 

Luckily for me, the power is really good where I live. When I lived in town, I had to suffer outages frequently.

[Kalevala]

Luckily for me, the power is really good where I live. When I lived in town, I had to suffer outages frequently.

I'm lucky here that it doesn't go out very often; when it does, they restore it quite quickly.  I believe that the longest it's been out for was under 3 hours?

K

[Henk]

Too much streaming is bad for the soul imo and according to my experience. Too high-tech dependency.

One is inclined to add all kinds of stuff into ones library. I have no overview. It's a mess. My cds are also often a mess, but it's a different mess. I don't like to push all kinds of buttons. It's neat, but it doesn't work, it gives only a illusion of overview, order and control.

Cds are beautiful products.

I do stream, I alternate between streaming and playing cds.

Movies: sometimes I watch a movie on prime. I rarely want to see a movie, rarely something interesting, so I desubscribe and subcribe quite often. Games even worse, you don't really know what you're buying. I consider myself too old to play video games, I'm not really interested anymore. Same here 'high-tech neatness' to which I can't get used.

Ocassionaly I purchase cds. I also purchase albums on Bandcamp, so artists get their money and can continue to make music.

I need physical books.

[Henk]

With ownership of the physical product, I feel I have a tangible experience with the music that you simply don't get by streaming/downloading. The cover art, liner notes --- just the whole package is special to me and in our current time feels like I'm holding some piece of history or some ancient relic. Of course, I don't expect anyone else to uphold these same beliefs or place importance in the same things I do as this would be unrealistic and rather egotistical of me to assume that these things should have the same meaning for everyone.

It does bring a certain feeling of melancholy to me knowing that we seem to be approaching some kind of demise of past ways, which, in turn, makes me cling to my CDs, DVDs and books even more. I'm just thankful I have been afforded the opportunity to have the collection I have and that there are other people in my life who are willing to put up with my madness after all of these years. It can't be easy to live with someone who is obsessed with music 24/7.

You really are a musical soul, John, just like Harry. It's great imo.

[Crudblud]

I like physical books, that's about it. DVDs and CDs and especially vinyl take up a lot of space that I could be using for books.

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

You really are a musical soul, John, just like Harry. It's great imo.

Thank you @Henk. Very nice of you to say, but I think all of us who contribute here on GMG have musical souls. But I won't lie and say that I don't share a certain kinship with @Harry even though we don't necessarily listen to the same composers. I think he and I have a certain madness for this music that carries over into our posts unknowingly.

[Henk]

Thank you @Henk. Very nice of you to say, but I think all of us who contribute here on GMG have musical souls. But I won't lie and say that I don't share a certain kinship with @Harry even though we don't necessarily listen to the same composers. I think he and I have a certain madness for this music that carries over into our posts unknowingly.

I can't listen to music all day, never did that. Not really a musical soul. Sometimes I think however my soul is like sound and being noble makes it music, that's my craziness and pretty delusional and conceited, but I can't really get it out of mind. The thought is nice imo. 🤣

[Karl Henning]

Nor me!

(...not wanting to be at the mercy of streaming services.) Especially true of movies/TV. Probably the chief consideration for me here is the supplements readily available on the physical discs: the commentary and soundtrack-only option on the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, e.g. Notable this week, especially, various supplements to Brazil and the Final Cut edition of Blade Runner. My enjoyment of these is not a great distance from my fondness of Tolkien's appendices to LotR.

[Roasted Swan]

(...not wanting to be at the mercy of streaming services.) Especially true of movies/TV. Probably the chief consideration for me here is the supplements readily available on the physical discs: the commentary and soundtrack-only option on the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, e.g. Notable this week, especially, various supplements to Brazil and the Final Cut edition of Blade Runner. My enjoyment of these is not a great distance from my fondness of Tolkien's appendices to LotR.

You've just mentioned 2 of my top five favourite films!! (If only you'd added All that Jazz too.....)

[Spotted Horses]

Until recently l was a subscriber to Amazon's Prime Music. This was partly out of curiosity, and partly out of the desire for access to recordings which I'm either a) unfamiliar with or b) own, but the CD is in commercial storage.

Last week l went to the site, selected von Karajan's commercial DG recording of Bruckner's Symphony No. 5, and started the opening movement.

The sound quality was so bad ( even with these old ears ) that l abandoned the experience after less than sixty seconds of listening.

Once again, access to physical media proves unreplacable.

I'm tempted to point out that Amazon music streaming uses MP3 compression and that the CD experience is only duplicated by streaming services that support lossless transfer (Apple Music, Qobuz, others I assume). But normally MP3 compression produces a very subtle loss of fidelity. I'm sure correctly mastered MP3 files are perfectly adequate to reproduce slightly disappointing 70's DG audio (although I remember the Bruckner 5 as being one of the better sounding recordings of the era). What you are describing sounds like a gross error, such as faulty MP3 compression, storage of the data on a defective device, a failing data link between their server and your gadget, etc.

Physical media is not immune to such problems. I'm trying to find a replacement for a disc of Maconchy string quartets where audio on one track contains a halo of static. One disc of my Ireland Piano Music set of Lyrita is plagued by obvious static and distortion. I replaced it with lossless downloads. I once purchased a lossless download of Zoltan Kocsis playing Debussy which had weird distortion. I complained to Presto and they put new files on the server which were corrected. There is no failsafe sound carrier.  All are subject to defect, and if anything I've found streaming to be least likely to be problematic (Apple Music).