Out of my group of friends and work mates, I seem to be the only one who still prefers and purchases physical media. My question here is, is it because us metal folk are devoted fans? Or "normies" average spotify listeners/ music fans just don't care as much about music as we do? Myself, I've always preferred to own music and enjoy the ritual of removing the CD or vinyl and playing it. A friend once said I was old fashioned which I found endlessly amusing :laugh:
Thoughts so folks?
I think it's an old fashion thing but I also think that because the culture of buying physical media is alive and well in the underground metal world, it's likely that some young heads will adopt the habit too. Artwork, band photos and lyrics sheets are all an important part of the experience for me. I was always massively drawn to the imagery of metal bands and I still am. I'm half kicking myself now as I'm doing a big move in a couple of months and moving a thirty year record collection versus moving an ipod is proving to be costly :laugh:
That was a point I forgot to mention actually. I get the convience of spotify and downloads as moving a collection is a pain. I've moved a few times and know that for sure. The collection will never stop with me anyway. One would hope the younger fans start collections of their own. Tapes seem to be the rage lately I see. They look better than they sound
The normie's relationship with music is a fickle and disposable one. Most of them stop even taking notice of what's on the radio once they reach their 20s. So it stands to reason that they regard physical music in much the same way as they would a phone box call card from the 90s.
There are plenty of metal heads who have largely abandoned the physical medium and plenty of, particularly vinyl, collectors who aren't into metal at all; dance heads, hip-hop heads, jazz heads, classic rock heads, R'n'B heads, etc., etc. The vinyl revival wasn't at all limited to heavy metal, and there's plenty of music buffs who say that X, Y, and Z genre sounds best on wax. See here, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_revival#2012_vinyl_LP_charts
Can't ever see myself moving away from LPs and CDs for metal as long as I can afford them. For any other genre Spotify or YouTube is fine, but for metal I need to have the physical format. Can't enjoy the album as much without owning it.
Sold a load of deadwood in my collection years ago so what I have now is quality over quantity.
I prefer records too, but I will say the Tidal streaming service is very good!
I connect via Bluetooth to my stereo with Tidal and the sound is superb.
Plenty of bands on there now, not just the mainstream stuff.
This is a pretty cool feature they offer that Spotify don't (although they do have plans to implement it)
https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000397069-TIDAL-MASTERS-AND-MASTER-QUALITY-AUDIO
I'm probably the only one with not a hint of physical media anymore. I had quite a cd collection back in the day but had to sell most of it off due to financial struggles. Spotify/soundcloud/bandcamp keeps me going.
Quote from: TurnTheAirBlue on March 24, 2021, 10:51:24 PM
I prefer records too, but I will say the Tidal streaming service is very good!
I connect via Bluetooth to my stereo with Tidal and the sound is superb.
Plenty of bands on there now, not just the mainstream stuff.
How much is it?
This is a pretty cool feature they offer that Spotify don't (although they do have plans to implement it)
https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000397069-TIDAL-MASTERS-AND-MASTER-QUALITY-AUDIO
10 euro a month I think it was.
I'm in the same boat as Necro Red above, out of all the people I know, I seem to be the only one still buying CDs, I'm also the only metal fan.
As a fan of death metal in the main, Id be lost without the lyric sheet, sure ya have to read along with the vocals the first time or two ya listen to a new album or ya won't know what the hell the vocalist is raving about, for me its one of the joys of experiencing a new album.
The third or fourth listen to a new album is enjoyed while looking at the artwork in conjunction with soaking up the art of the music in the background, a feast for the senses.
I was discussing this with a friend of mine some time ago and he called me a "purist", which I had a bit of a giggle about, given the subject matter of the stuff I listen to.
I don't get this obsession with vinyl at all, at all. As far as I'm concerned the sound quality of CDs is second to none and the ability to effortlessly skip tracks, find whatever track you'r in the mood for, or repeat a good song with the press of a button cannot be overestimated.
Quote from: Pedrito on March 24, 2021, 11:23:23 PM
Quote from: TurnTheAirBlue on March 24, 2021, 10:51:24 PM
I prefer records too, but I will say the Tidal streaming service is very good!
I connect via Bluetooth to my stereo with Tidal and the sound is superb.
Plenty of bands on there now, not just the mainstream stuff.
How much is it?
This is a pretty cool feature they offer that Spotify don't (although they do have plans to implement it)
https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000397069-TIDAL-MASTERS-AND-MASTER-QUALITY-AUDIO
Check Tital offers. I got a 4 or 5 month deal there before Christmas for €3.99....
When that deal runs out get your missus or whoever to sign up for another deal and you sign in under their email address.
I've never paid €10 a month to them yet....
Good service but they push a lot of Rap, Hip-Hop and R&B on you.....
I don't think it's a metal thing at all and moreso just how much a person loves music -- that meaning the whole visual, tangable aspect to it as well as listening. Two of my good mates aren't into metal and both buy a lot of records. One is into vinyl DJing so that's a big aspect for him, and the other is into predominantly jazz and electronic music.
I'm the same lads, most of my non-metal friends don't get why I'm still buying LPs when I have Spotify as well. For me Spotify is great for podcasts and music in the car, but there is nothing more pleasurable that opening that LP you were chasing for a while and cracking a beer and just enjoying the sheer pleasure of the crackles and the metal :abbath:. It might be the ceremony that I have now around listening to my LPs (Jesus Christ, I sound like my old lad) but lights low, LP on, cold beer. The LP covers, inlays are all part of the product and the experience for me. I will never stop. I don't get same feeling from CDs and especially not from anything on spotify, even if it is the same music at the end of the day. I will support the bands I like and will always prefer LPs.
Quote from: son of the Morrigan on March 25, 2021, 04:50:19 AM
I'm in the same boat as Necro Red above, out of all the people I know, I seem to be the only one still buying CDs, I'm also the only metal fan.
As a fan of death metal in the main, Id be lost without the lyric sheet, sure ya have to read along with the vocals the first time or two ya listen to a new album or ya won't know what the hell the vocalist is raving about, for me its one of the joys of experiencing a new album.
The third or fourth listen to a new album is enjoyed while looking at the artwork in conjunction with soaking up the art of the music in the background, a feast for the senses.
I was discussing this with a friend of mine some time ago and he called me a "purist", which I had a bit of a giggle about, given the subject matter of the stuff I listen to.
I don't get this obsession with vinyl at all, at all. As far as I'm concerned the sound quality of CDs is second to none and the ability to effortlessly skip tracks, find whatever track you'r in the mood for, or repeat a good song with the press of a button cannot be overestimated.
I think when you grew up and bought music before CD's came out vinyl and tape were the go to that is ingrained in me personally.
I love vinyl and remember in a lot of vinyl you would get posters and extra stuff. Also vinyl weighs a lot and takes up a lot of space so Cd's and tapes were a god send especially when moving.
I was holding out until a while ago, but moving necessitated packing the collection away (which took considerable effort), so for the interim I went with streaming and local digital files, but now I just can't be arsed. Beep bop, a few button presses and there's nearly any album you want. Sound.
I do still very much listen to albums as complete albums though, even with the ease of skipping I still hit play at track one and let it go the whole way through.
Can't enjoy a book on a Kindle/e-reader, mind.
Was chipping away with cd's and vinyl over the years since my teens and never really playing them , and when i did, on basic equipment. Invested in a hifi amp with the matching cd player and a quality turntable there last year in lock down... life changing.
I had left off the CDs for a good while but got back into them strong in the last couple of years. It's just less disposable and with such a daunting amount of choice out there, it's good to be a bit limited to get the most out of it.
It does seem to be more of an underground thing, the physical purchases. I guess it's a generational thing too
Absolutely love my kindle. Being a person who can only afford to rent a room I can't be doing with lugging books around.
Quote from: Blackout on April 11, 2021, 01:24:22 PM
Absolutely love my kindle. Being a person who can only afford to rent a room I can't be doing with lugging books around.
Ideal solution in fairness, the missus has one and she loves it
I gave away almost all my CD's in 2010. I was plugging away buying records till a couple of years ago. I moved house, they haven't moved back in with me. I was using Google Play Music and Chromecasting for a couple of years but they changed to YouTube Music which is terrible. So seeing as I had pretty much everything I ever owned on mp3 and some more besides I dragged a RaspberryPi out of a box, and set up a self hosted mp3 server that I can access on the phone while out walking the dogs which is about the only time I get to listen to music nowadays
Quote from: leoos on April 12, 2021, 08:38:42 PM
I dragged a RaspberryPi out of a box, and set up a self hosted mp3 server that I can access on the phone while out walking the dogs which is about the only time I get to listen to music nowadays
I still have all my cds but that sounds a decent idea for being out and about. Would it be easy enough to do for a technological idiot?
Quote from: Trev on April 12, 2021, 11:28:59 PM
I still have all my cds but that sounds a decent idea for being out and about. Would it be easy enough to do for a technological idiot?
It took a lot of mucking about alright. I work on mac admin on a daily basis so I have a basis in setting up stuff in Linux.
I read this https://jordancrawford.kiwi/home-server-without-portforward/ (https://jordancrawford.kiwi/home-server-without-portforward/)
And took it from there
I did the following. (there are many other ways to do this I'm sure)
Bought Raspberry Pi 4 and had a 2TB USB drive
Installed Ubuntu Server on the Pi
Installed Docker
Installed Ampache https://ampache.org/ (https://ampache.org/) (which is the media server)
Installed Samba (to fileshare with my local machine to copy mp3's to the external drive)
Installed Wireguard https://www.wireguard.com/ (https://www.wireguard.com/) (to create a VPN to......)
I have rented a Virtual Machine on http://vultr.com/ (http://vultr.com/) (there are others) €5 a month. Up to 1TB of data can be sent through this without and additional charges
This is publicly accessible over the web
I have setup Wireguard there also.
Wireguard creates a private VPN between the Raspberry Pi on my desk and the virtual server online
I got myself a URL €28 for 3 years I think
I got secure SSL certs for my URL
I setup a website to my URL which points to my virtual machine on the internet
This then connects to my Raspberry Pi with Ampache installed over the VPN and serves music to an app called dSub on my phone
It took a lot of messing, a lot of Googling and I am still figuring it out as I go along
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/Nwzrj0uYKskPgtC3d4WCa0-V5jRjXKGdV89POLEMzTJJWqbGBsR-RL5Smwod6OXtLO57yWlUOFhv_yV_e-naFsTBj-m-uVcMp_TioklbO2eUVcCUe_2iM4cprhiwv1Czp7pcGYl_E8Yc)
Quote from: leoos on April 13, 2021, 03:41:50 PM
Quote from: Trev on April 12, 2021, 11:28:59 PM
I still have all my cds but that sounds a decent idea for being out and about. Would it be easy enough to do for a technological idiot?
It took a lot of mucking about alright. I work on mac admin on a daily basis so I have a basis in setting up stuff in Linux.
I read this https://jordancrawford.kiwi/home-server-without-portforward/ (https://jordancrawford.kiwi/home-server-without-portforward/)
And took it from there
I did the following. (there are many other ways to do this I'm sure)
Bought Raspberry Pi 4 and had a 2TB USB drive
Installed Ubuntu Server on the Pi
Installed Docker
Installed Ampache https://ampache.org/ (https://ampache.org/) (which is the media server)
Installed Samba (to fileshare with my local machine to copy mp3's to the external drive)
Installed Wireguard https://www.wireguard.com/ (https://www.wireguard.com/) (to create a VPN to......)
I have rented a Virtual Machine on http://vultr.com/ (http://vultr.com/) (there are others) €5 a month. Up to 1TB of data can be sent through this without and additional charges
This is publicly accessible over the web
I have setup Wireguard there also.
Wireguard creates a private VPN between the Raspberry Pi on my desk and the virtual server online
I got myself a URL €28 for 3 years I think
I got secure SSL certs for my URL
I setup a website to my URL which points to my virtual machine on the internet
This then connects to my Raspberry Pi with Ampache installed over the VPN and serves music to an app called dSub on my phone
It took a lot of messing, a lot of Googling and I am still figuring it out as I go along
This sounds like a great setup. I'd love to get something like this going, must look at a few options too.
I ran a couple of solutions like this a few years back, much simpler but not as streamlined for the end result. First I ran an old laptop running ubuntu as a remote server, that I could access and pull files off of to my phone when needed, which worked well but eventually broke on me - I googled the whole way around setting it up, running something to do with Apache on it, but without any idea what I was doing other than through google I was at a loss to fix it when it failed.
Next option was remote desktop and dropbox, I would connect to the laptop over my phone and drag music folders into dropbox out of my collection when I wanted them, then pull them off the dropbox app on my phone when I had a wifi connection. This was grand when I had fuck all room on the phone but the way things advanced removed this need significantly, I have about 120GB of space on my phone now so rarely need to swap anything out, just add to it.
Quote from: leoos on April 13, 2021, 03:41:50 PM
Quote from: Trev on April 12, 2021, 11:28:59 PM
I still have all my cds but that sounds a decent idea for being out and about. Would it be easy enough to do for a technological idiot?
It took a lot of mucking about alright. I work on mac admin on a daily basis so I have a basis in setting up stuff in Linux.
I read this https://jordancrawford.kiwi/home-server-without-portforward/ (https://jordancrawford.kiwi/home-server-without-portforward/)
And took it from there
I did the following. (there are many other ways to do this I'm sure)
Bought Raspberry Pi 4 and had a 2TB USB drive
Installed Ubuntu Server on the Pi
Installed Docker
Installed Ampache https://ampache.org/ (https://ampache.org/) (which is the media server)
Installed Samba (to fileshare with my local machine to copy mp3's to the external drive)
Installed Wireguard https://www.wireguard.com/ (https://www.wireguard.com/) (to create a VPN to......)
I have rented a Virtual Machine on http://vultr.com/ (http://vultr.com/) (there are others) €5 a month. Up to 1TB of data can be sent through this without and additional charges
This is publicly accessible over the web
I have setup Wireguard there also.
Wireguard creates a private VPN between the Raspberry Pi on my desk and the virtual server online
I got myself a URL €28 for 3 years I think
I got secure SSL certs for my URL
I setup a website to my URL which points to my virtual machine on the internet
This then connects to my Raspberry Pi with Ampache installed over the VPN and serves music to an app called dSub on my phone
It took a lot of messing, a lot of Googling and I am still figuring it out as I go along
That is ridiculously over complicated lad. Playing a CD or vinyl doesn't require effort at all ha ha
Agreed
Having a 128GB SD card in me phone sure as fuck seems a lot easier. Have a Blutooth speaker for out in the garden/shed/shower/whatever, have earbuds in my coat pocket, or if I'm going for a walk, one of my better headphones.
Still have a dedicated listening corner at home too.
Is there a decent android app for playing music - one that cuts out gaps between tracks, specifically. I have an Ipod alright but the bluetooth adaptor eats the battery, be good to have a decent back up.
Have an ipod works well
Quote from: Carnage on April 16, 2021, 03:12:10 PM
Is there a decent android app for playing music - one that cuts out gaps between tracks, specifically. I have an Ipod alright but the bluetooth adaptor eats the battery, be good to have a decent back up.
VLC possibly. I don't notice gaps on it unless it's going bluetooth to the car (which puts a fuckin stall on everything regardless of app or device connected) but everything else seems to be gapless.
Sound, I'll give it a go. I have it in my laptop for video, never use it for music. I need to get an SD card, now that I think of it, mine's corrupted.
I have a rip of Winamp there from years back that I used to use for my library but now I just drag folders into VLC when on the computer or listen off Bandcamp (depending). VLC on the phone is quite good and pretty lightweight.
I use Foobar 2000 on both PC and the phone. Its the best player I've ever used.
Here is the set up I've been using:
https://youtu.be/iA3CT2zNs4E
Quote from: Carnage on April 16, 2021, 03:12:10 PM
Is there a decent android app for playing music - one that cuts out gaps between tracks, specifically. I have an Ipod alright but the bluetooth adaptor eats the battery, be good to have a decent back up.
Black Player is pretty good on Android, has gapless playback too.
It's got a few superfluous features locked behind a paid-for version, but you wouldn't miss them.
I'll check those out when I get sorted with an SD card, sound lads.
To some extent it is outdated you have a near infinite amount of music at your fingertips online nowadays and around the world which is also immediately available from it's release. What I'd wonder is how it affects music as an industry which was once based on the physical sale of records CDs tape etc. I suppose the blank cassette already damaged it earlier but more than likely it's still gonna be very important for labels etc to stay afloat. I guess the whole fashion trends and promotion of groups also comes into play when music is looked at from a more comercial perspective.
I still buy physical formats but I'm also increasingly comfortable with digital. If something is sold out or hard to get I might just buy the digital version and I can put nearly a thosand albums on a digital audio player I have that sounds decent and is about the size of a cassette.
I had a lad at work refer to records as big CDs during the week.
I hope you showed him pictures of Laser Discs with a Crocodile Dundee "you call that a big CD? Now that's a big CD"
Quote from: Ducky on April 18, 2021, 11:12:18 PM
Quote from: Carnage on April 16, 2021, 03:12:10 PM
Is there a decent android app for playing music - one that cuts out gaps between tracks, specifically. I have an Ipod alright but the bluetooth adaptor eats the battery, be good to have a decent back up.
Black Player is pretty good on Android, has gapless playback too.
It's got a few superfluous features locked behind a paid-for version, but you wouldn't miss them.
Just got an SD card and gave Black Player a spin, seems decent enough at first glance. Just threw a few albums on it there and so far so good. Gonna take ages to load up the phone though, solid state is great and all but slow as fuck to write. 256 Gb card so at least I'll have plenty of options.
Quote from: Ducky on April 18, 2021, 11:12:18 PM
Quote from: Carnage on April 16, 2021, 03:12:10 PM
Is there a decent android app for playing music - one that cuts out gaps between tracks, specifically. I have an Ipod alright but the bluetooth adaptor eats the battery, be good to have a decent back up.
Black Player is pretty good on Android, has gapless playback too.
It's got a few superfluous features locked behind a paid-for version, but you wouldn't miss them.
I got black player the other day as my Ipod is fecked. It doesn't seem to let me put music I downloaded from torrent etc, but music I have from bandcamp and download cards with vinyl transfer across no bother. Any ideas lads?
Try renaming the folders, I had a similar issue (with the remastered Metallica albums in particular, other stuff was fine) and that seemed to work, for some reason.
Sound chief
I would love to have more physical versions but I unfortunately don't have the space.