Streaming music vs physical ownership

[Caomhaoin]

Spent years and thousands on a record collection but I got rid of almost all of them when I left Ireland. I have accumulated a few LPs since, but Spotify is a great resource, regardless of the disdain I used to hold it in (the wife's account as an additional user). I have YouTube premium and the Music extra is also fantastic.

[Yung Led Zeppelin]

I mostly listen the same way I grew up doing, iPod, the digital collection built up and transferred through many hard drives over the years. Lately the digital files are even all above board and paid for (growing up and getting a job has its benefits), think it's probably the most direct-to-pocket method for bands via the likes of Bandcamp also.

But if I'm at home I'll throw on either a vinyl record or stream from the computer, both hooked up through my studio monitors. Does the job very nicely.

Have a fair few CDs but they mostly just get ripped for use on the iPod. 

I'm trying to keep the vinyl record collection to a reasonable size, but they're just so enjoyable. Often on a summer evening I'll take the turntable and speakers etc out the back garden and have a little session, beer, smoke, whatever you're having yourself, and it's great cos everyone just has to listen and there's no fucking about. Hoping someday when I have the space to have a hifi system with massive fuck-off speakers.

[astfgyl]

I mostly listen the same way I grew up doing, iPod, the digital collection built up and transferred through many hard drives over the years. Lately the digital files are even all above board and paid for (growing up and getting a job has its benefits), think it's probably the most direct-to-pocket method for bands via the likes of Bandcamp also.

But if I'm at home I'll throw on either a vinyl record or stream from the computer, both hooked up through my studio monitors. Does the job very nicely.

Have a fair few CDs but they mostly just get ripped for use on the iPod. 

I'm trying to keep the vinyl record collection to a reasonable size, but they're just so enjoyable. Often on a summer evening I'll take the turntable and speakers etc out the back garden and have a little session, beer, smoke, whatever you're having yourself, and it's great cos everyone just has to listen and there's no fucking about. Hoping someday when I have the space to have a hifi system with massive fuck-off speakers.

Ugh, you smoke?

Fucking philistine

[Yung Led Zeppelin]

Rarely, but the guests have to feel at home 

[Mooncat]

I find I never know song titles anymore. I used to have first listen to an album while lying back and reading through the booklet, reading along with the lyrics, enjoying the album art etc. With Spotify I don't have my phone out following the song titles so I just tend to never know them anymore, unless it's really obvious from the chorus in the song.

Moving to Canada I was grateful to not have a huge music collection to lug around, it felt freeing to leave that behind, but the overall experience is less magic with just streaming. On the flipside I'm discovering new music a lot faster, but finding that I spend a shorter window with albums that I love. Used to be a newfound beloved album could get played for months on end, now it's usually a few weeks and I've moved on to something else.

I do have huge ethical concerns with Spotify being that they are massive cunts, and absolutely fleecing artists. But clearly not enough to deactivate my account...yet. Which for the meantime makes me a bit of a cunt too I suppose.

[Cosmic_Equilibrium]

Grew up listening to music during the last high point for physical media in the 2000s, and as such I still have a large CD collection. I culled it a fair bit over the last ten years or so (when CDs started getting cheaper I was almost buying them for the sake of it at times, had a lot of stuff I just felt 'meh' about) but even so I still have over a thousand of them. Certain bands I'm completist about as well (Sabbath, Reverend Bizarre, Cathedral, Maiden) and I will usually own pretty much every release by them.

Being on an iMac on 56k in the 00s meant that I never got into downloading/torrenting much until I finally got broadband and enough storage space for FLACs. I usually download live bootlegs but I will also purchase digital releases if I can't be bothered to look around the shops or if they've sold out on the physical format. However there's still a certain lack of something with buying FLACs as opposed to purchasing physical product.

I got into vinyl in the 00s as well as it was relatively cheap then and prices hadn't gotten silly. Culled my LP collection down a bit since as I just wasn't playing them much but still got about 250 or so. Some records I have you can't easily find on CD or digital so it's the only option. I love the artwork and the tactile factor of an LP - dug out my deck and records a couple of years ago and really enjoyed how much more in depth interaction one has with the music and the experience as a whole - but then they gathered dust again. I tend to limit my purchases now to nice stuff like first pressings, or LP issues of albums I really really like.

Thing is, most of the time I just end up sitting at my laptop playing stuff off Youtube (I run an adblocker). Mostly live stuff but you can pretty much find anything on there, so it's the easiest option to do. I kind of like the whole casualness of streaming stuff this way. Don't own a Spotify account though because they pay artists jack shit. I know that streaming off Youtube doesn't pay the artist either but most of the time if I'm playing something and like it I'll go and buy the CD or digital download as well.

Also have some cassettes as back up in storage but the audio quality of the medium isn't that brilliant. Been thinking about ripping my CD collection to FLAC and putting it on an external HD storage that I can plug into my laptop and play through my stereo but I got to about E in the list of bands and gave up, just takes a lot of time. Still use MP3 player rather than phone as portable music player though. Useful to have around.