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Are people getting sick of streaming services...

Don't get me wrong, i'm not against the existence of streaming media (altough i don't use it). It could be a great way to spread and find music for cheap. But the actual execution lacks a lot i think, and I notice i'm not alone. Those who are unhappy with how it goes grows fast is my impression. Even youtube became only bearable if you block a whole leap of things they push in your face.

Some things that need to be better:

Artists could get paid better (there is budget, see the excessive profit they make).
Leave sugestions and so optional, an option you need to activate. If you want to suggest, look at the history and make logic suggestions. I know classical musicians, that only listen to classical music who always are pointed to top30 artist they don't give a f**k about.
Keep different versions of a song in the database, many care a lot about a specific version of a song.
High res should be mandatory (some do, not all).

And mainly, don't mess with playlists that people make, don't push things into people's face if the not choose for it. That is a very hard undisputable condition for many i know who now leave spotify. Suggestions can be good (like many of you say), but don't push it hardcore. Many don't care and just want to hear their favorite music, without interuptions by suggestions.

Sometimes i also wonder, should i try it still, but then those stories come and that curiosity is gone instantly... It's not that I lack music, I got a vinyl collection of thousands and a NAS server with terrabites of (high res) digital music.
Agree that the remuneration model for artists sucks (although I do like that streaming service are so cheap ... is it my fault after all?)

Streaming is challenging for Classical music especially, and where you want a specific recording. That's where CDs come in though. I'm not surprised that these global services don't cater well for niche markets and I don't think I expect them to

Heavy handed 'loudness' mastering is annoying. If I'm honest with myself I rarely actually notice this though, perhaps it's also less of a problem with the kind of music I tend to listen to. Not at all unique to streaming though
 
No, I’m not getting sick of streaming. Streaming has replaced radio for music discovery, with the added bonus that I can create my own playlist so it replaces the mix tape as well. Easier to share than past days.

I don’t find the generated suggestions problematic, the algorithms seem to expand with the variability in my musical tastes. They are not interrupting my playlists either, if so would be an irritation but a minor one.
 
I don't let the algorithms feed me music. I'm not into "songs" and "playlists" like most streamers seem to be. I'm really just into albums. I use Tidal, and interact almost exclusively by going to my followed artists, selecting one, then selecting an album. I literally never use playlists. I don't use it any differently than if I just had a stack of albums instead, other than there is no incremental cost to expanding my library. I also have a physical library, but I almost never use it, as streaming the same album from Tidal is just so much easier (assuming it's there).
 
I continue to use streaming serenely: I have discovered and continue to discover new songs and new artists every day, with Roon radios that I could never have known.

I have decided to abandon the CD, and I want to make a physical library with vinyl more for a question of fun and charm.
I will do a search for the albums that I like the most and I will integrate them with my, to date, small vinyl collection.

Social media is a different story... the Colosseum of modern times... I am simply not interested in participating in it, regardless of AI or algorithms, I prefer to live and engage in my real life and share with those close to me...
 
Hi

I
I'm 100% dependent on streaming services and sometimes I like the suggested music but I don't rely in it.

I'm surprised this gets anyone riled up.
Same here. 10~12 years ago, i was boasting about my collection of about 3000 CD ...
First shock was when i used ROON and it started looking into my collection ad suggesting me albums or pieces, I had forgotten all about. Then I tried Spotify around 10 years ago.
That was it! I have never listened and enjoyed to more music in my life... The level of convenience, the sheer size of their catalog and , yes, their algorithm that suggest interesting artists and pieces I had (or maybe could never have) any idea of.
And now I am making peace with Apple Music Classical. It appeared on iPad or it might have been there all along... Now they need to port it to Apple TV for a Spotify-connect-like experience.

Tangential to this discussion is ASR in all of his. Understanding that the compression schemes used by streamers MP3, ACC, Ogg-Vorbis, etc... at higher rate >256 kb/s, are for all practical purposes transparent, has removed any reticence, any subjectivist audiophile FOMO: I mostly listen to Spotify followed by Apple Music where many, if not most prices are in lossless... Doesn't bother me one bit...

Liberation... I am a tin-ears music lover :D. Lost my audiophiles golden ears creds for good..

:D

Peace.
 
I think paid for streaming services make more sense the older you are, for various reasons.
100% disagree, 65 yo and never liked streaming. Tried tidal, Spotify and Amazon. Content with 40,000 flacs, and rotate through thrift shops for new music at$1 a CD.
 
I'm about to turn 66, and I love streaming! Play via Spotify about 60% of the time, owned music the other 40%. I will never give up legacy media as I grew my records, tapes and CDs over a 50 year period, and we are still living in a large house that can accommodate the storage needs. When we downsize in about 10 years, life willing, I will make selections. I would use a different service than Spotify but my wife likes it and the quality is "good enough." I don't use their AI or algorithms much, still read my music news to learn of upcoming releases, and suggestions from others on classical, jazz and electronic/ambient threads, my main interests. Spotify's "Release Radar" I do play on Fridays, or skim through, as it does tend to find new releases by artists I like, or proximate artists. Streaming has allowed me huge access to almost anything I want to hear, and for about $16 a month, it's something I am very disinclined to ever do without.

The only playlists I use are Release Radar, a very small number of ones I built early on in using Spotify, and holiday ones where we just want background music playing behind our Edward Albee-like holiday escapades to soften the blows...oh, yeah, on to Thanksgiving, yay!
 
pretty happy with streaming. Currently I am using Tidal with Roon at home, most Tidal with Android Auto in my car. My complaints are that suggestions seem stagnant (found that to be the case with all the services I have tried). Apps don't seem to improve over time as I would expect though and really I most I have tried are worse than the old MOG and Rdio.
 
After grumbling about software updates, Kyle Chayka writes, "I realize that it sounds curmudgeonly to complain about software updates." and goes on to grumble some more.

Who remembers this from Private Eye?
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I try to support the active/living artists I play the most by buying downloads from Bandcamp etc. but I still mostly listen to them via Spotify even though I have several thousand CD's worth of 'lossless' music saved on my NAS. Most of the artists I currently favour I would probably never have heard of in the first place without Spotify's algorithms ...
 
100% disagree, 65 yo and never liked streaming. Tried tidal, Spotify and Amazon. Content with 40,000 flacs, and rotate through thrift shops for new music at$1 a CD.
I was not referring to personal preferences, but to what makes more sense or not, which can be assessed from different points of view, and of course can change depending on one’s circumstances.
Example: economically speaking, if you are in your 70s, well, you wont have to pay more than say 10-20 years of service, so, well, it might easily become irrelevant... While if you are a teenager, you have an awful lot of payments to spotify left, and that might not look so worthy….
 
For the most part, I'm happy with streaming. In the past I've had a record library with around 4000 albums, and around 2004, I digitized practically everything including the vinyl. Honestly, knowing what I know now, I wish I would not have bothered. I can find just about every one of those albums on either Tidal or Qobuz in CD quality or better. That's just so much more convenient than having them on a hard drive, let alone curating them as physical media. And they take up so much less space!

Same with video, though I'm kind of unhappy with Netflix for changing their desk top app. I'm still not sure if I can use it as a source for multichannel surround sound on my PC, so I can do DSP with Dirac with it.

I also don't like how certain genres get pushed on some of the streaming services (Tidal), how they may be lying about discontinuing all their MQA titles (Tidal again), and how some services don't seem to be available on all the platforms I use (Qobuz), but for the most part, they do seem to deliver on the sound quality aspect, and have a far wider choice than I'd otherwise have available to me. So yes, they are a win, a very big win.
 
I'm not into hoarding so streaming is the way to go. It's so much more convenient that it's hard to imagine people would go back to collections other than occasional vinyl
 
Bandcamp is the best platform I know in terms of how much they pay.
This is my main concern with streaming, and in fact the music industry in general, going back to my youth. Are the artists getting paid? Do the media companies foster new musical ideas and creativity? I am unclear on how streaming has helped and hurt the artists.

Kyle Chaya’s New Yorker article seems to be about struggles with Spotify’s user interface, software updates, etc. The article reads more like a long winded and lightly sourced customer service complaint. I don’t struggle with the interface the way he does.
 
I try to support the active/living artists I play the most by buying downloads from Bandcamp etc. but I still mostly listen to them via Spotify even though I have several thousand CD's worth of 'lossless' music saved on my NAS. Most of the artists I currently favour I would probably never have heard of in the first place without Spotify's algorithms ...
Lets asssume a CD cost $10. Let’s assume you want to have a good collection of 3000 CD. About $30,000 …
Or 140 years of Spotify at the current rate …
Of $15/month



Peace.
 
Idagio has a great 'radio' feature. All the other services are crap for classical 'algorithms'.

Qobuz keeps obsoleting tracks, and then they don't play in Roon.

Tidal's library seems to have caught up to Qobuz, and they've given up on the dumb MQA thing

I have all three, but thinking about reducing to Tidal and Idagio. Qobuz also allows purchases, which is helpful.
 
I decided to try Qobuz this year. There are pros and cons. I ignore the recommendations as a rule because they're either in genres I don't care about or the selection is too broad for me. E. g. in classical l like baroque and early music but not much from the 19th century on. The other thing that bothers me is that search by genre isn't implemented, only by artist and title. I've managed to find new stuff with search arguments like "viola da gamba" but would like to be able to search on something like "baroque chamber music" or "trio sonata." "Pre-WWII blues" or "country music before 1970" would work well for me. The good side is that they have a lot of stuff. If I search on artists I like I can find new to me recordings. I have 80K music files locally so Qobuz is a way of avoiding buying new stuff and disposing of the physical media I rarely use.
 
I'm not using any streaming app (but youtube, but the free version and very rarely), but i see many in my envirroment closing their spotify or even tidal account and going back to owning music. They are sick of the algoritmes that determine what music they should listen to, and want to go back to active choosing and owning their music. I notice it because many ask how i do that and want advice to set up a system like mine (NAS server with media feeding computers connected to hifi systems arround my house over wifi or lan).

In the press, local and international i see also editorals telling the same story...


I see the same on social media (and left it largely for that), AI wants to push things so hard it becomes a dealbreaker for the media. It's also one of the reason i think what drive youngsters to owning physica media (like vinyl). What are your experiences on that?
I'm nowhere near being a youngster. I've only had Tidal for a few weeks. I always select the music I listen to. It's usually classical, so algorithms have no say in my selection. I notice that the pages of albums top out at 300 choices and some categories have titles missing, so I look at different pages to find some choices. Annie Fischer's wonderful performance of Beethoven's 3rd piano concerto isn't listed under her name, but it does appear four different times, usually under the name of her conductor, Ferenc Fricsay.

I'm happy with the selection and sound quality for the most part. I do get glitches from time to time but my system is primitive by most standards, a laptop plugged into a Topping E30 DAC. Save for occasional dropouts and stutters, sound is fine. It all depends on the quality of the master used.

As regards "owning" the music, that's a chimera to me, an illusion. The record company owns the recording, we just get to listen to it, that's all. And more stuff clogging up space is more stuff clogging up space. I've got close to 1600 CDs, they take up more space than I currently have. I'd rather have some of my recordings in "virtual space" than have to figure out where to put them.
 
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