The Truth About Music Streaming

[Jim Tonic]

The CD is the license to own the ripped music. Ripping and then selling is a crime. Why I have a music server and a closet shelf full of CD’s

and additionally you can see the CDs as a physical Backup of your FLAC-Musicdatabase

 

[Rosenbloom]

Lesson learned! I am going to delete all the files. I don’t need them anymore.

 

[Punter]

And I'm sure many reviewers will actually hear a difference. It's the power of "audio-placebo" (is there a better term for this?).

I experienced it myself when I was listening to a track and the bass was a little off. After a small correction of my subwoofer level it sounded better and I was satisfied again. I swear I heard a clear difference, no doubt in my mind. But to my own astonishment I later discovered I forgot to turn on the subwoofer amplifier altogether. The correction I made had no effect whatsoever, it was all in my brain. Very weird experience which shows how powerfull the "audio-placebo" effect can be...

I find it fascinating that by an act of will, you can choose to hear something that you normally wouldn't pay any attention to. If someone was talking to you and shuffling papers at the same time, you could intentionally concentrate on the sound of the paper and render the talking to the background. It's a fun experiment to do It explains how the snake oil reveiwers manage to "hear" the effects they wax lyrical over.

 

[SimpleTheater]

I used to buy and keep CDs, up to a point of having around 2000 CDs on my shelves. Every time when I moved house, the burden of finding storage space for those CDs was not enjoyable. I just hoped one day I could get rid of those physical CDs and could still enjoy high quality music whenever I wanted. Ten years ago, I made up my mind and ripped all my CDs into Applelossless files, and then sold 97% of my CDs (I now only keep some 40 CDs.) I must say it was a very liberating experience!

And now, I am further liberated by the online streaming and Airplay. I stream BBC3 every morning or play the local files in my iPad Pro via Airplay. For me, the physical medium of music is no longer attractive. Cheers

I had hundreds of vinyl records and hundreds of CDs (collecting since the 80's). The amount of money in those physical products could have paid for streaming hi-fi from Tidal (or any other service) for a hundred years. My move to streaming not only saves money ($20/month is about 1.7 physical discs), allows me access to 70+ million songs, build playlists and take up no space at all. I've kept about 200 CDs (without the cases, just put them on a spindle), fifty LPs and my two dozen SACDs. Chances of ever buying anything else is slim, but there are a few songs/albums that are hard to find on a streaming service. One that comes to mind, and a CD I cherish, is the original motion picture soundtrack to Conan the Barbarian. This is where streaming can fall short, when it gets removed for some licensing reason. But I'm with you, the value of the physical music file isn't very important to me anymore.

 

[BinkieHuckerback]

CDs and vinyl are like vacuum cleaners...they just gather dust

 

[Rosenbloom]

TBH I almost come to a point that I even do not want to keep any music files in my hard drive. It may sound silly: Keeping those backups is also becoming quite troublesome for me!
I find the BBC3 streaming sound quality is perfectly fine to my ears. Music subscriptions allow me to explore new music everyday. If I want to have ”real audiophile” listening experiences, I go to the concert halls.

 

[Madlop26]

Another option for backing up is to install Roon, and export all your playlists, so that they can be uploaded into your next streaming service of choice.
I have spent years now curating my playlists (in Tidal). These are what I need to preserve.

Agree, it is amazing how times change, owning CDs or files are right now quite obsolete in a practical way. Owning your music? is that a thing?; really? what is important is accessibility and quality, that's all, in that regard the superiority of streaming music is vast. With apple Music I got my same music collection plus millions and millions of new song I never knew existed, you get CD quality or better (if you have bat ears of course). These day I Listen to my music collection rarely but I endlessly navigate through millions and millions of song, so much good new music to discover.; and yes, playlists are becoming the new thing, is where I put the music that really touch me, and there is so much that losing my playlists is becoming quite scary, the other day I lost one of them, I panicked, it was not a long one and I was able to rebuild it, but what about if I loss a large one? I find myself doing back ups now constantly.

 

[Overseas]

I use strea

And I'm sure many reviewers will actually hear a difference. It's the power of "audio-placebo" (is there a better term for this?).

I experienced it myself when I was listening to a track and the bass was a little off. After a small correction of my subwoofer level it sounded better and I was satisfied again. I swear I heard a clear difference, no doubt in my mind. But to my own astonishment I later discovered I forgot to turn on the subwoofer amplifier altogether. The correction I made had no effect whatsoever, it was all in my brain. Very weird experience which shows how powerfull the "audio-placebo" effect can be...

Ok, does not mean all perceptions are subjective.

 

[Overseas]

me, and there is so much that losing my playlists is becoming quite scary, the other day I lost one of them, I panicked, it was not a long one and I was able to rebuild it, but what about if I loss a large one? I find myself doing back ups now constantly.

So you laugh about 'owning' the music, but were panicked that you lost a playlist?! Do you see yourself in the big picture?

 

[BinkieHuckerback]

My dad collected CDs. He died in 2015. My mum is still around but is hard of hearing and doesn't care for music anyway. There are HUNDREDS of CDs at their home. I wish he'd gotten into streaming sooner.

 

[Jim Tonic]

+1 for owning physical music = I can lend digital ripped music to good friends (in germany)
the only problem is: my friends are just listing to mainstream, heartless spotify charts ...

 

[BinkieHuckerback]

+1 for owning physical music = I can lend digital ripped music to good friends (in germany)
the only problem is: my friends are just listing to mainstream, heartless spotify charts ...

Streaming has nothing to do with taste in music...

 

[Madlop26]

So you laugh about 'owning' the music, but were panicked that you lost a playlist?! Do you see yourself in the big picture?

yes my friend, accessibility is now more important than ownership

 

[LouB]

Just got into streaming using Qobuz very good quality as good as my cd's anyway. But whats pissing me off is some of the songs start a second or so into the track missing the 1st few notes ? Anybody else run into this problem ?

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Anybody else run into this problem ?

Not me. How are you streaming it?

 

[levimax]

Streaming is great and I use it often. However to claim the quality the best is not always true. Streaming services, even the HD services, usually only have the latest and greatest re-master of older music which is mastered to current fashion i.e. as loud as possible. In addition if listening to complete albums often both the fade in and fade out and the level differences between songs is lost. Sometimes differences are subtle other time very noticable. For older music I like I find it worth it to track down original CD's or in some cases original vinyl. I don't see any reason to limit my choices or ability to play back different formats.

 

[isolar8001]

I tried Tidal.....for half an hour. Unsubscribed immediately and have never tried it again....same with Prime Music.,
Direct compared to my files on hard-drive, their stream of the same material in the same supposed quality just sounded weak and lifeless.
That's it for streaming music for me....should work perfectly, but it doesn't.

 

[PierreV]

Streaming is just the standard. All the rest is for fossils (like myself who owned something like 2000 CDs and a bunch of vinyls at one point, I still must have 950 or so). Quality (leaving aside mastering/versions issue) is at worst very acceptable, most of the time virtually identical in the sense that I would and have failed blind tests. And that's even taking MQA, which I consider a con, into account. Not better, not worse for all practical purposes. People hearing major differences must have technical issues, such as low bit rates or hearing masters different from what they were used to, etc...

Yes, I miss the Friday afternoon when I would visit my small specialized CD shop and the very knowledgeable shopkeeper had a pile of new releases he thought could interest me. And yes, I spend much less on music, which probably isn't positive for the old-style artist who relied upon CD sales, especially when, on paper, streaming services aren't treating them fairly... while, apparently, at the same time not making a lot of profits.

I am sure people felt bad about the threat to horse carriages, wandering troubadours or, more recently, their local specialized shops. I will always miss the true Ali Baba cavern that my favorite toy store was, back in the day.

But that is how the world works.

 

[LouB]

Not me. How are you streamin

Using a Yamaha WXAD music streamer plugged into an amp & using the Yamaha app on my phone to run it. It's random and pretty rare & it's always on same song so I figure it has to be a problem with the content on Qobuz. Next time I hear it I'll post up song & version of it & you could give it try if you can stream it with no problem I'm gonna cancel Qobuz & try your provider.
Next rant and actually more pissed about this, seems like 90% of there "albums" are remixed/mastered ? Music that was mixed & mastered 40 years ago is how I would like it to hear it now, not how some engineer in 2014 thinks it should sound.

 

[ehabheikal]

Being quite ignorant about streaming, it's not feasible to record the files in some manner?

If i understand you, then yes there are opensource scripts that can download from tidal and qobuz, those are the ones that i know of.