I had an email exchange with a very famous audio writer who was sure he was immune to it too. No one is immune. When I am I am enjoying the music, I really don’t care much about the mechanisms of perception. I know what I hear and I know what I perceive are effectively the same thing unless I am performing some sort of test. Bias works both ways too. We can fail hear things that are real because our dogma and our test results say they can’t be.
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The Truth About Music Streaming
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Bernard23
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Agreed. I've got to an age where I observe two things: that ground truth matters, and there are well established processes to obtain it, that's been my day job for the last 40 odd years near enough. Applying that rigour to consumer audio is an interesting side show, ultimately irrelevant unless you're business (seller) or health (buyer) depends on it. Like you perhaps, I just buy stuff I like the sound of, I'm not really bothered too much if it's not correct, unless I paid for that expectation of course; but that's a principle of life, not limited to some holy grail of audio perfection.
thecheapseats
Addicted to Fun and Learning
stumbled upon your thread late (obviously)... however your phrase, "poverty spec home router" made me spit my afternoon coffee... hilarious - a sincere 'thanks'...
Liya
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- Browsing new weekly releases on streaming service is similar to how I used to browse shelves at the local CD shop twenty years ago. I was accepting some albums and rejecting many others. For me, album cover is just as important as music. Really. If you can't get album cover art right then what sort of music you are going to present?
- One of the reasons I maintain downloaded music library is booklets for classical music. Apple Music Classical is a step in the righ direction (because of their correct use of metadata) but for me to fully switch and use them they must have digital booklets attached to albums. You can get a lot of useful info from the booklet. Like latest Isabelle Faust's Stravinsky's Violin Concerto. There is an interesting interview with Isabelle and Francois Roth that is completelly missing if all you do is to listen to the album on Apple Classical, Tidal or Spotify.
- Tidal and Spotify integration with HiFI is elegant (plenty of streamers). Apple Music integration is very limited (only one streamer: Sonos. Then Airplay, which I wouldn't like to use. Third solution: iPad connected via cable to a dac, which is not good as my dac is 5 meters away from me; apart from that I think iPad is a great streamer! All native apps of anything you want. You can't beat that and none of the stand alone hifi streamers will ever match that!). A fourth solution would be Apple TV, but then I would need to have a TV on while listening to music or I would need to invest in a bulky AV receiver just to have Apple TV hdmi routed thru it).
You use other people’s assets( rent) which can increase price at any time …. Or go bust as a company. I prefer to be a farmer on my own land than a peasant working for others for their benefit
Hi.
I suppose your reply came from your private part of the Internet, connected through your private ISP.. then again , you must have to reach the rest of the global internet ... Not renting access?
You always "rent" something. You chose to not rent your music.. I posit that those who chose to rent their music have access to more music than you could ever... The risk of seeing my subscription fees increase are well worth it for us
Peace.
Zensō
Major Contributor
Agreed. And streaming fees are very unlikely to rise significantly due to the fact that Apple, Google, and Amazon—the companies that will ultimately control music streaming—do not need to make a profit directly from music. Music streaming for these behemoths is just one small value-added feature (among many) to entice people into their ecosystems.Hi.
I suppose your reply came from your private part of the Internet, connected through your private ISP.. then again , you must have to reach the rest of the global internet ... Not renting access?
You always "rent" something. You chose to not rent your music.. I posit that those who chose to rent their music have access to more music than you could ever... The risk of seeing my subscription fees increase are well worth it for us
Peace.
thecheapseats
Addicted to Fun and Learning
concise and so true ^^^
I value quality music and recordings over streaming buffets of suspect quality that can disappear at any time.Hi.
I suppose your reply came from your private part of the Internet, connected through your private ISP.. then again , you must have to reach the rest of the global internet ... Not renting access?
You always "rent" something. You chose to not rent your music.. I posit that those who chose to rent their music have access to more music than you could ever... The risk of seeing my subscription fees increase are well worth it for us
Peace.
I can learn about new music many ways: concerts, reviews, books , friends and music school seminars.
Cawafuoshi
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I once was an avid Microsoft Zune user. I went on a spending spree with them and purchased a good deal of music. Some I downloaded, plenty not. Then I started living under a rock, and when I came out I had missed the grace period when purchased titles and albums could be still downloaded before the service went bust.
I know, my fault but also a “flaw“ of the medium involved. Catalogues, streaming rights, etc. do change and music might not be accessible any longer.
Lesson learned. As long as my Sprint/TMO subscription includes access to Tidal Hi-Fi Plus, streaming will be a viable platform, but I never will throw out physical media.
I know, my fault but also a “flaw“ of the medium involved. Catalogues, streaming rights, etc. do change and music might not be accessible any longer.
Lesson learned. As long as my Sprint/TMO subscription includes access to Tidal Hi-Fi Plus, streaming will be a viable platform, but I never will throw out physical media.
ribonucleic
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Offsite backup of one’s own digitized music files is the only reasonable assurance of indefinite access to one’s music.
sure, just have audacity record your loopback device. Quite some manual work, but it works..
Napster definitely kicked the door open in 1999 for digital music distribution, yet it wasn’t the only file-sharing experiment: Gnutella (2000) and Kazaa (2001) quickly stepped in after the shutdown, proving the genie was out of the bottle. That context helps explain why the labels and traditional music distribution channels felt a sustained existential threat, not just a single rogue app. On mobile data speeds: the early “2G” you mention was really 9.6 kb/s for raw GSM data, with GPRS (“2.5G”) creeping up toward ~40 kb/s. EDGE squeezed out ~200 kb/s before true 3G (UMTS/HSPA) arrived in 2003–05 at 384 kb/s and later multi-megabit HSPA+ revisions. The point still stands—streaming didn’t become mainstream until networks hit that ~1 Mb/s comfort zone—but the step ladder is a bit more granular.
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Not really. Those who only use physical media still have access to all music that was ever released on physical media. They just don't have instant access.
(There will be some releases that are not available new or used but then streaming services don't have everything either).
There's no point having access, instant or otherwise, to music you have no interest in listening to.
whereisbrian
Active Member
Streaming is something like that:
www.theguardian.com
An AI-generated band got 1m plays on Spotify. Now music insiders say listeners should be warned
The Velvet Sundown released two albums before admitting their music, images and backstory were created by AI
www.theguardian.com
In Orwell's '1984' the contemporary music is written by machines. He was 40 years out but otherwise it was an accurate prediction.Streaming is something like that:
An AI-generated band got 1m plays on Spotify. Now music insiders say listeners should be warned
The Velvet Sundown released two albums before admitting their music, images and backstory were created by AI
Peterinvan
Senior Member
I have backed up my Tidal playlists in a Soundiz .CSV format such that they can be imported to any major streaming app if needed. This backup file goes offsite once a year.
I got rid of physical media (CDs) several years ago after ripping them to FLAC.
MitchDylan
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My first post on ASR, so please be gentle.
I once read, or somebody explained, why streaming services under-pay a lot of musicians. They pay based on the total number of streams of a song by all users on their platform in a month. And compared to the current popular songs/artists, something like jazz or classical is so far down the list that they only get a few pennies compared to the most popular musicians. For example, in 2024, the most popular musician on Spotify had about 4 billion streams and the most popular jazz artist had about 200 million streams at number 377 on the list. So it becomes a winner take all situation with the vast majority of the money going to pop musicians.
But what if you looked at it on a per subscriber basis rather than a total streams basis? Let’s say I pay $10/month for Spotify and I only listen to jazz. If Spotify took all the royalties they pay on my $120/year subscription and divided it based on my streams, nobody in the top 366 musicians would get any of my royalties but many musicians much further down the list would get a portion of my royalties. Thus, listeners who listen primarly to non-pop musicians could support the artists they are paying Spotify to listen to.
As far as I know, there is no reason royalties couldn’t be allocated on a per-subsciber basis, but it isn’t done that way. So jazz, classical, bluegrass, zydeco, etc musicians who have small but passionate followings, don’t get rewarded for this.
I hope this made sense.
I once read, or somebody explained, why streaming services under-pay a lot of musicians. They pay based on the total number of streams of a song by all users on their platform in a month. And compared to the current popular songs/artists, something like jazz or classical is so far down the list that they only get a few pennies compared to the most popular musicians. For example, in 2024, the most popular musician on Spotify had about 4 billion streams and the most popular jazz artist had about 200 million streams at number 377 on the list. So it becomes a winner take all situation with the vast majority of the money going to pop musicians.
But what if you looked at it on a per subscriber basis rather than a total streams basis? Let’s say I pay $10/month for Spotify and I only listen to jazz. If Spotify took all the royalties they pay on my $120/year subscription and divided it based on my streams, nobody in the top 366 musicians would get any of my royalties but many musicians much further down the list would get a portion of my royalties. Thus, listeners who listen primarly to non-pop musicians could support the artists they are paying Spotify to listen to.
As far as I know, there is no reason royalties couldn’t be allocated on a per-subsciber basis, but it isn’t done that way. So jazz, classical, bluegrass, zydeco, etc musicians who have small but passionate followings, don’t get rewarded for this.
I hope this made sense.
Robin L
Master Contributor
When I was first turned on by Classical music (1968, 13 years old) I heard most of my albums via local libraries. Fresno State University had an enormous collection of Classical titles, multiple listening booths, headphones. Later experiences got me used to the idea that I wasn't going to hang on to my LPs/CDs forever, simply didn't have enough room. Streaming, for me, is much like returning to the days when I used the library. I don't worry about "owning" the music, where would I store it anyway? And I don't worry about specific titles or masterings so much as I want to hear recordings I haven't heard before.
FLAC files streamed from a humongous catalog for about $12 a month?
FLAC files streamed from a humongous catalog for about $12 a month?
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I was able to follow this, and the model makes sense. However this model does not favour the huge music labels, who music streamers have to license and agree to payment structures with in order to offer their content.
The model you described would pit all music producers in competition with one another for a larger share of the finite pot of subscription revenue.
The model labels desire (and have enough power to bring about) is fixed payment per stream, which they can then hit the pavement in marketing to try and increase the total pot.
Obviously for them to have more means the streaming service has less, as there is in reality a finite amount of funds to go around. But this is not their problem, and they’re happy to let these services be bankrolled by investors in the mean time.
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