When I tossed my CD collection, I ripped all the music first. Lately I’ve been buying more digital music despite having an Amazon Music subscription. Eventually this will all go on a NAS with a Plex server for streaming.
Yeah I should have ripped everything when I got rid of the CDs but I was too lazy. Still assuming that I can download everything if I need to but of course I haven't done that yet. It's definitely a good idea to have some sort of personal backup.
"I may have forsaken ownership of any music media in exchange for access to infinitely more of it via streaming, but it’s still nearly impossible to imagine a scenario in which that faucet is turned off, even though the internet’s relatively short history offers little evidence that anything is even close to permanent."
Every once in a while I have a moment of panic, wondering "what if?" It's certainly possible that Spotify (or Tidal, or whoever) could vanish, but I'm relatively certain I could rebuild most of my collection- it'd take forever, but it's not impossible. In the meantime, the value proposition you've laid out here is exactly what keeps me on platforms I might not otherwise engage with. I don't have the space--literally or physically-- for the amount of music I currently have on playlists, liked records, etc.
The downside is needing to reconcile that with the idea that they host artists, podcasters, etc. I might not agree with. But we make those same decisions all the time (Twitter, Substack, etc.).
Yeah - this is pretty much my exact thought process. Like I said in the post, it's weird how it feels sort of unimaginable that our access would ever be reduced. But now all my habits revolve around Spotify and I could never replace my wide range of streaming with a physical collection (not to mention the cost of buying it all again).
This situation probably recurs in a lot of domains, not just music, where we're used to having everything at our our fingertips. Good to be aware of it at least!
When I tossed my CD collection, I ripped all the music first. Lately I’ve been buying more digital music despite having an Amazon Music subscription. Eventually this will all go on a NAS with a Plex server for streaming.
Yeah I should have ripped everything when I got rid of the CDs but I was too lazy. Still assuming that I can download everything if I need to but of course I haven't done that yet. It's definitely a good idea to have some sort of personal backup.
"I may have forsaken ownership of any music media in exchange for access to infinitely more of it via streaming, but it’s still nearly impossible to imagine a scenario in which that faucet is turned off, even though the internet’s relatively short history offers little evidence that anything is even close to permanent."
Every once in a while I have a moment of panic, wondering "what if?" It's certainly possible that Spotify (or Tidal, or whoever) could vanish, but I'm relatively certain I could rebuild most of my collection- it'd take forever, but it's not impossible. In the meantime, the value proposition you've laid out here is exactly what keeps me on platforms I might not otherwise engage with. I don't have the space--literally or physically-- for the amount of music I currently have on playlists, liked records, etc.
The downside is needing to reconcile that with the idea that they host artists, podcasters, etc. I might not agree with. But we make those same decisions all the time (Twitter, Substack, etc.).
Yeah - this is pretty much my exact thought process. Like I said in the post, it's weird how it feels sort of unimaginable that our access would ever be reduced. But now all my habits revolve around Spotify and I could never replace my wide range of streaming with a physical collection (not to mention the cost of buying it all again).
This situation probably recurs in a lot of domains, not just music, where we're used to having everything at our our fingertips. Good to be aware of it at least!