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Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

nytimes.com

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Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#51

Post by coldtea »

Nextgrid wrote: post #8
munmaek wrote: post #2

I buy CDs occasionally and rip them, but it's 2019, there's no real need to amass a CD collection (unless you want to). For most of my needs, spotify works out. I don't mind paying $10/mo since I use the offline listening so much. I only buy and rip CDs for my own collection if I -really- like that album or a song on it, and a web download isn't available. Occasionally spotify doesn't have a very specific version of…

Just wondering how you manage Spotify + your own music collection. Is there an app that can play both Spotify and imported files and present them in a single UI? At the moment I can’t enjoy anything that’s not on Spotify simply because I wouldn’t be able to listen to them really. I have hours of music on Spotify playlists and I would only need maybe a dozen of songs that aren’t on there, so manually switching apps fo…

>Is there an app that can play both Spotify and imported files and present them in a single UI?

Spotify can play and sync your own files. You add them in a list of folders it checks.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#52

Post by Spearchucker »

Nodzi wrote: post #31

I honestly prefer Spotify. The reality is that I have 1014 songs on my playlist at the time of writing, and it sets me back the equivalent of about $5 PM (Converted from ZAR), and I get to be picky about what I listen to frequently. In an album from someone, odds are that I might like 2 of the songs at most, so buying a CD for only 2 songs is a pointless activity for me. This means that to collect 1000 songs that I l…

Your comment about liking say 2 songs on a album is interesting.

I bought the double disk Led Zep Remasters CD in 1992 just for Immigrant Song. And since then have grown to love all of their stuff.

Sure, since ~1990 I have amassed lot of complete albums (almost 2,000 of them) which cost me a lot of money. Spotify Premium at €10/month for all those years is €3,480. Suspect Spotify is cheaper but I've developed this crazy distrust for anything I supposedly own but isn't DRM-free on my PC.

Yoar approach is easier, no doubt.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#53

Post by coldtea »

jim-jim-jim wrote: post #14
munmaek wrote: post #2

I buy CDs occasionally and rip them, but it's 2019, there's no real need to amass a CD collection (unless you want to). For most of my needs, spotify works out. I don't mind paying $10/mo since I use the offline listening so much. I only buy and rip CDs for my own collection if I -really- like that album or a song on it, and a web download isn't available. Occasionally spotify doesn't have a very specific version of…

While we're on the topic of prog, Spotify also has nothing by Henry Cow or Fred Frith in general, which combined with the lack of King Crimson is a dealbreaker for me.

Perhaps such artists are not recommended (pun intended).

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#55

Post by garmaine »

rawTruthHurts wrote: post #16
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #3

No privacy terrors? What short memories we have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

In all fairness, I'm not sure how much of that applies 14 years later.

We’re now invulnerable to rootkits?

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#56

Post by morsch »

dastx wrote: post #43

I keep pointing this out, but Spotify's shuffle algorithm is absolute horrible. It plays the same 10 or so songs for hours on hours before it moves on to the next 10 or so songs. Their offline feature has become rubbish. Every morning I have a 10 minute walk to the train station and I usually open spotify right after I lock my door. Throughout this walk, spotify has played for about 1 minute in total, on a good day t…

Try putting your phone in airplane mode, or possibly Spotify's own offline mode. I've found that Spotify works great when you have a good internet connection or when you have none at all. It doesn't do well when you have 1 bar of edge reception, or your phone is struggling with cell/wifi handover.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#57

Post by nickjj »

Instead or privacy terrors you have other terrors like wondering if the CD will even play, especially if you've listened to it a lot over 5+ years, even with good care.

I'm surprised the article doesn't cover a more relevant approach like just playing local mp3s from your computer. You get the same no ads, no privacy issues, no algorithms but you have the added benefit of not having to lug around a binder of CDs to play the songs you want.

This is how I've been listening to music for around 20 years and it works nicely. Been using foobar2000 since the beginning too (shortly after the Winamp rewrite that made it suck). It's a minimal mp3 player that uses about 5mb of RAM but has every feature I'd want for play back.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#58

Post by avra »

rusk wrote: post #39
alias_neo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to mention exactly this and am glad to see it at the top. I, as a teenager bought a Sony BMG album with this rootkit. At the time I didn't own a standalone music player, just my PC. I had a nice Creative sound card and some decent speakers, and an appreciation for audio quality. To my surprise I found that the Sony album prevented you from playing back anything but some low-quality 128Kb MP3s stored in th…

wasn't it a thing, that you could bypass this by holding shift (to disable autoplay) when inserting the disc?

I think holding shift just works for autostart when booting up. Autorun/autoplay of CD's can be disabled in the system settings.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#59

Post by garmaine »

hpaavola wrote: post #12

Any recommendations for music stores which sell mp3's? I ordered Nokia 8110 4G and ditch my smartphone once it arrives. I think it only supports mp3's so I need to start buying albums and not rely on Spotify.

You’re local library and a CD drive.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#60

Post by imglorp »

chewz wrote: post #36
sschueller wrote: post #24

What bugs me is that quite a lot of things are not available. I ripped my entire CD collection and uploaded into Google Music (not sure if that feature still exists). I have all this music available but I can not find it on other peoples google music. So if I share a song, they get an error. Most of this music is nothing special and quite mainstream but if I search on other peoples devices I can not find the songs on…

> I can not find the songs only alternate versions from other people who made a cover version of the song. Try some jazz like Coltrane or Miles Davis. It seems they never stoped issuing albums - remastered, Coltrane for lovers, Miles for cooking. It is next to impossible to find original album or remastered original. Yesterday on Youtube Music oldest Coltrane album was from 2015.

I think all these algorithms reward novelty to keep you engaged, which means snipers making phony compilations beat the original.
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