"Why play music from your hard drive? No Ads, No Privacy Terrors, No Algorithms"
Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms
71–80 of 452 posts
Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No, shift would disable autoplay. The question is whether this could defeat the malware ... I seem to remember that it did but few were wise to this.
Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms
#73I 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…
> even if you listen to CDs on your computer the media player is still collecting your data and behaviour
I'm not sure what OS or media player you use(d), but implying that it's somehow inherent to playing music on your computer in general is an overstatement, to put it mildly.
As a counterpoint to your argument: I tried Spotify and went back to offline music. I don't use CDs of course, it's all ripped to MP3 and sitting there on my hard drives, with some of it copied over to my phone.
The internet is always there except when it isn't – cross the border to a non-EU country with crazy roaming charges and suddenly you'd wish that you had stuff offline with you. On the other hand with online services the music collection you have “with you” is effectively infinite, as long as the data connection is up. There's ups and downs to everything.
The thing that ultimately turns me off from Spotify is the client: I've come to expect the ability to add a few albums to a makeshift playlist, shuffle the tracks, remove some of them because I don't like them, reorder a few songs whenever I feel like it etc. Whenever I try out Spotify it seems like my options are either to listen to whatever The Algorithm[tm] serves me or painstakingly create a custom playlist every time I want to listen to something non-standard. The “Play Queue” management in Spotify is next to nonexistent (or hidden so well in the UI that I couldn't find it), and compared to regular desktop players like Cantata it's just annoying to use.
Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
To nitpick: Pure musics CD (CD-DA) can't contain any DRM or rootkits, because the format doesn't allow for data - it's all sound. Only combined CD-ROM/CD-R + CD-DA formats together with the unfortunate eagerness of Windows to auto-execute everything allows such rootkits. So if you feed a music CD to a real old CD player, or to (say) a properly configured Linux computer: No privacy terrors.
Or a properly configured windows. Not even windows 95 would autorun a CD if you didn't tell it to.
> ... if you told it not to.
FTFY
By default, Win96 would run that CD. You didn't tell it to. You had to go change the setting from the default. You had to tell Win95 to not autorun a CD.
Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms
#75Instead 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 p…
I'm curious why a CD would not work anymore after listening to it a lot? Is the laser powerful enough to damage it or is it the heat from the device itself which is degrading the material in the long term?
The polycarbonate substrate could degrade due to temperature, humidity, exposure to sunlight, and other environmental variables. These are concerns for institutions with large CD-based archives (e.g., Library of Congress). [1]
In practice, though, it's far more likely that the the disc will get corrupted from small scratches.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/08/18/34...
Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms
#76Instead 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 p…
I'm curious why a CD would not work anymore after listening to it a lot? Is the laser powerful enough to damage it or is it the heat from the device itself which is degrading the material in the long term?
> I'm curious why a CD would not work anymore after listening to it a lot? Is the laser powerful enough to damage it or is it the heat from the device itself which is degrading the material in the long term?
If you handled everything with white gloves and carefully moved the CD around it would probably last forever under a realistic scenario (you left it in a closet, didn't move it around much, etc.).
I have a bunch of original CDs from my first music collection that still work after ~20 years based on spot checking some of them 5+ years ago. Even with hundreds of playbacks.
But, I do have a handful of CDs that I remember having issues. They skip in certain spots due to artifacts on the CD. The real world happens. I don't remember what happened exactly in each case, but I'm guessing they got scratched. Like maybe I didn't put it fully into the black binder that held 200 CDs and I hit a bump in my car which caused the binder to jump around and an edge of the CD got clipped by the zipper, who knows.
Also burnt CDs seem to have a much worse shelf life. They are much more susceptible to being damaged. I don't know exactly why at a technical level but for sure I've had more burnt CDs fail over time. That becomes an issue when you want to back things up.
With mp3s, I can just put thousands of songs on my computer and everything works all the time. I never had an mp3 not play or skip unless the file itself was corrupt initially. They are also a heck of a lot more portable. You can put your collection on your phone, throw in some earbuds and now you can go on a run, or a 6 hour plane trip. You ever try running with a discman[0]? I have. It doesn't really work too well haha.
[0]: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41305EZ51FL...
Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms
#77I 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…
I think CDs are still a very good option when you think about how you intend to maintain your digital collection in the next 30 years. CDs I bought in the early 90s are there, in a box. I'd like to see people's iTunes collections in 30 years... Yes, I know that CDs have a shelf-life and that real long term storage would involve backing them up. But CDs still seem a better option than the current alternatives. Edit: T…
> The issue even with a DRM-free local iTunes library is: how are people going to keep that over 30 years?
The same place and way you keep all your other digitally purchased music. Just like the music I buy from bleep, Bandcamp or directly from artists.
What’s the problem here?
Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms
#78Earlier 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?
That didn't work for getting you access to the better quality audio. The PC's drive would just skip the audio section, even if you prevented it from installing the malware/rootkit.
Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or a properly configured windows. Not even windows 95 would autorun a CD if you didn't tell it to.
> ... if you told it not to. FTFY By default, Win96 would run that CD. You didn't tell it to. You had to go change the setting from the default. You had to tell Win95 to not autorun a CD.
Win96 = Win95OSR?
Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms
#80I 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…
For all flac lovers: http://abx.digitalfeed.net/ I do understand the sentiment though.
Their music is compressed down to 6db maybe, no wonder it sounds the same, the industry is to blame.