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

nytimes.com

131–140 of 452 posts

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

#131
I think people are missing the point - his point is simplicity. This is actually why I've stopped buying albums and switched entirely to streaming internet radio like di.fm. I spent way too much time and effort managing my mp3 library over the years. (ripping, tagging, file naming, album art, etc)

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

#132
post #90

I listen to a lot of japanese doujin music (self-released albums produced by amateur circles at conventions). This is often a couple hundred albums every year, between Comiket, M3, and other smaller conventions. The overwhelming majority of it simply isn't available as a physical release on typical online marketplaces, much less on streaming services. Importing the physical release + ripping or relying on community d…

Is there an online community for doujin? Sounds similar to the vapor/future/chillwave community on Bandcamp.

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

#133
post #94

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…

This is why it's so important that we resist pressure to upload everything to the cloud. Buy a 64 or 128GiB flash drive and put your whole collection there. (plus one probably for backup). Copy it to all your local machine(s). Copy the important stuff to your mobile.

I wouldn't trust flash drives for a whole library of hard-to-replace music, they fail all the time and they're hard to recover once they do. Better to use a NAS, external hard drive, or cloud storage you pay for like S3.

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

#134

I ripped my CDs ages ago and have listened to music in my car or on my motorcycle through iPods or my iPhone since then. I would love to be able to get rid of all the CDs that I have accumulated throughout the years. For the last few years all my purchases have been through iTunes with an exception or two done through Amazon. I even downloaded a few albums and tracks made available by the artists themselves. The key…

> The key to me is that I am pretty much set in my music preferences.

I used to think that until I got a music subscription. I end up finding old music that is new to me. About the only genre I do not like is country, but even that isn't a hard rule. I also find it fun to just get lost exploring genres of music, but I understand that may not be a common thing to do.

> Radio, I used to use it for commute traffic only and for the most part its the only reason I can see using it.

For me, podcasts killed the radio. Terrestrial radio feels like it's more commercials than content. If I do turn on the radio and on the rare chance it's not on a commercial, one is coming in the next minute or so.

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

#135
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this statement of yours is somewhat of a meme, and you may even be saying it tongue-in-cheek, but, this is one of many tiny cuts over the years that caused me to switch entirely to Linux. I don't run Windows at home or at work for the best part of a decade now. I run bleeding edge hardware, I have a high-end gaming PC, my laptop is a 2019 model that only works if I use Linux 5.0 and my wife complains that Open…

> I have a high-end gaming PC Is gaming a thing on Linux now? I was given to thinking that if you're into PC gaming you're really stuck with Windows ...

Linux gaming has come a long way. Steam even has a fork of wine they are working on which is built into their client.

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

#136

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…

Man, I lost my precious childhood videos after "saving" on the cloud. Google deleted it because of some seconds of the background music of AC/DC's on the radio.

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

#137
post #79
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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?

I think it’s a typo.

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

#138
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…

Agreed. I have Apple Music. $99/year, and it's easy to find $100 iTunes gift cards for $85 (sometimes even $80) each year to renew. So ~$7/month is a great value and less than a new CD each month.

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

#139
post #129

A couple years ago I took all my music back out of google music and restored from physical backups where necessary. Now, my audio player is an old laptop running linux, hooked up to some very nice speakers. (it can play podcasts too!) The laptop just uses Rhythmbox, but you could obviously use whatever player you like. It's the best setup I've ever had. No terrible UI, no syncing, no garbage. I control what music is…

So, do you buy each song separately digitally or physically? Also, after buying, how do you move it to your setup? For physical copies (CDs or Vinyls), do you rip and convert them to .flac or .mp3? For digital, do you remove the DRM?

I thought that Amazon and iTunes both have DRM free songs (for purchase / streaming does have DRM)

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

#140

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.

Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose.
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