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

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

#341

Post by h4waii »

mywittyname wrote: post #296
rchaud wrote: post #261

I'm definitely on board with physical media. Almost all the vinyl I've bought comes with a download code anyway, and album artwork shines on a 12" x 12" canvas much more than it ever could on the tiny thumbnail you get on a music player app. That being said, indie music stores like Bandcamp are digital only, but offer one-click DRM-free MP3 downloads for purchased songs/albums. The UX is focused on buying music first…

> I honestly find Spotify and Apple Music bad for music discovery if your tastes aren't really adjacent to Top 40 (is that even a thing today?) style pop music. I strongly disagree. Spotify has dramatically increased the variety of music that I listen to and introduced me to lost of tiny artists with great music. I'm looking at the official chart top 40 online and have to go down to 7th place to find an artist I know…

I can second this. Spotify has really helped me discover artists and bands I enjoy.

Years ago, I would have spent a non-zero amount of time linking through friends on Last.FM / Audioscrobbler. While this can be enjoyable, having it done by an algorithm is perfectly fine for me and I'm willing to pay for it.

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

#342

Post by confounded »

fjp wrote: post #334
fatnoah wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I strongly disagree. Spotify has dramatically increased the variety of music that I listen to and introduced me to lost of tiny artists with great music. This has been my experience as well.

There was even a post on HN recently by a small artist talking about how the Discover algorithms brought listeners to his music that probably never would have found him otherwise. I'm a big fan of the recommendation algorithms, so I set up a super basic site to wrap the Spotify API and let anyone get recommendations based on a single song link, rather than waiting for the Discover Weekly recs which are based off the…

How does this compare to Spotify’s ‘Song Radio’ feature?

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

#343

Post by Eleopteryx »

PeanutNore wrote: post #306
rchaud wrote: post #261

I'm definitely on board with physical media. Almost all the vinyl I've bought comes with a download code anyway, and album artwork shines on a 12" x 12" canvas much more than it ever could on the tiny thumbnail you get on a music player app. That being said, indie music stores like Bandcamp are digital only, but offer one-click DRM-free MP3 downloads for purchased songs/albums. The UX is focused on buying music first…

I listen pretty much exclusively to extreme metal and punk rock and Google Play Music has been doing an incredible job of recommending new music that I enjoy.

I actually sent a suggestion/complaint to Google regarding their recommendations. If I start a radio station based on e.g. a 2009 indie pop song I'll mostly hear songs made around that year, usually like 2006~2013, with newer songs just absent. If I make a station based on a 2019 indie pop song, for the most part it's all the same bands as the 2009 playlist, it's just that the songs are more recent. I don't really like this because it forces me into a time capsule instead of just playing indie pop songs from any decade.

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

#344

Post by mattl »

shuzchen wrote: post #315
dirkt wrote: post #26

Earlier 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.

To nitpick your nitpick: there were many attempts to implement DRM even on pure music CDs, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_Control My personal experience with this was with some import CDs (from Japan) that, from what I recall, messed with the error correction part of the data so that it skipped horrendously in my PC (so it was impossible to rip in cdex) but played fine in (most) standalone audio players.

From that Wikipedia article:

"As the Copy Control discs do not conform to the requirements of the CD standard, they are not labeled with the CDDA logo, which is trademarked by Philips."

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

#345

Post by zild3d »

athroway wrote: post #248
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it was not your intention but your comment reminds me of the infamous HN comment on why dropbox is useless and would never be successful.[1] :)) "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in…

Dropbox has been operating at a loss since its creation and is currently not making a profit, so the jury is still out on whether it is actually successful (or just a VC-subsidized service that got advertised a lot).

This comes up all the time and it's silly.

If dropbox only had a high valuation on paper, but employees/founders/investors couldn't actually exchange that into real $ in their bank account then sure, you can say the jury is still out.

But that's not the case. They built a product, have tons of paying users, and have IPO'd with a market cap over $10B. It's not money that only exists on paper. Founders and employees can sell their shares for real money and buy real things.

Their shareholders aren't just a handful of VC's anymore - they are public. The jury has decided, it's successful

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

#347

Post by dingaling »

ckastner wrote: post #98
rawTruthHurts wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Speaking as someone who actively boycotted Sony products for a decade because of this fiasco, I also think it's time to put this to rest.

I'm still boycotting Sony, for the rootkit and the PlayStation Linux switcheroo. They never actually apologised for either.

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

#348

Post by rebane2001 »

poelzi wrote: post #283
rebane2001 wrote: post #106

Most of the music I listen to is from Bandcamp I like it because I can directly support the artists and I get to show off my collection online, while still keeping my (easily redownloadable) mp3/flac collection offline I do like Spotify (even have a Premium subscription), but it's often missing the artists I like and the program itself is pretty terrible compared to something like Foobar/AIMP/PowerAmp In addition, ha…

Me too. In fact, I find the prices and especially the flac extra price something from the last millenium, when storage and bandwith where expensive. Also the discography option is so wonderful, it helps with the backlog if you dive into something new. I already got 2 or 3 labels to be there because there was no proper place to get their music :)

I feel like Bandcamp is also more geared towards artists. When I discover new music on Bandcamp, I see the custom-designed artist pages and make a connection between the music and the artist while on Spotify and YouTube it feels more like going from song to song, but not focusing on artists separately (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I personally prefer the former)

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

#350

Post by nathan_long »

zild3d wrote: post #345
athroway wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox has been operating at a loss since its creation and is currently not making a profit, so the jury is still out on whether it is actually successful (or just a VC-subsidized service that got advertised a lot).

This comes up all the time and it's silly. If dropbox only had a high valuation on paper, but employees/founders/investors couldn't actually exchange that into real $ in their bank account then sure, you can say the jury is still out. But that's not the case. They built a product, have tons of paying users, and have IPO'd with a market cap over $10B. It's not money that only exists on paper. Founders and employees ca…

> The jury has decided, it's successful

Hypothetically, what if it never begins earning more money than it spends each year? At some point wouldn't it be unable to borrow any more (from banks or investors) and be forced to shut down? And if so, we still don't know if it can be profitable, right?

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