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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

#441
post #75
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

And don't forget about the fungus that eats CDs!

https://www.nature.com/news/2001/010628/full/news010628-11.h...

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

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You played AC/DC on multiple videos, and deleted all your originals and other copies after uploading it to YouTube?

Oh, now I understood your question. I lost my physical backup, and now I can't recover it from Google.

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

#443
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…

Spotify has good suggestions. All you need to pick is the genre and then you go to song/playlist radio and you are good. I have found many bands and it often recommends bands with foreign languages( which I don't want). Then there is also your discover weekly which usually gives me at least 1 or 2 good songs.

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

#444
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 only keep Spotify because of "Discover Weekly" playlist generated every Monday based on your taste. The algorithm is truly incredible. There are weeks I find myself saving half of the songs.

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

#445

Another reason CDs are still worth considering: classical music and, to a lesser extent, jazz CDs often feature extensive and informative liner notes that have never been posted online anywhere. I myself typically rip all my purchases to FLAC immediately and then I listen through my media centre, so I often forget that I have the original physical release there on the shelf, but when I do go back and look at that CD…

I recently discovered the Idagio app (https://www.idagio.com/). It has pretty amazing and well maintained database of classical pieces. You can for example list all renditions of such and such piano concerto sorted by year.

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pressed CDs do quite well over time if you keep them in a dry and cool place. I do think finding optical drives will be the rub, they are already becoming niche products. With SSD prices as they are, it’s not hard to imagine a world without SATA connectors before too long. It’s really hard to imagine that there won’t be some Asian company selling optical drives with usb-x connectors or something but I expect people t…

> keep them in a dry and cool place I just pulled mine out of the attic after they had been sitting there for more than a decade. It's dry up there, but not cool at all. I'm in central Texas and in the summer you can only be up there for a few minutes at a time because it's so hot. I bought dbPowerAmp and ripped them all to ALAC. Only a couple of them couldn't be accurately ripped and that's because of scratches on t…

Worth noting (not for you, just in general)--pressed CDs are very durable but CD-Rs, due to their organic ink, generally aren't. Don't rely on them for archiving.

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For new works, but not necessarily old ones. The remaster acts as a new, “derivative” work and thus gets whatever new copyright protection is offered by newer laws.

But the older work doesn't, and nearly all recorded music is already covered by Disney's forever copyright just because of the history of when the technology was invented.

This was my understanding as well.

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

#448

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. I've used a number of music recommendation applications over the last decade. With Spotify, I've noticed that it will become "stuck" in what I describe as similar artist troughs and valleys. In other words, the Spotify recommendation engine will pigeonhole your re…

Yup, I've had to work around this. I'll pick a song I like, and do "song radio" to find more like it. But this makes a playlist which is basically 6 more similar artists, and no variety beyond that. But I want to branch out more, several steps beyond that. So I'll open a particular song from that playlist, go to "song radio" for that, and drag a bunch of songs I don't recognize back into the first playlist. Repeat th…

You can simulate the slider behavior you describe by thumbing up everything for more variety, or thumbing down everything for more restriction.

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

#449
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who spend thousands of dollars on music tend to be people who buy expensive phones that don't allow SD cards. But 128GB phones have enough storage for most music collections

> expensive phones that don't allow SD cards Oh 21st century, what have you done.

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