I’ve just been archiving about 75 of my deceased uncle’s CD-Rs which, I’m assuming, he had archived from his EMusic account. The labeling of the CDs (ex., 13/08/23) and the order of tracks is completely wacked but I really appreciate that I have “hard copies”.
Last year, I gave my 16 year old nephew a classic (refurbed) iPod full of about 10,000 songs. Don’t think he really appreciated it (and the months it took me to curate it). Kid was touching the screen and had no idea what a click wheel was.
I’m an avid record (500) and CD (100) collector but I have close to 100,000 tracks in my digital library. This music was acquired in a number of ways but only about a quarter of it was ever paid for by me. I know how to get music for free. I’m sure most of this sub knows too.
I’ve mostly resorted to buying physical media for the albums I really like and sourcing digital music with abandon for background music, playlists, and iPod playback.
For a wide variety of reasons, I do not use streaming music services. For one, with such a large music collection of my own, I was never listening to it. Two, and more importantly for this post, you can’t pass down a subscription service.
I’m just curious, is anyone buying digital music anymore?
Bandcamp is an easy place to pay for music but it’s not really mainstream. If you wanted to buy the new Teddy Swims album, where would you buy that? I just pulled this album out as an example because it’s in the iTunes Store. Apple has it for $8 but the artist has a 24/44 MP3 for $5.
Where are you buying digital music from and why?
Ooh - and is anyone either buying digital and burning to CD for backup or buying CDs and ripping them for playback? Or are you all too young for CDs over here?
Not so much now, but I used to buy my digital music from 7digital as they have their music in lossless flac and also hd flac32, not that I had anything to play it on!
Now I mainly buy vinyl.
Something better than CD quality? Who actually needs that?
Is there anyone in the world who can actually pass an ABX test between CD audio and something with a higher bitrate? If so, they are the 0.0000001% No one needs that. Me, I can’t even hear past ~13 kHz, let alone past 20 kHz. And what would even be there that’s acoustically interesting? It just seems like more audiophile placebo to me.
I say this as an audiophile myself who can appreciate $300 headphones.
I can hear the difference with an otherwise identical recording. Mastering is more important though. I’d rather listen to something in 16/44 that’s well mixed than some brickwalled pile of shit at 24/96. As for anyone who says you can’t hear the difference, if you spend enough time listening to music in detail and train yourself to notice even the most minute differences you can hear the difference between CD-quality and hi-res. Most people aren’t as obsessive over audio as I am which is totally valid.