Comment by munmaek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by munmaek | Hacker News Reader

I 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 a song–Legend of a Mind by the Moody Blues from the 1967? BBC recording sessions comes to mind. Or artists like King Crimson.

I don't buy through itunes because of drm and the lack flac/alac options–why would I buy an mp3/m4a/aac file that I'm stuck with and can't transcode if needed? Bandcamp is a great alternative if the band you want happens to be on there. The app isn't too bad either if you forgot to download and sync an album.

Other benefits of ripping a CD or downloading a flac/alac file include having a perfect lossless copy. I can then transcode to any format that I want, whenever I want, however I want, from now until forever (or at least until the storage goes bad/breaks), without losing any quality.

With spotify pro + ublock origin, I never see ads on spotify or youtube anyway.

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:

The issue even with a DRM-free local iTunes library is: how are people going to keep that over 30 years?

If you have a CD you only need to have a CD/DVD/Bluray player, which are still ubiquitous, and to push a button.

But for a local iTunes library you need IT admin skills to manage it, to back it up, to transfer it from one machine to the next, perhaps to understand that you can access the music without iTunes, etc. The vast majority of the public don't know how to do that.

"I'd like to see people's iTunes collection in 30 years"

Might look different and be called different, but I bet there is some service offering most music in existence in 2050.

Are you saying that they will be lost and people will keep buying it again and again?

People will subscribe to another service. But you mean the local iTunes library? Isn't that DRM free? I mean having DRM on it still makes it their music that you "rent", so basically a subscription service.

My father was so ethical and bought a lot of music from some service of his ISP (Planet music or something), it is all lost. I'd never pay for DRMed music. At least with Spotify you know you don't own anything and just pay for access to a lot of stuff as long as you pay.

I have at least a dozen albums that are not on any music service today! In 30 years they’ll be impossible to find in any form.

If you get deep into any small/independent music scene you’ll find CDs are still king.

... or bandcamp (increasingly so in my experience)

> I'd like to see people's iTunes collections in 30 years...

I bought my first album from iTunes 10 years ago and it is right there in my external HDD since iTunes does not have any sort of DRM anymore (it was removed years ago). Unless computers in 20 years do not allow people to have local data and force them to use The Cloud (at which point i'd probably stop using computers altogether outside of necessity), i do not see them disappear.

If fact i rebought several albums i had in CD format because i lost some of the CDs after moving and a bunch of M4A files in a folder are more convenient than a bunch of CDs in a box (although TBH i do get the nice feeling of having something to look at that is physical... but only for things i really like and for me that is usually games not music).

> 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?

LOL. This. This discussion here is surreal to me.

Ways to enjoy music: stream it on Spotify or insert a CD. Pick one.

?????

I mean, DRMless, local media doesn't obviate streaming which has its own valuable niche, from discovery to the fact that my 200 GB music library cannot fit on my phone, but that library is on Dropbox.

In 30 years, the format might be unrecognizable, but... I don't get the problem either.

>But for a local iTunes library you need IT admin skills to manage it, to back it up, to transfer it from one machine to the next, perhaps to understand that you can access the music without iTunes, etc. The vast majority of the public don't know how to do that.

Oh, we're operating from an assumption of pre-Internet tech literacy. Then, yeah, I don't know. The computer-as-radio/physical-media dichotomy might be the way to go. Enjoy those CDs. uwu Put thing in thing and hear sound. Zug zug

Backing them up on MDISC DVDs or Blu-Rays is doable. 6 CDs per DVD if you want to store them bit-by-bit. 12 CDs if you go for losless compression. Around 35 CDs per DVD if you do 256kbit/s MP3 or something like that.

MDISC are supposed to last for 100 years or so.

I'd rather maintain a file system of FLAC files, and skip anything like iTunes that can potentially mess with the library. Then it's just data that gets backed up with anything else worth keeping. Add an extra 1MB of space for the FLAC source code if you're really paranoid.

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 thought that about various floppy disks over the years too. And then there is the software to read and rip it, probably not super difficult but you never know.

There is an awful lot of music simply not streamed, if you live near a college town or in any city of say 80,000 people then there probably some local bands, chances are good they’ve recorded some stuff and outside of that run of CDs, the music is nowhere else. It’s not like we’re losing part of the Beatles catalog exactly but if you’ve bonded and heard that band a few times it might be meaningful.

> 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 them (some of them are from the mid-80's and have had rough lives).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that they are remarkably durable.

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.

> 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 thought that about various floppy disks over the years too.

Well, you can buy a new 3.5" floppy disk drive for $15 right now. The problem are proprietary formats, like Zip disks - just avoid those.

>But for a local iTunes library you need IT admin skills to manage it...

If we're talking actual files, it's just basic file management skills, and maybe some simple knowledge of ripping (assuming we're not taking the EAC lossless route). Almost everyone in my office (which are mainly non-tech people) have the former.

>...how are people going to keep that over 30 years?

It's way more likely someone's going to burgle my remaining CDs than they are to destroy every instance of my virtual collection.

>The issue even with a DRM-free local iTunes library is: how are people going to keep that over 30 years?

Parts of my MP3 library are 20 years old. Why do you think keeping them spinning a few more decades will be any harder?

>But for a local iTunes library you need IT admin skills to manage it, to back it up, to transfer it from one machine to the next, perhaps to understand that you can access the music without iTunes, etc. The vast majority of the public don't know how to do that.

Honestly, I think that's why streaming is taking over. Apple's approach to solving the sync problem was to rethink the whole paradigm, and so we got Apple Music instead of smarter iPhone/iPod sync. Sure, they get service revenue in the bargain, but to me it seems like an easy play.

I ripped my CDs 20 years ago and kept that library, moving it between machines and backing up to the cloud. I don't see why I can't keep it alive for another 20 or 30 years. Over time this has become much easier as storage has become smaller and cheaper. I now have my entire music collection on a microSD card on my phone which as well as being handy is also another backup.

Only real problem is that I ripped them at 128Kbps. For some tracks I've gone back and re-done them at a higher bitrate.

> I don't buy through itunes because of drm

iTunes does not have DRM and is the only reason i buy albums through them: after i download the album, i have a bunch of m4a files i can play with any player i want, in any device i want and store on my own external drive.

I have purchased some albums in the past on itunes and discovered with disgust that they had DRM. They were only playable on itunes. I returned them (a not very user-friendly process).

I have googled it a bit and it seems that DRM is not used any more on iTunes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay#iTunes_Store_DRM_chan...

2009. That’s when the DRM was removed. 10 years ago.

A good lesson for anyone considering user unfriendly features.

Nobody "considered" them, it was what the music industry demanded at the time.

In fact, as far as major services (e.g. major distributor and not some niche music market with "indie" artists only) iTunes was the one that spearheaded the un-DRM of music (with Steve Jobs' call to end music DRM: https://betanews.com/2007/02/06/apple-s-steve-jobs-calls-for... ).

The music industry considered them, then

Let's throw away marketing/PR part from what labels try to act and we'll see a simple fact: these parasites should be dead like 10 years ago. Almost all of the profits for musicians in digital era are made by concerts and merchandise, individuals could make some through direct sells and Patreon. Major labels charge 70-90% of the income and exclusive copyright for masters, which is a bit overpriced service.

>In fact, as far as major services...

of which at that time there were only 2 or 3.

Why did Jobs do this?

Countries in the EU were demanding that he do so if he wanted to sell product there. Jobs was not interested in dropping DRM until the countries started bitching. Norway banned the iPod due to the iTunes walled garden creating captive audiences without opportunity for choice in media vendor (due to incompatibilities with competition services) and France started slinging similar threats.

It all seems so altruistic in hind-sight, but really he (Jobs) was being pressured by the nation-states, and he had the opportunity to look like a pioneer by dropping DRM (an endeavor that Apple felt pretty keen about with FairPlay) -- making the competition look petty and selfish for having DRM, while simultaneously satisfying the desires of the nations with markets that he wanted to compete within.

The whole story is in that link you included. I got a different vibe from the article than you did, I think.

Yes, an album with DRM is not a purchase, but a loan. The law should prohibit this term abuse in order to protect consumers.

It's amazing to me that people still think iTunes music has DRM.

It makes sense to me. I evaluated it years ago (when it did have DRM), and simply moved onto different solutions. I never had a need to re-evaluate itunes because I haven't had any issue with the alternatives.

It looks like itunes has changed its ways in that regard.

However m4a files are lossy and thus not desirable for me. If I purchase music I want it in flac/alac format because I can transcode it to say, m4a if I need to in the future, or any other format. You can't do that with m4a without a degradation in quality.

Just wondering how you manage Spotify + your own music collection. Is there an app that can play both Spotify and imported files and present them in a single UI?

At the moment I can’t enjoy anything that’s not on Spotify simply because I wouldn’t be able to listen to them really. I have hours of music on Spotify playlists and I would only need maybe a dozen of songs that aren’t on there, so manually switching apps for those few times would be annoying.

Why not use two apps?

Shuffle play

You can import music in to spotify.

Spotify allows you to import tracks from your computer and add them to playlists as if it was on Spotify. Obviously you can only access them on the computer you added them from though.

Not sure about the mobile app, I assume it will skip the missing tracks in a playlist as normal but it might be possible that it picks them up if they're present on the device somewhere.

You can share them to an Android or iOS device [1], but it's a little fiddly. I'd love for them to offer a cloud music system like Apple Music or Google Play does, as Spotify checks all the other boxes that those services don't.

[1] https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/listen...

Spotify windows client can play local music just fine. At least could last time I've used it.

Do you have an issue with playing local files in Spotify itself? I do this for the ~30 or so songs I have on my computer (in Dropbox, actually) and it works just fine.

The Sonos app does that for you. Likely their implementation of Spotify is not as slick as the native Spotify app, but you can for instance search for songs and see results from Spotify mixed with results from your local collection.

>Is there an app that can play both Spotify and imported files and present them in a single UI?

Spotify can play and sync your own files. You add them in a list of folders it checks.

I think clementine (based on/inspired by Amarok 1.4) supports spotify - at least they say so on their website. However, I (used to) use it only for my local music and switching to spotify for, well, spotify.

https://www.clementine-player.org/ Hm, but the last version is from 2016.

Mopidy can do this, that's what I use: https://www.mopidy.com/

...but it's a background service with a web UI, so how easy you'll find it to set up depends on your technical expertise.

I just use separate apps. I generally use spotify but occasionally I'll just play my local songs via vlc or itunes.

For most casual music listening I use Spotify; one thing that annoys me there though is that there are some songs which have clear compression issues, the kinda wavy, watery sound from early low bitrate MP3s. I can only notice it in one or two songs with a lot of guitar distortion / wall of sound though.

Its recommendations, daily mix and automatic playlist generated after listening to a full album are getting VERY predictable though. That is, same bands and often the same song. I'm not saying Spotify needs to improve their algorithm per se, it just needs to add a bit more variety - switch up algorithms from time to time, shuffle, start way down on the list of matched songs, something like that. It's getting annoying to the point where I'm considering switching to Apple Music for a while.

Anyway, for physical music I buy vinyl nowadays. I don't even have a vinyl player (yet), just a box of collectables / memorable albums. I don't like CDs, the boxes feel far too flimsy; I've never owned any.

It’s not really Spotify’s fault. They are at the mercy of the master provided to them. For the most part Spotify sound quality is very good. Tidal has issues with poor masters as well - some songs sound worse on Tidal than Spotify, and vice versa.

While we're on the topic of prog, Spotify also has nothing by Henry Cow or Fred Frith in general, which combined with the lack of King Crimson is a dealbreaker for me.

Apple Music has a whole bunch of Henry Cow. No King Crimson though.

I just looked and there are 13 King Crimson albums on Apple Music

There are 10 on Spotify. One "funny" thing is that they're all labelled "2017" or "2018" instead of the actual year of release.

They must have just recently been added. They weren’t there a few weeks ago. Thanks for the tip!

Perhaps such artists are not recommended (pun intended).

Totally understand your pain :| They've recently added some very hard to find prog albums there, like Planet X, Andy West, Liquid Tension Experiment, Mahavishnu Orchestra, etc, but that obviously depends on what you like.

I dislike renting in general, especially something so important like access to music, but the only reason I do it in this case is indeed the availability of some hard to find rarities.

For all flac lovers: http://abx.digitalfeed.net/

I do understand the sentiment though.

Successful ABX test only proves that no differences can be heard for some particular pieces of music, but not for all possible music material. There are edge cases (especially where noise is involved) that can never compress perfectly without overfitting the compression algorithm.

Their music is compressed down to 6db maybe, no wonder it sounds the same, the industry is to blame.

Sure, but without FLAC I wouldn't be able to have my music in Opus without re-encoding from a lossy format.

As I noted, my reason for flac/alac is for transcoding purposes. I mainly just transcode them to mp3 currently and play them in itunes anyways, but I have the freedom to transcode to any format in the future without a degradation in quality. You can't do that with lossy formats like mp3.

Double blind tests show that 320kbp/s mp3s are indistinguishable from flacs, barring very poor masters or some extreme edge cases. For a lot of music you could get away with 256kbp/s probably, but it doesn't cost you anything to just go with 320kbp/s.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com