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Comment by greggman3 | Hacker News Reader

I had ~1100 CDs in 2000. Now I have close to 0. I don't even own a device I could play a CD in nor rip it. None of my 4 PCs (3 Macs, one Gaming Windows Box) have a CD (nor DVD nor Bluray) player.

Instead I have about 9000 mp3 files.

I find streaming services frustrating because their recommendation algorithm suck. I tried playing "Swing" and it gave me "Volare" by Dean Martin. (that's not Swing), I pick Prince Radio and it plays rap (Prince has no relation to rap). My mom's into Tuba Skinny so I pick Tuba Skinny radio, every song it choose was nothing like Tuba Skinny (Dixieland Jazz). And on and on. It get music similar to the artists less than 1 out of 6 times.

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> (Prince has no relation to rap)

Prince certainly created some songs that would qualify as rap, and they were some fairly big hits:

My Name is Prince: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0g9Qkrc8nE

Sexy MF, including the rap section here: https://youtu.be/bfHsF6FKgb4?t=324

A compilation of some Prince raps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ez4iEHtAuw

Same... literally. About 1200 CDs in 2000, I ripped them at some point and sold them when I became a digital nomad. I have no idea where those rips are; I think I may have just liked them all on Spotify and kept a folder of obscure albums I wasn't likely to find online. But I'm not sure where that folder is.

I bounce between Spotify and Youtube Music and Apple Music. I recently got into Apple Music library curation but then I got a Tesla which supports Spotify (and Tidal, but...). So I'm back on Spotify. But Apple Music has one really nifty thing -- highlighting major tracks on albums so that album exploration can be enhanced a bit.

But honestly, my appetite for keeping up with and curating albums is waning. I wish there was a nice "cd changer" like interface to one of these services -- load up 6 albums and randomize. Queueing isn't the same.

(I'll repeat a desire I've had a long time -- playlists of albums, not tracks, with album-shuffle. So simple, yet nobody supports it).

I have a few online streaming radio stations I love -- Radio Paradise in particular. Someday I can see chucking all the "streaming service album" management and just going other-peoples-radio.

Slacker (in the Tesla) is also good enough.

Did you notice how tracks and whole albums sometimes disappear from Spotify?

If not yet, you're in for a unpleasant surprise.

As annoying as this is, at least it shows you the name of the original track but it's grayed out, as opposed to when YouTube would remove a video you wouldn't even realize it had been deleted from your playlist.

Yeah, I’ve noticed. I get that licensing issues drift over time, but it just means it’s not in my best interest to care a whole lot.

FWIW you can get a USB dvd drive for under $30.

You can't control the quality of purchased music files. More significantly, you can't be sure that gapless playback has been encoded correctly into anything sold by the track. I continue to purchase music on CDs but they get used once while being ripped then go into storage.

> You can't control the quality of purchased music files

Sure you can, hdtracks has been around for nearly 15 years now, and even offers the same redbook data you'd find on a CD if you don't trust their FLAC encoding.

There are places where you can buy very high quality music files without needing a physical CD.

If you can organize and manage 9k mp3 files could you not just as easily setup your own playlists on spotify?

1. This presumes Spotify will still be in business in the next 10, 30, 50+ years.

2. This presumes 100% of the music collection is on Spotify. Personally speaking, 60%~ of the music I listen to ISN'T on Spotify.

3. This presumes music is only desired to be listened to when an available internet connection is available.

Having to shuffle my media collections around whenever a third party went out of business or pivoted was such a massive headache that it was the inspiration for just managing my own media collections locally.

This is just my own personal perspective on the matter but one could do that until the Spotify domain is gone. The mp3's will remain provided they have a habit of keeping their software backed up. I have CD's, DVD's and music files going back as far as such things existed and no internet connection is required for any of it.

Despite iTunes fans bashing me since iTunes inception the simple file structure

    Artist
        Album
    Artist
        Album
    Game OST
        Game Name
    Film OST
        Film Name

works just fine.

With WinAmp's quick jump it was a blast to navigate.

(just checked - my mp3 folder has 6231 files)

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