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I think people assume that because the actual contents of the media are basically identical, that the physical and digital/streamed media are functionally equivalent, but they offer very different experiences.

You have a really awesome relationship with the physical media your dad left you. I imagine you play the vinyls on some kind of stereo and not in airpods or whatever? The medium asks you to use it to create an experience, an environment. Streaming doesn't care, so long as you're Consuming Content.

With the enshittification of Spotify (really? Ads for AI generated bullshit on my PAID account???) I really want to retreat back into the domain of Local Copy.

Sony BMG can't enshittify a CD you already own. Random House can't take back a book I bought in the 90s.

I hope that we have a renaissance of physical media as people realize that streaming companies don't respect our desires about how we listen/watch/read things.

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You say that, but maybe you don’t remember the rootkits Sony BMG put on their cd’s in the 90’s ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo... ) Instead of playing you an ad, they disabled a function of your computer.

There was a post on here that I responded to and can't find now. The purpose was a gentleman talking about how music today is generic crap because of streaming.

I disagreed with everything he said (he claims music is bland now because of streaming and just sort of ignores that for all of history most art produced is terrible) except the attraction of physical media. When you had to go through a process to be able to listen to media and you were stuck with it once you bought it, it was a real experience. The art, the feel, the smell of the record shop, hell you had to talk to actual people if you wanted to find new music that you would like. Everything was part of the experience.

And that is lost with streaming music.

Can't speak for the industry at large, but streaming ruined music for me. I think it has to do with how different brains are wired.

Organization on song within album within artist within genre helped me remember and relate to it. I felt like I was in conversation with the artists.

On the other hand, streaming is snippets without context, like a book composed of the most popular paragraphs from 1000s of authors.

I guess for me, being able engage with my personal library or playlists was irreplaceable.

>I felt like I was in conversation with the artists.

I work with college kids. They don't understand the absolute obsession a lot of old people have with The Dark Side of the Moon. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why. It's like the perfect album.

And that's what finally dawned on me. It's the perfect album. The songs are really good individually, but the album is a masterpiece when played how it was originally meant to be played. The pauses and the transitions and the background noise of the player all brilliantly factor into the album.

And the 20 year olds I interact with mostly listen to individual songs instead of albums.

It's such a subtle difference that most people don't even recognize it.

Personally I would argue a good DJ set is possibly a better version of albums of the past.

The really good ones mostly play their own music, but aren't limited to their own output. Its a completely coherent experience with an intentional mood that completely flows together without any disjointed pauses. I don't think anyone actually misses skits or hidden songs, just that good albums sometimes had them.

But I've given up on ever convincing people that think perfect was in the past. Usually I'm told there isn't any difference between an iPod on random or a Spotify playlist. I personally never want to say the best music was at some arbitrary moment in the past when I liked it and hope my taste continue to evolve even as I get further away from the source.

I'm almost 30 but as a stoner back in high school I loved Floyd so much. Their albums were meant to be played back to back as a single unit. Great band. Animals is up there with dark side for me.

You may enjoy this story:

My daughter is 18. She first listened to The Great Gig in The Sky on some joke/funny video involving Mario (I mean one of the Super Mario Bros). She looked what the song was, started listening to the album, and is now a huge Pink Floyd fan.

As for DSOTM, she has it on CD and Vinyl, though she mostly listens to their music on Deezer.

Learned to play the bass riff to Money too, so it seems some people still enjoy the full album listening experience and also digging deep (freak-territory deep) into the ones they really like.

I should add that neither my wife nor I (we both have mostly distinct taste in music, though with some overlap) forced anything on her or her brother (who is 10 and a big RHCP fan, in particular of Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and professes to hate Pink Floyd, though I don’t know how much of that is just to annoy his sister), and while my wife is more of a song listener (and on streaming, a playlist listener, with she creating the lists) I’m an album listener myself. Even when I got to CDs (from tape, we couldn’t afford a turntable when I was young so I got to vinyl after I got my grandma’s collection) I rarely skipped a track unless I really felt it as filler.

> Organization on song within album within artist within genre helped me remember and relate to it. I felt like I was in conversation with the artists.

The podcast No Dogs in Space brought this back for me. They discuss the stories of different artists, playing clips of their songs and explaining which got them their first gigs or record deals, when band members joined or left, other artists and music styles of the time, etc.

I've always been terrible with names, so I could never follow along with pop culture songs, albums, or artists. For the first time in my life I can overhear a song and identify it, the artist's influences, and related songs. I'm no longer a complete outsider in conversations about music.

Maybe once upon a time radio provided a lot of that--before it was taken over by standardized programming and advertisements.

You might want to try non commercial listener supported wbgo.org if you like jazz and blues, for example. There are others. This is a local station, so as a bonus, there is no surveillance when I listen over the air.

If you're not able to properly seek out and play full albums within the context of the artist then that's the particular service you're using sucking. For all of YouTube's flaws it enables that experience just fine.

Yeah, I think that is part of the problem. I can find an album on YouTube if I think of the right one, but my brain doesnt work that. I don't have mental lists or spot recall.

Maybe if I maintained a excell sheet of artists or albums I like, I could brows that, and then play them, but meh.

> Organization on song within album within artist within genre helped me remember and relate to it.

I prefer to listen to full albums, but that I can do easily on Apple Music (Spotify is the same I think). And I can ask the player to play albums in a certain order. Is that what you're talking about? I don't see how "streeaming" made this impossible, it's just much easier actually.

I’m not a Spotify user but this is largely still how I relate to music on Apple Music and Apple Classical.

Yes there are playlists and stations but there always were before streaming too.

I’m a big NIN fan and they have had great physical releases since the beginning - remix albums, singles, eps, vinyl, CD, SACD, DVD-A, blu-ray, etc., etc. each release has a halo, sigil, or null identifier designating its order.

Now there are releases that are digital only. It’s really odd. A huge part of the experience was the packaging and visual artwork and now that’s mostly gone.

... one of my favorite NIN bits of a recent release though was what you got mailed for 'Not The Actual Events' if you chose it-

The album was digital only, which I too was disappointed at. But if you chose to, they mailed something. When you got it, it was this black envelope with a very serious warning that if you opened it, it was going to cause a mess, and they had no liability whatsoever for said mess.

When you opened it, it was some album artwork prints, on cardstock... covered in fine black powder. Just, carbon black powder. With a hefty amount just in the envelope. Similar to laserjet printer toner.

If you handled the stuff, it got all over your hands. Everywhere. You got physically dirty from the album. It truly was a mess.

I thought it was awesome.

The only time I saw NIN live, Trent Reznor nearly destroyed his keyboard while putting on the most amazing musical performance. Sweat, dust, dirt, and glitter were everywhere, and probably bits of equipment as well.

Throughout the 90's it was said that during tours they would send someone in each city to various pawn shops and bought up Yamaha DX7's- you could easily find a DX7 in thrift stores for $100 or less in those days, the FM sound was out of fashion and Yamaha built so many of them you could find them cheap. They just used them as MIDI keyboards, with all the actual sounds coming from rack gear off stage.

And then nearly every night, Trent would destroy one on stage by the end of the night.

Which is actually pretty hard to do if you know anything about Yamaha DX7's.

Somebody wrote that in the 1800s you'd probably hear a particular orchestral piece once in your life (and if you're a peasant probably never), having made arrangements to see a performance when they happen to be playing near you.

> You have a really awesome relationship with the physical media your dad left you.

The relationship with the actual guy was significantly more complicated. CDs are a little easier to deal with than people.

You're also lumping buying mp3s/aac/whatever in with streaming. Sony can't mess with the DRM free audio files you purchase from any marketplace...

Yeah there's a distinction. I think physical media, Local Copy (as I put it), and streaming are three different things.

> The medium asks you to use it to create an experience, an environment. Streaming doesn't care, so long as you're Consuming Content.

I think you’re being a bit too charitable with the record industry IMHO. Buying records is “Consuming Content”, the experience is of your own creation.

There is an artist on the other side. The fact that they can connect with you is the real experience, mediated by commerce and technology and all the other stuff that gets in the way.

Usually, you won't create anything of worth without consuming first.

You can rip music to digital in lossless format. There is no way that I would want to keep that much physical media. Back in the day, I had a 200 disc CD changer

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