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Comment by comrade1234 | Hacker News Reader

> ...nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ of owning music...

I have no desire to go back to that. New music is being created WORLDWIDE constantly and we also have a few hundred years of already-made music. There's no way I could even come close to 'owning' all of the music I'd want to own.

Discovering good new music is a problem becasuse there's so much of it. Since '99 I've been listening to one of the first streaming internet station. DJs give them one to two hour sets that go into rotation. There's no limit to the variety - you'll get an hour of Portuguese Fado music (was a fad in L.A. for awhile) followed by 8-bit video game music then Iranian music... I like it because it's curated by humans and not computer.

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The good old days sucked. I have a large collection of CDs that I "own" and they're in a box in the basement because the medium is irrelevant.

For less than the price of 1 CD per month (and I used to buy WAY more than 1 CD per month) I have access to a near-infinite amount of music.

I've added 49 full or partial albums to my library since 1/1/2025 for $78. And some of that stuff has an EXACT AND PRECISE 0.00% of having ever been carried in a physical shop on physical media such as: a DJ set consisting mainly of remixes of The Hacker tracks from the late 90s, recorded by a Canadian DJ in a Frankfurt Studio in 2025.

We're eating perfectly-prepared filet every day and people are reminiscing about school cafeteria salisbury steak.

This is well said and I agree that nostalgia for old systems is overdone… os2warpman :-)

> The good old days sucked

They didn’t suck. Like many situations that were resource constrained they had unique positive attributes even though you have a strong preference for the alternative strictly speaking.

Sometimes being constrained forces you to have a different and better experience, like when you’re young and broke and have adventures, or there’s a power outage and the city turns into a party, or when you miss the bus and have an interesting walk.

I was and am a musician and massive music fan. I miss the experience of being on a long train trip with only 10 CDs and really deeply connecting to each of them with no distractions. I miss discovering something on a record store clerk’s recommendation. And it’s not fair to say I just miss being younger those were specific experiences and they were pleasant.

I’m not saying I’m going back, or that we all should. I am happy with unlimited access to everything that’s also great. But back then it didn’t suck, it was great in a different way.

I think the vast majority of people don't really give a shit about music and don't think about it deeply. They just need something to listen to.

> We're eating perfectly-prepared filet every day and people are reminiscing about school cafeteria salisbury steak.

I stopped digging, but from what I hear in the mainstream it tastes more like plastic burger than triple-a filet.

>but from what I hear in the mainstream it tastes more like plastic burger than triple-a filet.

When has it not?

Honestly it was better before, in france most of pop songs are utter s*t now, it used to be a blend of various degrees, from laughable dumpster fire to nice to great timeless pop music (goldman, cabrel, balavoine). You could say the same about brit pop, I still dig the police, dire straits, in ways that surprise me even today. There really was, afaik, a higher base floor.

> For less than the price of 1 CD per month (and I used to buy WAY more than 1 CD per month) I have access to a near-infinite amount of music.

> I've added 49 full or partial albums to my library since 1/1/2025 for $78.

Counterpoint: I haven't bought a record in over 10 years. That is, I have added exactly zero full or partial albums to my library since 1/1/2014. Even though I stopped spending money, I didn't have to stop (legally) listening.

If your numbers are correct, this (being able to play the music that I've listened to over the last 10 years) is something would have cost me over $1500.

> Discovering good new music is a problem becasuse there's so much of it

Not really, discovering it is a problem because it is hidden. Current algorithms are designed to revert you to the same old and to show you stuff similar to what you have seen. You need to know specific terms to find something new - but of course if it is truly new for you, you do not know those terms.

That's why I listen to dublab - it's human-curated.

I’ve discovered tons of music through the YouTube algorithm over the past 15ish years, and it’s definitely not all ‘similar to what [I] have seen’.

don't fall for it, nobody owns the music

the musicians making it know this deep down. it's like the music is there, and the musician who "made" it indeed only brought it from "there" to here. that is it.

at most you own the medium in which the music's representation is stored, which is streaming's problem. the medium is your internet connection if anything

> Since '99 I've been listening to one of the first streaming internet station.

Care to share which one? I personally like FIP.

Dublab. They have a few stations - LA (the original), Spain, Germany, Japan. Brazil seems to be gone though. It was all started by USC music geeks.

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