Neil Young to pull music from Amazon, encourages fans to buy local | Hacker News Reader

Neil Young to pull music from Amazon, encourages fans to buy local

hollywoodreporter.com

>It is easy to buy local. Support your community. Go to the local store. Don’t go back to the big corporations who have sold out America.

Is it easy? How many people live walking distance from a record store? Or know of one within 10 or even 30 minutes drive? One that isn't a big corporation (i.e. Walmart, Target, Best Buy*, B&N). Who still owns a CD player?

I do, but not in my car. The 'infotainment' is sophisticated enough to call in an airstrike, but can't play CDs. Okay, so I've got the CD in hand, can't play it yet, just need to rip it and transfer to USB. Grab the MacBook, and... no optical drive.

It's not as easy as the old man purports. I'm reminded of the scene in Austin Powers where he puts a CD on the turntable.

*Best Buy stopped selling DVDs and Blu-Rays, not sure about music.

I’ve got a cd player and burner, record player may be more niche. But I’m all for it, and I’ve been working on gathering my music locally again. I’ve had other songs disappear from my cloud playlists for reasons I can’t find answers to. I’d rather be able to buy it digitally, honestly. but to support artists I like I’ll do what I can, and most of them still make cds or records of their new albums. EDM and other electronic music has been harder, especially since many of these djs release more singles than they do full albums.

It is harder than it was 20 years ago for sure. But not totally gone yet! And I do feel like it’s making a slow come back in some ways.

I used to buy movies before I ripped them too. But now physical copies of those are becoming harder to get.

To be clear, I'm a big proponent of physical media.

But places to buy them brick & mortar simply do not exist anymore. The few that do exist are mostly owned by 'big corporations'. And the physical media sections in stores are some of the saddest places I've walked through: they look abandoned, media is disorganized and difficult to find. They tend to focus on stocking greatest hits compilations. The days of treasure hunting in a record store is a relic of the past I'm afraid.

If you live in a city that still has a record store within driving distance, great! But that's, what, maybe 10% of the population at most? You're likely making a special trip, not dropping in on your way to do something else.

I buy books from bookshop.org, which donates a portion of sales to a local bookstore I can elect. The same can be done for music. I want as much of my creative dollars spent to go to the creative folks and local distributors, even if less convenient. I will avoid Amazon and Spotify as much as possible. Maybe that’s physical media (I buy lots of vinyl now, which I didn’t previously, which gets shipped to me via usps or fedex from the artist’s distributor), and it’s easy to play digital music I buy via Bandcamp through my car via my phone (Jellyfin and Plex apps).

Is it easy? It’s not hard. Making it easier is a market opportunity.

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