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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> and I'd remind people that the relevant price isn't list price but what you actually pay. Fetching a Michael Jackson album out of a bargain bin for $1 is that album for a $1,

If going to physical stores, sifting through bargain bins, accepting whatever nobody else wanted, spending the time to physically rip the CD, and hoping that second hand bargain disc wasn’t scratched is your idea of a good time then that’s great for you.

I will pay $4680 over 30 years of my life to not have to deal with that and to be able to listen to anything I want whenever I want without having to manage a library or streaming setup.

That honestly sounds like a bargain when I consider the time saved over 30 years!

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Once your collection is built, thirty years down the line, you'll add less than five CDs per year. With streaming however, you'll end up paying a whole lot more than $5000 for the next 30 years, thanks to inflation. If you started this journey at 20 years old, you'll only be 80 after 60 years of streaming, but you might get to live until 110 and get to pay for yet another 30 years, which you may not be able to afford at that point in your life anymore.

There's also an interesting side effect of owning limited media that streaming advocates overlook.

When you own 3 albums, you'll listen to them more often. You will put more effort into memorizing them. You'll listen to the tracks that were not designed to be radio hits by a committee but were instead the songs the band came up with on their own.

You get way more out of your investment when you invest mentally and emotionally into the full spectrum of their music.

This guy is talking about finding 20 new bands a month. He's not getting anything out of it other than a mild dopamine hit, and he thinks he's somehow cool for that?

It's like being a connoisseur of children's cereal and never having home cooked steak and eggs for breakfast. It's like bragging about your weight loss journey because you started smoking crack.

Is that a good thing? One of the benefits to streaming for me is precisely that I don't want to get stuck being an old guy who just listens to music from when I was a teenager/young adult. 20 new bands per month is certainly excessive, but with the radio long-dead, how do you discover new music without some kind of streaming service?

Music stores still exist. Many of them have setups that let you listen to clips from new albums as well. You can also buy secondhand albums at thrift stores and pawn shops, or trade with others.

Friends might mention a band they enjoy, or you might hear a snippet on a video and look into it. Movie soundtracks occasionally have great music from well-established bands I've never heard of.

And you can go to live shows and check out local artists, buy their merch if they're any good.

Streaming is not the only way. Never has been, and never will be.

As far as your first question, is that a good thing, it's entirely subjective. But listening to a full album when you only "like" one song on it will expose you to new music, and might broaden your horizons or help you develop taste.

You have to actually look not just get spoon fed by the algorithm. Community is how you find music. Subreddits, forums, record stores. You find reviewers with similar tastes and see what they like. You search “bands like X” on the Internet. You keep up with artists you like and watch for new albums. It’s more active than just letting the algorithm feed you stuff but it works. Also radio still exists and public radio especially is still great for discovery.

Or if you’re ripping your CDs and listening via apps you can just scrobble and get algo recommendations still while owning your music and without a monthly fee.

"You'll listen to the tracks that were not designed to be radio hits by a committee but were instead the songs the band came up with on their own."

And amplifying that, we see more and more "built for streaming" music, which is not the sort of music I want to listen to. I have phrased that carefully; it is a personal opinion and I won't criticize anyone who discovers that actually, yes, generic AI rock that is pumped out by the hour is something they find some use for. I could see someone who wouldn't want to "listen" to that with intentionality finding it useful to code to or as background noise in their life or something. But it's not what I want, and unless the streaming services do something about it it is what is going to dominate their platforms over time.

I don't go in for super deep relationships with the musicians, reading about their histories and stuff, but I do enjoy the way that the music I like most on first listen often pales quickly and the tracks that I initially didn't like very well become my favorites.

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