Apple Music Physical Media for Music or Streaming?

[JamesMay82]

I'm 40 so grew up on tapes and then CD's and the start of the Napster MP3 Era etc but I massively prefer buying physical media in the form of CD's. My reason for doing so is I'm not a massive fan of new music and I find myself listening to the music of my youth and when I've tried streaming, I felt like I'm paying $10 a month for music I already have and it felt wasteful plus I've spent thousands over the years in CD's since being a kid and that also feels wasteful to just abandon it. don't get me wrong I do buy the occasional album a year but probably under 10 a year

I'm curious to what percentage of you on this forum prefer physical over streaming and if any of you share the same thought process as me?

 

[Boyd01]

I'm 74 and still remember when 78 RPM records were the standard. My dad was an aerospace engineer and loved gadgets, so we always had a nice system at home, with a big Heathkit amp he built himself. I also remember when we got a 45 RPM turntable and thought those little records with the big holes were so cool - especially the colored transparent ones! Then 33 RPM long play records came along and stereo, FM receivers, tape recorders - we had it all and by the time I was about 12, I was building my own speaker cabinets and Heathkits.

Throughout college I acquired better and better turntables, amps, reel to reel recorders and stereo cassette decks. Accumulated quite a collection of records and tapes, gave many of them to my daughter and son in law (about your age) a few years ago and they were thrilled. Aside from stuff like this, they are 100% streaming and use the Cloud for everything.

Having come all this way - I'm done with physical media. Still have a big floor to ceiling bookcase full of DVD's and BD's, have already ripped all I want, not sure why I'm saving the disks (laziness, mainly). Boxes of old records and CD's up in the attic, most of them have been ripped too.

Now everything is on a 4tb USB SSD connected to a 2014 Mini as a media server (still running iTunes/Mojave for now) where I can access on all my devices at home. I have a small library of music on another Mac that I sync with my phone. I just don't see any reason to go back to physical media, for me it's a much better experience to have custom playlists that I've created. Not very interested in Apple Music, I prefer to own my media. In a way, I suppose you could say I still have "physical media" because it's all stored on an SSD with two hard disk backups (plus BackBlaze).

 

[cateye]

52 years old. I signed up for Spotify the day it came to the U.S. and have been a paying subscriber as soon as that became an option as well. I personally couldn't wait to be done with physical media, despite meticulously collecting (and eventually ripping) over 2000 CDs during my college and post-college years.

Why? Because I listen to a huge range of music. From prog and classic rock to metal, classical and jazz, to the latest progressive house, techno and ambient. I am constantly on the hunt for new music, things I haven't heard before, interesting new recordings and artists pushing genres and inventing new ones. And the reality is, more and more artists are eschewing physical or full-album releases to instead release individual tracks or sets of tracks around a theme directly to Spotify or YouTube in particular (hence why I now have a YouTube Music subscription as well).

I still have all my ripped tracks, and I listen to them on occasion. There are some rare gems and unique recordings in there, so I'm glad I have them, if nothing else. The actual CDs are in boxes in my garage. I really should haul them to Goodwill or something. I have no easy way to play them, other than finding the USB CD/DVD drive I have in a parts bin somewhere.

The only trend I never really embraced was buying individual tracks from iTunes, etc. That always seemed like a particularly silly stop-gap to me, and I was right. Co-opting the structure of physical media with none of its advantages feels like a boomer-something solution at its finest.

 

[JamesMay82]

52 years old. I signed up for Spotify the day it came to the U.S. and have been a paying subscriber as soon as that became an option as well. I personally couldn't wait to be done with physical media, despite meticulously collecting (and eventually ripping) over 2000 CDs during my college and post-college years.

Why? Because I listen to a huge range of music. From prog and classic rock to metal, classical and jazz, to the latest progressive house, techno and ambient. I am constantly on the hunt for new music, things I haven't heard before, interesting new recordings and artists pushing genres and inventing new ones. And the reality is, more and more artists are eschewing physical or full-album releases to instead release individual tracks or sets of tracks around a theme directly to Spotify or YouTube in particular (hence why I now have a YouTube Music subscription as well).

I still have all my ripped tracks, and I listen to them on occasion. There are some rare gems and unique recordings in there, so I'm glad I have them, if nothing else. The actual CDs are in boxes in my garage. I really should haul them to Goodwill or something. I have no easy way to play them, other than finding the USB CD/DVD drive I have in a parts bin somewhere.

The only trend I never really embraced was buying individual tracks from iTunes, etc. That always seemed like a particularly silly stop-gap to me, and I was right. Co-opting the structure of physical media with none of its advantages feels like a boomer-something solution at its finest.

I understand both your points of view. I think my hurdle is a mental at discarding my collection due to the cost over the years as it feels wasteful.

I must admit I do try Apple Music when I get a free trial via my phone provider or bank etc and I enjoy it but again I just begrudge paying it.

 

[floral]

Neither... I just listen to it on the radio. Not a music enthusiast :P

 

[RokinAmerica]

While I have a large collection of music, collected (and in some cases, purchased) over the many years of my life, my collection is on several drives, as well as on my many iPods. But when I am out in the yard or at my desk, when I turn on tunes, it is now thru Prime. Go figure.