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Music - rent or buy?

Thorn

Thorn

pfm Member
i'm about to get a streaming amplifier, and probably a NAS to store my cds on.
I buy the occasional bit of jazz on vinyl, and can't remember when I last bought a cd. I listen to a lot of Radio Paradise and download about one album a month when something I hear there encourages me to look it up on iTunes.
I'm struggling to see that it's worth my paying a monthly sum to Tidal or Qubuz and risking losing everything when technological "advances" make either the service or my system obsolete, and feel that I might carry on simply buying things I hear that appeal, so owning them forever, or, at least, for as long as the equipment I play them on works?
Are you all renters now, or are there still buyers in this world.
 
I'm a CD buyer still - like you, I struggle with the idea of not owning, or having to continue paying or risk losing access to what I see as 'my' music.
I have a NAS and buy a few CD's each month, usually used, often from Tony here, and rarely spend more than £10-£15 a month.
 
The real issue, I believe, is in good times you can afford to subscribe to a service, and in bad maybe not.

In good times you can buy physical media for replay, and in bad times you can still use it.

For bad times when you have no recording of favourite music, there is always free to air music on the radio.

I discount streaming from the web on free services as well in this as clearly an internet service [broadband connection] itself costs money that may be needed in bad times for absolutely necessities, such as, food, rent and utility bills.

Just two pence worth from George [who does not subscribe to any streaming service].
 
I don't think I could be without a physical source , mainly vinyl in my case . I do subscribe to Spotify but use it to search out new music or to listen to stuff before I buy it on vinyl .
 
I baulked at £25 a month for Qobuz but I just keep reminding myself it's one album a month and that I can stop it if needed.
 
Of course, the answer is to do both. Streaming services open up a whole world of music which you’d probably otherwise miss out on. I’ve got about 4,000 LP’s, enough to keep me going in the event of cyber attacks (as long as the power is still on).
 
Both, I buy plenty of CDs and records but still jump between streaming services because of the discovery aspect. Rarely do I pay full price for streaming (just signed up to a 3 month Tidal trial and transferred all my artists and albums using Soundiiz).

It always bothers me that the money paid for streaming could be going to hard copies, so that's where it mostly goes.

My brother who is a big fan of music and attends loads of gigs, hasn't bought a CD in the time Spotify broke, what's that, nearly 10 years? In the same amount of time I've bought hundreds of albums that are there anytime I want to listen. The thought of not having my own copies terrifies me!
 
Just to add, I tend to listen to things on Qobuz that I probably wouldn't end up buying maybe 60% of the time. I still buy stuff but it means I don't have to buy everything :) Also even on Qobuz I listen to full albums, I would bin it tomorrow if I started picking on individual tracks here and there. I know I'm weird but that's just me :)
 
I have always been a strong 'own my own music' type. A couple of years ago I started to rip CDs to a hard drive system - but did not finish the job. Along the way I was tempted into trying Roon - which was great but clearly without a streaming service attached you did not see all of the clever stuff it does - so I subscribed to Tidal (not yet the hifi service, just the basic)

Now I found every evening that I am taking a random walk around Tidal and playing stuff I have never heard of. Any recommended recordings that come up on sites like this I can generally nip over to Roon (the control is on the same laptop I browse the internet with) and find it and play it whilst I carry on reading the news.

So, I have not played a CD of mine, or ripped one, for a couple of weeks now. I fear I have been converted to streaming!
 
Thorn said:
i'm about to get a streaming amplifier, and probably a NAS to store my cds on.
I buy the occasional bit of jazz on vinyl, and can't remember when I last bought a cd. I listen to a lot of Radio Paradise and download about one album a month when something I hear there encourages me to look it up on iTunes.
I'm struggling to see that it's worth my paying a monthly sum to Tidal or Qubuz and risking losing everything when technological "advances" make either the service or my system obsolete, and feel that I might carry on simply buying things I hear that appeal, so owning them forever, or, at least, for as long as the equipment I play them on works?
Are you all renters now, or are there still buyers in this world.
Click to expand...

I think you’re making the mistake of thinking that renting is like temporary ownership, and you would “lose” something were the service to fold. It’s not like that. A Tidal or Qobuz subscription gives you unlimited access to a vast quantity of music, and is an immense source of great music to listen to for 70p or so a day - about the price of a mouthful of coffee. If the service folds, you would still be able to buy the CDs that you chose (by which time they’ll be cheaper) and you’ll have avoided buying a whole load of CDs that it turns out you didn’t like or didn’t want to listen to more than a couple of times. Win win win. Don’t go overboard with a NAS - if you go with Tidal or Qobuz there is a good chance you won’t listen to more than a small proportion of the CDs you own. I run Qobuz from a modest fanless laptop into a DAC with a USB input. I’m not locked into any streamer, I can easily keep up with whatever changes there are in the industry. If amazon come out with a service tomorrow, I can use it. If Qobuz fold I can go with Tidal. Unlike folk who spent thousands on naim and Linn I didn’t have to wait years for a flakey Roon implementation. Keep things flexible, and enjoy your music.
 
We had this conversation this morning talking to my local dCS dealer and a friend. All three of us agreed that streaming is getting better but is not quite up there in terms of sound quality when compared to locally stored and served WAV files (whether from CD transport of hard disc). Personally I blame the slight hardness of FLAC as used for streaming which is why I rip to WAV and download to AIFF (more secure metadata from band camp at least). Obviously all this concerns the same recording in the same resolution.

The downside of streaming (apart from the monthly rent) is that your library is dependent on someone else deciding to keep what you like available or not.

The downside of the CD is the physical space it invades in the sitting room.
Long term my plan is to rip all the CDS (and DVDs too for that matter) to declutter the sitting room (and invade the cellar instead). Most of the DVDs are done and the non classical half of the CDs too.
 
Music - rent or buy?

I always purchase the album on record, rarely I buy a c.d. 'new,' as they are soo cheap second-hand.
Never used a streaming service, I enjoy the physical world and need the exercise. Most of the 1000 plus cd's I have are in the spare room apart from about 20 that live in the music room.
It is worth pointing out that I will happily stream films, but still have 100's of DvD's. In the same vein, I like books and would never use a 'kindle' thingy. The missus went all in on the kindle hoodiddy about 4 years ago. She never uses it now, and has started to use the local library frequently to help support the service. I tend to buy charity shop books, I like the randomness.
 
Streaming is certainly the future however I still find I prefer vinyl to CD, and CD to streaming - even if I'm streaming from lossless files I've ripped myself. For casual listening the convenience of streaming makes up for that gap (especially when out and about) however when I'm at home I probably split my listening 40% vinyl, 40% CD and 20% streaming. At the moment I'll tend to buy vinyl mostly but have recently started buying CD's again - both new and second hand.
 
CD or vinyl for the best available sound quality and for archival purposes.

Streaming for discovery and casual listening.

Considering issues such as watermarking and DRM focussed technologies such as MQA, now would seem like a good time to start collecting Red Book CDs while they are still widely available at a reasonable cost.
 
The Option is own a bit of music (e.g. 1-4000 cds) or have access via streaming to vast amounts of music (millions) ... I’d try and forget who owns it, as when it’s playing it doesn’t really matter and start streaming.
 
Heckyman said:
CD or vinyl for the best available sound quality and for archival purposes.

Streaming for discovery and casual listening.

Considering issues such as watermarking and DRM focussed technologies such as MQA, now would seem like a good time to start collecting Red Book CDs while they are still widely available at a reasonable cost.
Click to expand...

Nop, can't hear water when playing music.
 
Whatever virtues vinyl might lay claim to, it is certainly not an archival medium. Far too fragile, much too much added to the signal it's supposed to be a carrier for...
 
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