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Music Technology

Why Play a Music CD? 'No Ads, No Privacy Terrors, No Algorithms' (nytimes.com) 241

Ben Sisario, American author, academic, and journalist who covers the music industry for The New York Times, shares why he still likes to list to compact discs: I try to keep an eye on all the major platforms out there, which means regularly poking around on about a dozen apps. My go-to sources are Spotify, SoundCloud, Bandcamp and Mixcloud, which has excellent D.J.-style mixes and to me feels more human than most. At home I have a Sonos Play:5 speaker, which plays streaming music and podcasts, and is a piece of cake to use. I also have Google Chromecast Audio, a little plug-in device (now discontinued) that allows me to send high-fidelity streams to my stereo. It sounds better that way, but it's not nearly as easy to use as the Sonos. To be honest, my preferred way to listen to music is on CD, as unfashionable as that might be. You push a button, the music plays, and then it's over -- no ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms! Do you share the same sentiment as Sisario, or have you gone all in on music streaming? Why or why not?
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Why Play a Music CD? 'No Ads, No Privacy Terrors, No Algorithms'

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18, 2019 @05:03AM (#58612720)

    digital doesn’t have to mean streaming. I just play music files on my PC and route it through my hifi system. easy.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      The MP3 codec made this revolution in music listening possible. Big Thanks to the inventors!

      • Not only MP3 (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Lonewolf666 ( 259450 ) on Saturday May 18, 2019 @06:27AM (#58612904)

        Yes, MP3 was the first that allowed compression to more palatable file sizes. But today? FLAC, Opus and some others will do the job too. With varying degrees of fidelity and file size, but in the age of Terabyte disks we can afford to use the formats with less effective compression too.

        460 GByte of FLAC files here, storing over 1000 full albums.

      • The MP3 codec made this revolution in music listening possible. Big Thanks to the inventors!

        Ah, yes... the MP3 patent wars. I remember them like it was yesterday.

    • by Sique ( 173459 )
      Even playing a CD is digital. CDDA stands for Compact Disc Digital Audio.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mrbester ( 200927 )

        And as for "algorithms", I have a couple of CDs that flat out refuse to play on any computer I have with a DVD drive due to deliberately corrupt filesystem entries as an anti-copying measure. These play fine in a dumb HiFi CD player, but my Blu-Ray sometimes has issues.

        Heaven forfend I might want to exercise my right to make a backup...

    • Consider that listening to all audio involves streaming of sound to your ear.

    • The formats which support DRM protection [defectivebydesign.org] can make the player phone home every time you try to play the file, to confirm that you're authorized to play it. So your privacy can be infringed even though you're playing local files. It's especially insidious because many of these formats can also be used to encode media without DRM, so many people assume a file with that extension is DRM-free when it can have DRM (like MP3 - that's why people were pushing for OGG).

      So no, it's not that easy.
    • I buy CD's, rip them to mp3/ogg/whatever and listen the resulting files on PC or Android phone, routing the audio to a pair of powered studio monitors either via a mixer (PC), or Chromecast Audio to the same mixer (Android). Its a very rare occasion to listen to the original CD's.

    • by havana9 ( 101033 )
      Most of modern separate CD players are capable to play CD or even USB devices with mp3, ogg, and other compressed audio formats in. Some of them can also rip in MPe Format from a CD to an USB stick: [teac-audio.eu] https://www.teac-audio.eu/en/p... [teac-audio.eu]
      Besides CD have thae big advantage that, being a physical thing, you could buy them at venues and support your local artist, and also get an autograph, and you are buiding a library, showing too you and to visitors what are your musical tastes and how they evolved.
      CD are wo
  • by Static ( 1229 ) on Saturday May 18, 2019 @05:06AM (#58612726) Homepage

    I still listen to CDs, too, especially as buying CDs is the best way I have of supporting the artists I love. (Plus the CDs always have lots of pics of the artists...) But I also pay for Youtube Music which I actually usually listen to and I do that because it means I don't get ads.

    • by auzy ( 680819 )

      This isn't always true though. Often the record companies make the majority of the money, and everyone down the chain takes their cut.

      You can buy the music often as a digital download directly off the artists website, or order the CD from them.

      Apparently most artists make the majority of their money from concerts though.

    • I still listen to CDs, too, especially as buying CDs is the best way I have of supporting the artists I love.

      Not if they're touring, it isn't. Go to a show, buy a T-shirt, download the album. They'll make WAY more money on you than if you bought a half-dozen albums, unless they're on one of a couple of indie labels that actually pays artists.

    • I buy used CDs on Amazon. Many are fulfilled by charities like Goodwill. Typical price is 50c for a CD. It's very cheap!

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 18, 2019 @05:09AM (#58612736)

    no thanks. I'll stick to 8-tracks.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Download music from whatever torrent site you prefer, put it on your device, get a player from f-droid.org, done.

    No carrying cases of CDs, no Google products, no spying, no shitgoritms.

    The "artists don't get paid" thing is also not a problem, because they aren't getting paid anyway, according to them.

    So, it is a multiple win.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Yep, and use the money you saved from not paying the "copyright holders" to buy concert tickets and support the artists.

      Done.

      • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday May 18, 2019 @05:31AM (#58612792)

        Bullshit. Quit making excuses. You, nor anyone, goes to concerts for every artist they've stolen songs from, not unless it's only one or two.

        It's amazing the excuses people coming up with to justify not paying someone for their work.

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          It is really hard to "steal" songs from the artists. I don't even know what you mean - do you break in their house and steal the note sheets?

          • by mentil ( 1748130 )

            Yes! If this Kickstarter meets its goal, then you'll all find out the lyrics to 'Hail to the Chief', every song by The Ventures, and Daft Punk's 'Around the World'.

      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        What does that leave for fans of bands that do not tour in your part of the world, bands that play mostly venues that require age 21+ to enter (while you're still in high school or in college as an underclassman), bands that have been broken up (and thus no longer tour), or musical genres not really amenable to live performance?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      These days there are plenty of ways to obtain music legally without having to stream it and/or having to put up with ads. Just buy the CD and rip it. Or buy it from iTunes, which lets you take out a DRM-free digital copy.

      I don't have much issues with pirating media if the distributor refuses to provide a legal copy on reasonable terms (and so did my government until recently: they refused to prosecute piracy in cases where there was no viable legal alternative. The EU forced them to change that, alas)
    • by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Saturday May 18, 2019 @10:24AM (#58613726) Homepage

      Better plan. Listen to a free streaming system, like shoutcast/icecast.

      Find independent artists that you like.

      Go to their website and buy the tracks directly from them. They get 100% of the profit.

    • With a torrent site you probably don't know what quality the file is. Might be crap quality.
  • Variety (Score:3, Interesting)

    by peragrin ( 659227 ) on Saturday May 18, 2019 @05:21AM (#58612758)

    A CD contains 7-10 songs from one person , or 7-10 songs you mixed.

    Personally I like a variety of music, listening to the radio 40 songs a week gets old fast, a CD get repeative in 10 minutes. Spotify or Pandora, on my custom channels and I go days before I get a repeated song.

    Yes the tracking sucks, and I am so over exposed to ads that I tune them out anyways. I see or hear an ad now and my mind blanks out the memory. Ads have very little value in today's world.

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      I haven't listened to a CD in years, first thing rip and store and port to all my devices. Loading a CD just a waste of time except for the one time and there in after listen to all the tracks and mixes you like. The biggest problem in newer content, shitty mixes the artists B$ over but not the mix you want to hear from your youth, very annoying. This means getting the right mix from the net because you simply can not buy it and it must be the right mix, not some shitty self indulgent egoistic remix.

      People

    • Re:Variety (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Cesare Ferrari ( 667973 ) on Saturday May 18, 2019 @07:07AM (#58613010) Homepage

      A cd gets repetitive in 10 minutes? So what, when you're listening to the second track? Two songs in succession by the same artist? Oh dear, I really think you have some attention issues. I can't imagine you've listened too many symphonies, or a song cycle, or an opera, or been to many gigs, or concerts. That's a real shame, it'd open your ears to something different.

      • Oh dear, I really think you have some attention issues.

        The music industry has an attention issue. The days of an "album" are long over where artists these days produce generic crap and load it onto the CD. Yes 2 songs in succession by the same artist is most definitely a limit for much modern music.

      • I hate how the default for streaming platforms like Spotify is for random. If I choose track 1 on an album it means I want to listen to the album, I find it incredibly annoying when it skips to something other than track 2 and then I have to dig through menu to find the hidden default skip option. Something is just wrong when you listen to Metallica Anesthesia: Pulling Teeth and the follow up is not Whiplash. Millennials just don't understand the pleasure of a concept album like Pink Floyd The Wall or War o
    • by rnturn ( 11092 )

      I've found that my 25-disc CD changer loaded with good soundtrack discs provides pretty much an entire day's worth of music with little to no repetition.

      If that's not random enough, the Raspberry Pi connected to the stereo does a great job of playing a wide variety music stored on the music server on the LAN.

      No ads.

      At all.

    • That's what MP3 players are for. On my 8 GB iPod I can load enough songs not to hear a repeat in a month. The quality of the selection is better because it's all music which I've chosen and not some crappy algorithm, so fewer skips. And no ads!

  • There are two options:

    A) The OP was born in the 21th Century (...Schizoid Men...)
    B) He is actively lying (what journalist in the music world doesn't remember Sony automatic spyware music CDs?

    • The rootkit does not run on a normal CD player, also if you disable Windows AutoRun.

      Honestly IMO AutoRun was one of the stupidest choices that Microsoft made (along with making the file sharing service so complex that it probably will always have remote code execution bugs),

  • No variance. No significant length. No ease of changing artist / genre. No discovery of new music.

    How about not being a cheapskate and subscribing to Spotify if you have a problem with an advert every 30min?
    Also if you have privacy "terrors" because someone knows what music you like then these guys can help: https://www.mentalhealthameric... [mentalhealthamerica.net]

    • Re:CD? No... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Pentium100 ( 1240090 ) on Saturday May 18, 2019 @06:13AM (#58612876)

      I dislike services. When I buy a CD it's mine forever, I can also sell it if I get bored of it.
      While with a service I would pay continuously and not have anything after I stop paying. Well, I could record the songs to a tape, but that's beside the point.

    • No variance. No significant length. No ease of changing artist / genre. No discovery of new music.

      Also if you have privacy "terrors" because someone knows what music you like then these guys can help

      Have you actually read the privacy policies of these services? Way more than music you are downloading from these services is being collected.

      Sonos the company mentioned in TFA that just sells "speakers" is giving Facebook a run for its money.

  • I've just started dipping into Mixcloud and it's a nice service. It's like listening to other people's mixtapes (or uploading your own). The sound quality is spotty, since it's people uploading their own mp3s, and the selection is very heavy on hipster stuff. Also, it's hard to find cross-genre collections. But there's something nice about hearing music curated by passionate people once in a while.

  • To some extent (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday May 18, 2019 @05:36AM (#58612812)

    With a CD, it's mine. I can do with it what I want short of "sharing" it with my five million "friends". It's the music I want, when I want, without commercials, without people talking over the songs, knowing what I'm going to get rather than depend on some crappy algorithm to make suggestions.

    Also, streaming doesn't work in some parts of the country when you're on the road. Yes, one can use MP3 on a stick, but then all you've done is take the songs on the CD and convert them into a different format.

    CD is music you own (or as much as one can own someone else's work). Short of destruction of the CD, it can't be taken from you, unlike streaming where the songs can be removed or, in the case of Apple and others, wiped from your system.

    • by berj ( 754323 )

      Music you buy and download from Apple (as opposed to the stuff you stream temporarily in Apple Music) can't be "wiped' from your system. What's more there's no copy protection at all. That music is as much yours to do with as you please as music you rip off a CD.

      Buying albums from the iTunes Music Store is still my preferred way to pay for music. I do have an Apple Music subscription for when I just want to listen to some random music around the house or in the car but the bulk of my music listening is e

    • by tbuskey ( 135499 )

      With a CD, it's mine. I can do with it what I want short of "sharing" it with my five million "friends". It's the music I want, when I want, without commercials, without people talking over the songs, knowing what I'm going to get rather than depend on some crappy algorithm to make suggestions.

      I buy CDs for the same reasons. I listen to lots of folk artists who make $ on the CD I buy at the concerts. Some publish the whole thing to youtube but I still buy the CD.

      Then I can rip it the way I want and put it on my music server. I can put it on any device I want later.

      These streaming services are similar to the old days when we had radio with a DJ selecting stuff the audience might like. If you wanted to listen to it often, you bought the album. If you wanted to carry the music around, you copi

    • Also, streaming doesn't work in some parts of the country when you're on the road. Yes, one can use MP3 on a stick, but then all you've done is take the songs on the CD and convert them into a different format.

      Most paid streaming services allow you to download channels or playlists for offline play. In the case of Google Play Music (which I use, I assume Spotify may be similar), occasionally when connected to WiFi it will update the channels, so I don't need to manually refresh the playlist to something else.

    • Also, streaming doesn't work in some parts of the country when you're on the road. Yes, one can use MP3 on a stick, but then all you've done is take the songs on the CD and convert them into a different format.

      Spotify lets you download tracks locally. I bought a 64 GB SD card for my phone and it's half full with most of my Spotify library at the highest available resolution. Works a treat.

    • Also, streaming doesn't work in some parts of the country when you're on the road.

      Just like the OP who is annoyed at ads it shows that you also don't pay money to subscribe to streaming services since most of them allow you to cache as much music as you want on your device.

      CD is music you own

      Personally I don't understand the obsession with ownership of music. Music is something I hear, it's a soundtrack to the life. It doesn't need to be something I own, it doesn't even need to be something specific, and I say that as someone with a huge CD and vinyl collection (legacy). If a song is removed from a streami

  • leaving out how much richer vinyl is, and i won't go into how stunningly beautiful AM Rado sounded on my aunt's old valve radio, so much depth i was astounded (AM radio is only supposed to have a range of about 8khz, and always sounds absolutely awful on a *transistor* radio)

    leaving that aside, i worked for an Audio Restoration Company (CEDAR Audio) 25 years ago, and being able to tell what the quality of sound was happened to be, as might be expected, rather um important. some of their customers bought CE

  • Two choices? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Saturday May 18, 2019 @06:42AM (#58612922)

    >"Do you share the same sentiment as Sisario, or have you gone all in on music streaming?"

    Those aren't the only two choices, believe it or not. I have many hundreds of CDs, all ripped and stored in files. I have Amazon tracks stored in files. I then rsync them to all my devices and I have all my music on all my devices. Phone, tablet, laptop, work, home, car, sports portable. No streaming. No CDs. No commercials. No dependence on a service. No Internet needed. No interruptions. No bulky equipment. No songs I don't want to hear. No strange or poor encoding. No skips/drops/scrambles. No disappearing songs.

    Sure, it isn't perfect, it is a lot more work, but I like it and probably around the same cost (in the long term). That is how I play/listen to music 99% of the time. I do like streaming for discovering new music- it beats the hell out of what I did 30 years ago, standing in a music shop for many hours, screening CD's on their nasty headphones :)

    • Those aren't the only two choices, believe it or not. I have many hundreds of CDs, all ripped and stored in files. I have Amazon tracks stored in files.

      Do note that you have to explicitly download Amazon tracks as MP3 for this to work. If you use the regular "download" option on Amazon Music, it saves the local file in a DRM-encrypted format. The Amazon Music app has to phone home every few days? weeks? to confirm you're still authorized to play the music before the files will play. I learned this the h

  • The great thing that I have discovered about all of our CDs is how easy it is for your kids to explore your and their musical tastes, and you don't have to give them access to a computer, a smart phone, or a smart speaker which tracks what they do. Also, CDs can be pretty inexpensive, especially if you buy them used. They are no longer the best way for ME to discover new music, but they are awesome for little people who know little to nothing about music or are only exposed to what OTHER kids' parents are l

  • by xack ( 5304745 )
    That people are getting nostalgia for cds. Anyone who remembers the iPod and P2P era remembers how bad cds were. If you want a physical format use vinyl or cassette.
    • }}} how bad cds were. If you want a physical format use vinyl or cassette. {{{ --- I've been digitizing my vinyl at 96/24 and listening to albums that way. You were joking about the quality of cassettes, though, right? If you want to listen to tape format, go to reel-to-reel. Cassettes can't hold a candle to reel-to-reel.
  • I buy CDs and rip to a lossless format or purchase music from HD sources (e.g.: HDTracks) then play it all with Plex. I'd use Sonos, but the player is $350 and doesn't seem all that great.

    There is a CD in my car player right now.

    My son's 6 CD changer in his car is full, and he also streams with Spotify.

    Is this what you're asking?

  • ...in no way does the suspicion that someone, somewhere, knows what I'm listening to, could the word 'terror' ever possibly apply.

    Grow the fuck up: everything in LIFE is about compromises.

    If you thought that you could have an infinite variety of free music sent to you over the invisible tubes wherever you happen to be standing and there wasn't some sort of cost to you somewhere, then you're just a dimwit that didn't think things through.

    • Grow the fuck up

      Says the one getting pissy over someone else having a preference (and giving reasons for it) - and then slinging about names. Oh the irony. Mayhap you need to calm your tits before telling anyone else what to do.

    • ...in no way does the suspicion that someone, somewhere, knows what I'm listening to, could the word 'terror' ever possibly apply.

      The fact there are those here who believe the only data being collected is what you are listening is "cute" and mildly amusing.

  • by mschaffer ( 97223 ) on Saturday May 18, 2019 @08:11AM (#58613172)

    Bill Gates said people should just buy CDs and rip them: https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com]

  • Because music on a CD sounds better than the compressed music on the steaming services. I do rip the CDs to disk and use J River Media Center [jriver.com] to play the music.
    • Same here. You can pick them up fairly cheap, you can find them used, or you can trade them on places like Discogs. 16/44 provides better sound quality than any compressed format (on a high end system with a good DAC)

      I rip them to an HDD for backup (as WAV, no need for compression), put them on a USB stick for in the car, and throw a few on my phone for portable use. Having a physical medium means no risk of anything "disappearing" like with subscription services. Plus you get album art, and frequently

  • I do not trust any of the streaming services to avoid censorship, privacy intrusions, or marketing games.

    However, once I've bought it, of course I rip it to MP3 or FLAC... much easier than dealing with a physical interface like a CD or record player.

    I have probably a thousand CDs and a few hundred vinyls.

  • My difference is that I have ripped almost my CDs to flac and play them on my HTPC, disconnected from the Internet.

  • Subsonic, Plex, Emby, there are others, with variable support for app platforms directly supported and/or public APIs for other developers to fill in the gap.

    For Music, I buy CDs or mp3s, but then rip/download and route them through Subsonic, for which I've written my own suite of Progressive Web Apps and the FireOS version for Amazon's Fire TV/Stick. My plex server also has the music files as a back up if the subsonic server dies. If my entire home dies, well, I have Amazon's streaming service for a fina

  • I do listen to streaming sites but ones that aren't just lousy with obnoxious ads. Streamtuner has a ton of good streaming sites, BTW. (Radio Paradise is one of my favorites for their variety)

    When my daughters' internet use starts interfering with streaming, I fall back on the CDs--either the actual discs or the ones I ripped from my collection--or downloaded podcasts (mostly 1-3 hours in length. Between the ripped CDs and the podcasts I have upwards of 6000 hours of music to listen to---all commercial fre

  • If I'm honest about it? It has far more to do with the capabilities of the devices around me than anything else.

    I used to have a collection of hundreds of CDs, but that was also when both of my vehicles had CD players built into their radios and I had a nice component stereo system in my apartment with a Kenwood multi-disc CD changer. Back then, I had a lot of cassettes too - but it was clear that migrating to CD format was the way to go, especially as my good tape player started acting up and was randomly

  • And my own music library. I've burned all my CDs and then I buy digitally from modern bands I want to listen to.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by antdude ( 79039 )

    Use music files ripped from audio CDs.

  • by manoweb ( 1993306 ) on Saturday May 18, 2019 @10:15PM (#58616574)
    I prefer cassette tapes over CDs. They are more robust as they do not scratch easily, this is important when kids have to handle them or you are wearing gloves. They conserve state across players. I am aware that quality is not nearly as good but I like the process. I typically mix my own tapes from digital sources. I have a boom box in the garage for when I perform mechanical work and being the environment pretty noisy due to the milling machine, fans of the welder etc, it negates the advantages of higher quality sound sources like increased dynamic range etc

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