The end of owning music

[TerraEpon]

With thousands of CDs, how on earth would I find the time to rip them? I'll continue to buy them until they aren't made any more and then switch to downloads. Simples...

Took me three, but I'm far more meticulous than others about the way I named and tagged my files. Just /ripping/ them is actually quite an easy task since it's passive -- just shove the CD in and go, the majority of time you can do whatever else.

But many downloads offer digital files of the liner notes anyway.

True, but many don't. And often times you have to but the full album to get the book...which beings up a very silly point about digital DLs -- especially with classical where 'albums' can often be not originally made of recordings meant to be together, one might often not want everything on them. Yet (outside of eClassical.com) they are priced to aggressively sell you the whole thing anyway (that is being very expensive ala carte), and often can't even buy certain tracks separately. This is something that's bothered me since diigi-DLs started.

[semloh]

Although I love CDs, have a room full (plus tapes and LPs!), and are distraught if I mislay one, I mostly get downloads these days.

Liner notes are important to me, but more for other genres of music, for which I want recording dates, personnel and so forth. I'll leave streaming to the younger generation... a time will come when they'll know no better. 

It strikes me that in an increasingly authoritarian world, people might end up being streamed only the music that those in power (politically, economically or culturally) want them to hear, and that's quite frightening. I wonder what streaming services are like in Russia, Hungary and China.

[matesic]

I'm sure I'm not alone in having accumulated more LPs and CDs than I could realistically expect to find the time or inclination to play in my remaining years! That, at least, was the situation about 3 years ago, before I decided I could bear to lose my last 1500 or so LPs (having had limited culls on several previous occasions). With LPs of course, the prospect of converting them all to digital format in real time was inconceivable.

Then last year I decided it was time for the 2500 CDs to go the same way, but this time I did rip them all to mp3 first at a rate of more than 20 per day (at one point I had two computers on the job simultaneously) and the job took just 3 months. I'm not concerned about liner notes but I do like to browse, and now the works are all far better catalogued than they were in their CD incarnation. I wouldn't want to sacrifice "ownership" entirely, but I don't miss their concrete physical presence one little bit.

The disadvantage of streaming, I find, is that you need to decide in advance exactly what you want to hear and I seldom listen that way. However, if you yearn to hear a particular piece (at least, one that's old enough to be out of copyright), a subscription to IMSLP fulfills the need perfectly. The only difficulty is choosing which to listen to amongst exactly 100 recordings of the Pathetique symphony!

[Mark Thomas]

It's taken me a couple of years of very intermittent activity to digitise around 2250 CDs - only another 1250 or so to go. You can do this job whilst doing other things, just stopping every few minutes to slot another CD into the drive. Of course, the job doesn't stop there, the resulting tracks need to be organised into albums and properly tagged to get the cataloguing benefits Matesic mentions and to maximise instant accessibility. I should add, rather tongue in cheek, that therein I found a great and unlooked-for benefit. Tagging tracks is a highly therapeutic activity for anyone with even a touch of OCD (I have more than a touch). There's reams and reams of advice online about standardising your tag formats, cover art size and so on - it clearly floats a lot of nerdy boats.

[Sharkkb8]

I guess I'm sailing in a similarly OCD "nerdy boat" like Mark - organizing & tagging music is a task just routine enough to do largely by rote, but simultaneously requiring just enough attention to accuracy to exercise the brain a little. (as to nerdiness factor, my own personal boat may have aircraft carrier overtones  )  Like others, I found that digitizing wasn't quite the impossible job it seemed to be up front - I ripped my (I'm guessing) 2,500 or so cd's about 5 years ago, and have continued to do so with new stuff since then, of course.  One of the great benefits is the option to use playlists and/or "smart playlists" - wherein with a few mouse-clicks, one can assemble however many criteria one chooses  -  "19th century" & "German" & "string trios" or whatever choices, into an instantly-generated playlist, to be perused and played as one wishes.  Also, for me, one of the great benefits of digitizing is that we travel a lot, and the fact that on a whim I can play absolutely any piece of music I've ever collected, of (now) well-organized 84,000+ tracks, while being absolutely anywhere in the world (assuming wifi, of course), seems magical. A smallish-but-surprisingly-good Bose portable speaker and my phone are all I need.   We'll be in Antarctica next month and I can play whatever piece of music happens to float my nerd boat.....yes, RVW's 7th symphony is a no-brainer, of course!

[eschiss1]

I spend so much time trying to peruse the scores so that I can add at least some descriptive info not on the often miserly CD /etc jackets that it slows me down -some-...

[Jonathan]

I have no intentions whatsoever of disposing of my CDs! 

I've got about 1500, some are transferred to hard drive but I intend to do the rest slowly.  I've been keeping up with recent acquisitions by ripping them when I get them but my buying rate has dropped off substantially in the last few years.  There are several series that are continuing and I shall continue to "collect" but aside from that, the amount I buy is not likely to go up.  As a reviewer, I get discs to review so I will still acquire them by that route.

I do use a streaming service as well, mostly for hearing things I've not got the finances to buy - however, if a disc is released I really want, I'll still buy it (even if it's streamable (if that's a word)) 

[kolaboy]

I thought people were silly for getting rid of their albums, much less cds. I suppose I'm an obsessive collector. Yes, my shelves creak - but they're happy creaks.

And I haven't read Rolling Stone since Blondie were on the cover (1979, or thereabouts...)

[matesic]

I'm thinking of the unfortunates who'll have to dispose of their unwanted inheritance. After overcoming my initial reluctance I find decluttering strangely liberating.

[Mark Thomas]

... and I'm afraid the libraries and other institutions don't seem to want the gift of one's treasured collection.

[Alan Howe]

Well, I won't be here to care...

[semloh]

Ditto 

[Mark Thomas]

A few more boxes to be carried out after you, then. 

[Alan Howe]

Might get a few of my favourites put in with me...

[Mark Thomas]

You'll need some beefy pall-bearers (not a sentence I ever imagined typing).