jae

That's fair. But then what is the word for what I am talking of? Just simply "collecting"? But could that also have a connotation of a person who's into collecting music as a hobby, like what you're saying for "curated"?

That's what I meant by curated! Taking the effort to buy some cool songs/albums you liked. Is there a connotation to "curation" that I don't know about?

I agree that many people listened to music for free via radio but I’m skeptical that it was just a hobby? What about the Zune/iPod days? People went through more efforts to curate a library, no? Whether it was with music downloaded illegally, or actually paid for via iTunes…

I realize I kept saying CDs, but I also include buying digital version in what I meant, edited my original post to say that. My main gripe is that we do have these services in which musicians can put their work out there and get paid fairly for it, but people don’t use them. Buying digital album is cheaper than monthly streaming price for Spotify too. These services that people value for convenience are hurting artists. We even have musicians commenting so here.

I feel so bad for artists. They deserve to get paid for their hard work. Unfortunately, it’s been so hard for me to convince friends to move away from these predatory streaming platforms. A lot of people don’t want to lose having an unlimited catalogue at their fingertips.

Maybe I’m going to sound like a boomer here, but I don’t get why people need an unlimited catalogue at all. What’s wrong with paying artists directly to get their vinyls and CDs (or digital album)? What happened to curating your music library? What happened to the days where you’d buy CDs and listen to them over and over again, front to back? What happened to the days where playlists were manually curated for yourself, or even better, for your friends? Some of my fondest memories are music related, of my best friends painstakingly selecting a playlist of songs for me and burning them onto a CD for me to enjoy. What happened to the days where we didn’t need a constant stream of music pushed to us by an impersonal AI? What happened to developing your own unique and interesting personal taste?

I get that these streaming platforms are convenient, but it feels to me that we’re losing the ability to actively listen to music, to truly appreciate it, to understand the labor of love that it was for the artists, all for the sake of convenience. I don’t want music to be convenient, music is a fucking gift. I don’t want to be pushed AI generated recs, or AI generated music.

I’m rambling, lost my train of thought, and probably sound like a Luddite, but I have such strong feelings related to music and just hate these streaming platforms so much. I refuse to use them.

tldr please please please support your favorite artists by buying from them directly

Didn’t see it mentioned, but I self host Navidrome. It’s great and open source. I get most my music from Bandcamp, or even rip CDs I check out from the library.

I bought on qobuz before! But I’m with you, it’s really hard to find a legal way to purchase certain albums. If a tool like that existed it’d be so convenient. It’d save me a lot of time searching for how to purchase.

You’d be surprised, quite a lot of artists still put out CDs! A lot of artists I like sell them when you go to their shows, it’s a great way for them to make money, along with selling other merch. I also really like collecting them. I also check out a lot of CDs from the library (more useful for older music, I listen to a lot of jazz and classical). I rip the CDs and throw them into my library, assuming there isn’t a digital version already available.

I scrobble my listens using Last.fm and ListenBrainz, which has given me some decent recommendations. It’s worked well enough for me. Maybe I’m “missing out” on more recommendations by not being on Spotify or other streaming service, but I still manage to find so much to listen to organically anyway. Also like @[email protected], YouTube recommendations work too.

I don’t bother with streaming services anymore. I set up Navidrome on my home server for my music library and love it.

Also, I may be in the minority here, but I decided to start paying artists directly for their music. Whether it be buying a CD at a show or buying off of Bandcamp. I didn’t want most of my money going to Apple/Spotify, I want my favorite artists to at least get something for their hard work …

Yes, it’s more expensive if you expect to have the entire Spotify catalog at a moment’s notice, but I may be old fashioned in that I like listening to albums front to back, and tend to listen to a single album on loop for a long time. After I’ve worn out that album, then I’ll move onto another one. Buying about an album a month has worked out for me, which is about the cost of these subscription services (I know I’m definitely in the minority here in the way I listen to my library, but figured I’d share anyway).