Don't forget the dinosaurs!

[cloughie]

But payment by subscription is a different economic proposition, enforced consumerism. Am I right that Qobuz subscriptions start at £12.49 per month? Are there cheaper options? At least with CDs (cassettes, records &c) you can choose whether to buy every month or not without forfeit.

You can also get free streaming, albeit with interruption from adverts from Spotify and your local library may offer the Naxos library for free streaming which includes not only Naxos but also many other labels.

[Ein Heldenleben]

As I have mentioned previously, I lost the majority of my favourite LPs in a house fire, back in the '80s. Most of the downloads I have purchased remain available for repeated downloading from the vendor at no extra cost. Again, backing up of downloads is a very much simpler operaton than is backing up a CD.

When you buy a music download do you actually “own” it? I only ask because when you look carefully at Kindle downloads you don’t “own” the download . Amazon can take it both off your kindle and off the cloud. Presumably Qubuz can do this if you store it in their app but not if you transfer the file to your own drive? Or is their a poison pill in there somewhere? The problem with access to repeated downloads from a digital streamer is what happens if / when the firm goes bust. Unlikely with Amazon but with others when you look at their debt pile I’m not so sure ...

[Dave2002]

Considering what you get for that amount I would say it's next to nothing.

You may think that ....

Each year that’s almost £150.

if you feel it’s almost nothing, I’m sure there’ll be many willing to take your “nothing” off you, if you were willing to give it away.

[richardfinegold]

That's an argument for subscribing to a streaming service, not against it! Probably you remember that when CDs appeared many people thought they wouldn't get involved in this new fad, and everyone did, indeed everyone had to because that was the only way to hear new recordings, let alone older ones in better sound quality. And before that, exactly the same was true of the transition from 78s to LPs. I mention that since LPs were introduced in 1948 and CDs in 1982, making a difference of 34 years. Now, 39 years after the introduction of CDs, it's going to be increasingly difficult not to move on to the next medium, which will at some point be the only way to hear new recordings, and which once more (potentially) involves an increase in sound quality, but above all is a vastly more convenient and less expensive way to listen to an enormous variety of music. You've made that kind of change once already!

Agree with most of this, taking issue only with the stream quality issue. Both streaming and CDs send a bunch of 1s and 0s to a DAC. No reason why one should sound better than another. Streaming is affected by the quality of what comes down the pike from an ISP, and there are are areas of this country where ISP coverage is less than optimal. And now, with all of Life As We Know It moved to Zoom, ISPs are sorely tempted to throttle bandwidth.
Having just had my NAS “hijacked” by Hackers that targeted the guy that I paid to set it up and all of his Clients, demanding a ransom to release their files, I can testify that it’s easier to have a hard drive go awry than a CD collection that fills the shelves on a wall. I really can’t see a burglar driving a pickup truck to my home to load up a few thousand Classical CDs. I am going to burn the CDs again, but this time keep the collection as an LAN and hope that I don’t get a digital venereal disease from the wonderful World Wide Web. If I didn’t face the prospect of downsizing in the next few years I wouldn’t be bothering.

[Ein Heldenleben]

You may think that ....

Each year that’s almost £150.

if you feel it’s almost nothing, I’m sure there’ll be many willing to take your “nothing” off you, if you were willing to give it away.

Within the first month of my Qubuz sub I reckon I’d listened to £300 worth of CD’s though I don’t own them. That’s not “nothing” but it is value for money.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Agree with most of this, taking issue only with the stream quality issue. Both streaming and CDs send a bunch of 1s and 0s to a DAC. No reason why one should sound better than another. Streaming is affected by the quality of what comes down the pike from an ISP, and there are are areas of this country where ISP coverage is less than optimal. And now, with all of Life As We Know It moved to Zoom, ISPs are sorely tempted to throttle bandwidth.
Having just had my NAS “hijacked” by Hackers that targeted the guy that I paid to set it up and all of his Clients, demanding a ransom to release their files, I can testify that it’s easier to have a hard drive go awry than a CD collection that fills the shelves on a wall. I really can’t see a burglar driving a pickup truck to my home to load up a few thousand Classical CDs. I am going to burn the CDs again, but this time keep the collection as an LAN and hope that I don’t get a digital venereal disease from the wonderful World Wide Web. If I didn’t face the prospect of downsizing in the next few years I wouldn’t be bothering.

When I got broken into 30 years ago the robbers had put all my opera boxed sets into a carrier bag and then left them. Perhaps they realised the local market for knocked off copies of Solti’s Ring was not that buoyant...

[Bryn]

A fairly regular grouse about streaming services is how bad their search engines are. I'm not sure if this is particularly the case for classical music, or a more general complaint.
Deezer is certainly pretty grim, as there seems to be no standard format to how any information is entered/available: soloist, orchestra, conductor, title of work.
Even once you've found what you might be looking for (in one recent case, the box set of French piano concertos) there's often no composer information visible; in that case, I had to resort to Presto's site to find out what piece was what.


It's an interesting pastime to listen 'blind', though, and play 'name that composer'!

I find the QOBUZ app's search 'facility' anything but. It is often easier to find stuff via their download pages, then select "Listen on QOBUZ" (when available).

[french frank]

Within the first month of my Qubuz sub I reckon I’d listened to £300 worth of CD’s though I don’t own them. That’s not “nothing” but it is value for money.

Indeed - there's no question of it being 'value for money' providing that you 'value' and want what you get. But it's the valuing and wanting that are different for each person - it's up to them to decide what they are. I'm now restricting what I get to what is necessary - food and the replacement of necessaries that wear out (clothes which now just go to the textile recycling).

[Petrushka]

There's another aspect to this which few of us seem to want to face: our own mortality!

I've never counted my CD collection but it must be somewhere between 2000-4000 (probably a gross underestimate) and as none of my family have the slightest interest in them they will no doubt all end up in the skip when the time comes. Once the forthcoming Previn box arrives I'm giving serious consideration to saying enough is enough as I'll need a dozen lifetimes to listen to all my CDs just once and that's without either eating or sleeping!

I've got little interest in new releases these days so a streaming option might well be attractive for the few that do catch my attention. £12.49 a month is hardly going to break the bank (less than my mobile phone) so it could be the way to go.

[Ein Heldenleben]

There's another aspect to this which few of us seem to want to face: our own mortality!

I've never counted my CD collection but it must be somewhere between 2000-4000 (probably a gross underestimate) and as none of my family have the slightest interest in them they will no doubt all end up in the skip when the time comes. Once the forthcoming Previn box arrives I'm giving serious consideration to saying enough is enough as I'll need a dozen lifetimes to listen to all my CDs just once and that's without either eating or sleeping!

I've got little interest in new releases these days so a streaming option might well be attractive for the few that do catch my attention. £12.49 a month is hardly going to break the bank (less than my mobile phone) so it could be the way to go.

We have a one -in one - out policy on books and CD’s . Perhaps the forum could offer a post mortem CD aftercare facility ? . Or there’s always the Oxfam shop ....

[Ein Heldenleben]

I find the QOBUZ app's search 'facility' anything but. It is often easier to find stuff via their download pages, then select "Listen on QOBUZ" (when available).

What’s really weird is when you enter the exact same search terms on the website and on the app and get slightly differing results ..

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I've never counted my CD collection but it must be somewhere between 2000-4000 (probably a gross underestimate) and as none of my family have the slightest interest in them they will no doubt all end up in the skip when the time comes. Once the forthcoming Previn box arrives I'm giving serious consideration to saying enough is enough as I'll need a dozen lifetimes to listen to all my CDs just once and that's without either eating or sleeping! .

I know my sons are waiting with interest to pounce when I'm gone. As it is, whenever I find I have duplicates of the same CD recording, the vultures are there waiting and I have to decide who benefits.

[cloughie]

Agree with most of this, taking issue only with the stream quality issue. Both streaming and CDs send a bunch of 1s and 0s to a DAC. No reason why one should sound better than another. Streaming is affected by the quality of what comes down the pike from an ISP, and there are are areas of this country where ISP coverage is less than optimal. And now, with all of Life As We Know It moved to Zoom, ISPs are sorely tempted to throttle bandwidth.
Having just had my NAS “hijacked” by Hackers that targeted the guy that I paid to set it up and all of his Clients, demanding a ransom to release their files, I can testify that it’s easier to have a hard drive go awry than a CD collection that fills the shelves on a wall. I really can’t see a burglar driving a pickup truck to my home to load up a few thousand Classical CDs. I am going to burn the CDs again, but this time keep the collection as an LAN and hope that I don’t get a digital venereal disease from the wonderful World Wide Web. If I didn’t face the prospect of downsizing in the next few years I wouldn’t be bothering.

But how often will you play each recording - is it really worth spending the time on all that ripping?

[cloughie]

We have a one -in one - out policy on books and CD’s . Perhaps the forum could offer a post mortem CD aftercare facility ? . Or there’s always the Oxfam shop ....

We’ve tried that and there seems very little interest - how many of us have their biggest box set - a cardboard one full of duplicates? Perhaps we need Alpie’s vultures? One person’s duplicate is another person’s gap in the collection.

[Richard Barrett]

Agree with most of this, taking issue only with the stream quality issue. Both streaming and CDs send a bunch of 1s and 0s to a DAC. No reason why one should sound better than another.

In fact there is though, because while CDs are all digitised at 44.1kHz/16 bit, many newer recordings are available to stream/download at 96kHz/24 bit, and to my ears the increase in bit depth can make a noticeable difference.