Music ownership vs. Streaming subscription

This is interesting. There seems to be a good cross section of feelings about this that don't go strictly along the generational lines I have been reading about.

Pev mentioned that it might be due to how comfortable and long a person has been exposed to technology though I am not sure I buy this as a deciding factor either. I was one of the early digital natives and grew up from day 1 in an environment full of computers and have worked in IT my entire life. Like some members here I even have a dedicated 21U half server rack at home as part of a network application development lab (I work partly from home). Yet, as mentioned, the appeal of streaming is lost on me. I sense this preference for each person lies deeper.

Frenchnaim (who I seem to agree with a lot lately) probably hit the nail on the head as to the reasons for my own preference for ownership with his mention of desert island discs. In the back of my mind I always desire to go off-grid to a cabin in the woods. As long as I have electricity to power my NAS and Naim I can hermit myself away. If I did that after 20 years of subscription music I would be left without much to listen to.

I am not sure that wanting a physical CD is about the wish to own something at all. It can be of course, but not necessarily. 

It is about a certain sense of security. If you have the CDs transferred to a hard drive and backed up, then they remain the ultimate long stop back-up.

If you have to give up a good broadband internet service, either for financial reasons or moving somewhere remote, then streaming is no good. 

Also I wonder how much is to be gained with streaming when compared to radio. If you have a core collection of music - the music that you love best and may want to listen to at any time, and many times - it makes sense to buy the recording in physical form.

As for music that may be interesting to a person, but not necessarily something to audition on demand, then the radio provides a marvellous source, and so does going to real concerts.

I don't see much sensible comparison with paying a subscription for a streaming service, and paying to go to a concert. Of course the obvious parallel is that at the end you actually own nothing, but going to concert can lead to wonderful lifelong memories. I very much doubt if listening to a stream of a recording is ever going to be that memorable.

Streaming would suit the commercial music and recording enterprises, as it comes close to pay per listen [which would their most profitable method], but for the consumer, I would contend that buying a well chosen collection of favourite music on CD is going to prove very much more sensible as a financial proposition over a lifetime, and this spare cash might well be sensibly spent on attending real music making rather than canned music. 

In my humble opinion.

ATB from George

Why does it have to be an either - or proposition?

I listen to, and discover music on spotify. Music that I like enough to want to listen to in CD quality, I buy. It's probably a few albums a month.

It doesn't. But the fact that some see it this way and others don't is very interesting.

I admit, for me it is either or for music but subscription + ownership for movies.

Dear Mango,

Clearly it does not have to be either or, unless you are a person who wants to avoid spending in several different directions for the same sort of thing. Recorded music replayed at home.

For example, sometimes I have a real ramble round the music now on youtube.

Okay for me that it is MP3 of sometimes variable quality, but I have made discoveries this way, just for the time of digging a bit.

The other day I found a marvellous live 1966 performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult of Mozart's 39th Symphony. Marvellous on every level. glad to have had the chance to listen to this unusual combination of England's then most senior [in years] conductor and one the great USA orchestras! And the result was electrifying. I had no idea that Boult ever led the BSO either!

Would I buy this on CD? Probably not, but if I saw in a store then I might - who knows?

As it goes I have some very fine recordings of this music, and what this live performance shows is that Boult was as good as the best in his day! Not obviously better or worse ...

And I very much doubt if this kind of completely uncommercial radio recording is coming soon to any commercial streaming service either. 

As for one off listens, I do not find MP3 unacceptable at all. If one is going to listen to a recording many times then CD quality is better for me. 

So it is horses for courses. I remember when CD started to be issued parallel to LPs, and sometimes of re-issues on CDs alone. Rather than divide my expenditure on two formats, I adopted CD alone as early as the late 1980s. By 1992, I had sold all bar forty my nine hundred LPs/ I never missed them, and was delighted by the CDs I bought [sometimes direct replacements, sometimes not] in their place. 

Nine hundred LPs, is about the same as the seven hundred CDs I have today. I cannot see me adding even fifty or one hundred more. I am not a collector in any real sense. But just want access when I feel like it to something like thirty days [end to end] of favourite music. Enough to be sure that there is always something fresh to find!

ATB from George

Most interesting, agreed.

I suspect there is a generational influence on this matter, in the sense that if you are of a generation that is used to "owning" things, then having your own physical music collection (even in file format) seems a natural extension of that thought process.  A kind of "conditioning", I suppose.

I am early(ish) Gen X and also fit the pattern I have just described.

But as many have said already, its not a black & white thing, or needn't be.  You can have both, and enjoy streaming for specific purposes such as trying recommendations or discovery.

I don't stream for the very good reason that our "rubber-band" internet isn't up to it, but if that changed I probably would do.

I guess if you were starting out or at an early stage of exploring music in your life, then it could be considered a black & white situation.  You might decide, "No need to own music at all, I'll just pay my subs and stream".  But to do that certainly requires a different mentality than my own, and may be generational.  I would be worried that I'm effectively signing up for life, because the moment you stop you'd have nothing (except radio).....

It's a generational/cultural thing to me. I never really bought 45s growing up. Mostly went for LPs, so the album is my unit of purchase. Plus I always enjoyed the cover photography and art, and reading the credits. Gatefolds were appreciated and I hung posters on my bedroom walls. I'll sample some of the music I see posted here on my laptop to help decide whether I want to buy an LP or CD.

My kids tend to buy typically at the song level for their MP3s. Streaming devices let you buy songs and easily arrange a customized playlist by artist or musical similarity, so I guess buying at the song level makes sense there. Still, as it was growing up, I enjoy loading the physical media, browsing the credits as I listen, and playing an entire album at a time.

Interesting. This raises another issue entirely: within ownership the differentiation between physical media over pure data ownership. Although true I prefer the physical copy of a CD with the booklet and art, I also consider purchasing a download as ownership. The emotional attachment isn't the same though. Probably why I keep Laserdiscs in storage even though DVD and then BluRay were better. The large gatefolds made them nice to handle.

On the other hand, I would never purchase at the song level. Not sure this an ownership vs. subscription issue though. Some people just like the songs on the album in the order they were arranged in (including not so likeable tracks). Many artists used to arrange and plan these carefully to create a "musical journey". Instant gratification of one-off tracks just doesn't have the same impact.

Indeed. I think artists/producers generally give careful consideration to song arrangement on their albums. I like the notion of a 'concept album', and the feeling of completion you arrive at at the end. When I hear a song from a familiar album, I inherently know the next song up.

Listening to "Girls in Peacetime.." by Belle and Sebastian. Nice enough. Would be tempted to buy - but I doubt I'll listen to it again....

Perhaps its down to the way one selects the albums and tracks to play.. If one uses fully integrated software like the Sonos control application, local and subscription streaming content is seamlessly combined when searching and looking for music and there is no difference on playback. if you had no knowledge of your supporting 'technology' there would be no difference between your local copies and your external subscription copies.

However if your software or tools for selecting the music reinforce and stove pipe the differences, such as Naim's approach, you are constantly reminded of this, and perhaps you are more inclined to adopt an either / or mentality.

To me these are both means to an end. 

In the UK, most don't own their music.. You either simply purchase the perpetual right to play back  somebody else's music from a physical medium ( record, CD, computer  download file etc) , or you subscribe the right to play somebody else's music.

Simon

If young people don't like owning things then where has the vinyl resurgence come from?

Well Mango, what you just did is called 'sampling'. Surely you're familiar with that notion

Grey-haired men with paunches and possibly pony-tails.

It's relative. Sales are much higher than in the 90s when the market for new vinyl was mainly for wannabe DJs. But now with the supposedly high sales of vinyl, it is still not exactly like they are flying off he shelves and sold everywhere like in the 70s.

Indeed, it would appear listening to radio article on this yesterday the re introduced  vinyl charts will show it's mostly the older generation that is driving this resurgence. ( in the UK at least)

Of course there is nothing wrong with grey hair and paunches, but I draw the line at pony tails (in men) 

I was born in mid 60s, and for me I still prefer the physical medium to be in my possession.

OK, so I then rip it, store it away and stream it to listen to it, but I feel I still need the safety net of my own collection.

I have a listen to a lot of music via Spotify to see if I fancy buying it, but that's as far as I will hand myself over to streaming services at the moment.

From what I have seen so far if I went 100% over to streaming there would be quite some albums or versions where I would need to subscribe to multiple services to get access to my collection, which would seem to be a bit of a dumb move for me. (even if they were all lossless services)

I also think it is a far from mature market, and this will take many years.

I bet if the OP asked the question again in 2 years time, a completely different set of responses would be posted.

Sums up my approach too. I don't even feel right if I have to stop an album before it's finished!

G

I agree the ordering of the album can be a significant part of the experience of listening to the album.. I enjoy how streaming makes these albums available to me..Also streaming allows me to compare different masters before deciding which album master I want in my virtual collection.. and often, but not always, the earlier master is preferable.   For me with many CDs introducing new artists I was tempted to go for compilations or best of's and this ordering was lost.

EPs are other often well chosen groupings of tracks.. And for me were largely difficult to gain access to in a lossless format.. Streaming makes this possible and greatly enjoyable.

I'm 56, and took advantage of the .99p Spotify trial at Christmas, I used it less than 5 hours over the 3 months, mainly checking out albums/songs I'd like to own.

I found the Spotify sound quite still/dead/lifeless which was strange.....not sure what I expected in that regard.

I do prefer to own music and generally buy CDs of things I want a quality copy of for my NAS, and a download if I'm less bothered by the quality (mainly pop stuff). Streaming by paying £10-£20 a month does not appeal, although buying a high quality download file does......if the price is right. A recent purchase of an album by a band I like had a FLAC download file as part of the package and that seems a good way forward to me.

Once Naim finally get Qobuz working, the sublime subscription seems ideal to me : you can stream at CD quality and buy 96k downloads for the price of CD quality for those albums you want to own. Since switching to streaming I've bought loads of CDs, which I rip and then put in a box. Recently I've been downloading more, which saves clutter in the house and the quaility is of course the same.

Once the walls of CDs are banished, the ownership proposition is slightly different, as all the music lives in the hard drive, visible only via the iPad or whatever. I think people will eventually move more and more to streaming rather than downloading, owning fewer albums. 

The thing I like about the streaming setup is having all your music easily visible. If I want some Stan Getz, say, my 20 or so of his albums are all there. But if you use Qobuz, some will be there and some won't. You somehow need a way of being able to curate you collection, where the app shows the stuff on your NAS integrated with chosen albums on Qobuz or wherever - you just choose what to play and the system tootles off and finds it. I believe this is the way some manufacturers are going but whether it will be seamless is another matter.

That's the way Meridian are doing it, pretty much. A few glitches at the moment, but the general experience is that you 'add' Tidal albums to your collection and they just appear in with everything else you have and play as if you had ripped them yourself, complete with metadata which can be edited to your satisfaction if required.

You can always give your CDs to the charity shop, Halibut  ;-)

Going back to the album vs single point, I wonder if that was also something that got instilled during a vinyl obsessed youth. A couple of friends back then did admittedly collect 7" singles, but most did not and neither did I.  The passion was all about the next great album release, what it would sound like, and what its cover art might be.  The flow of songs on an album was in part a key to its success or failure.

As Joerand says, vinyl may well have contributed to the "ownership" mentality, and the desire for a physical library of music, as it seems even today inherently more covetable than other formats.... ;-)

That's still pretty much ownership. It's what I do too. Not equating ownership with physical items (maybe because I'm that year right between generation X and Y but comments on the thread seemed to have dispelled a strong generation bias), I look for what I want as hi-res FLAC or WAV, if I find it great, if not I don't hesitate to buy the CD instead, rip it and stick it with all the others in storage.

If the end of life the universe and everything comes, I can pretend it isn't happening and still rock out. Meanwhile, everyone else will be waiting for [insert your cyber terrorist country name here] to allow the world to use the internet again.

Same logic goes for books. Living in a tiny Japanese apartment with tons of books, I was an early adopter of a Kindle. I want to own the media but don't mind where it is - so was happy to get rid of several great hulking bookshelves. Yet I have never been inclined to go to a library (while they were still a feasible business model).

I think if you could stream and buy and album which triggered a download to a NAS it might be different for me. But I am living in a country where you can rent CDs for about 30p a disc/week (yes I have been tempted to rip - but no I haven't).