Music ownership vs. Streaming subscription

I still like the physical ownership - ultimate backup i suppose and with used CDs so cheap i'm making the most of people moving on their collections. I still have my CDs displayed in the lounge but most just get ripped and put in a storage box. The other thing is I don't really have the time to make the most of a streaming service and own enough music already to have a wide and varied collection for listening at home, car and work.

It's great to have so much choice and ease of access to a vast collection of music so i can see the appeal of the streaming services. 

My understanding is the charity shops legally own what is donated to them.  How then do the CD's become illegal ?

EDIT.   Ah you mean the rips ?  Understood.  Well I guess my answer to that would be where is the greater good ?

UK legal spoiler. I'm not an expert in this area but:

Oddly, at present, the legal position is not clear as to whether, as owner of a CD, you have the right to make a backup copy for yourself. [I'm not defending the legal position here, just sayin'.] But in practice this is assumed to be the case. I understand that legislation is planned which will make this position clear and permit backup copies/self-streaming.

What is pretty clear is that you don't have the right to retain a ripped copy if you onward-sell the physical CD. Ownership of the physical CD may give you a licence to make a backup copy, but only while you own the CD. Hence HH is correct (in the UK at least) - the ripped copy would be retained in breach of the CD licence and therefore "illegal".

[This is why you will see some disclaimers on t'internet about ripping CDs...]

I'm pretty sure, in the UK at least, that the law has recently changed and that you do have the right to make back up copies for yourself, or to use on mobile or streaming devices

Yeah on reflection I must also agree HH is technically correct from a legal / copyright infringement standpoint.

My own feeling is it seems a terrible waste to keep a vast crate of CDs mothballed in a loft, as I do.  Some folks may genuinely want to keep them, either as memorabilia or back-up of last resort, which is fine.  But personally I don't, and would happily donate to a good cause.  The law therefore seems an ass in such a case..... ;-)

Sorry for inadvertently derailing the thread, btw !

I was quite enjoying the philosophical/psychological underpinnings to the whole discussion....... :-)

@dayjay - You are right: see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29448058 [Mods - this is a news item so I hope it's ok to post.]

I'm sure I read that there was additional legislation planned...

Steering the thread back to the main discussion, can I ask how people equate emotional attachment (if at all) to how they access music?

As logical as saying it is only the music that matters is, I personally have found the following:

Physical ownership of media = greatest emotional attachement and security

Ownership of digital data = some attachement but mainly just the sense of security

Subscription or radio = no attachment whatsoever

Obviously with shared access, there might be no change in the music to our ears but I somehow feel distanced from something that is a great piece of art. It's admittedly all very touchy feely but I'm interested in how others with very different views on this thread feel.

one friend of mine who has ripped all his CDs and has boxes and boxes of them in the loft let me have a rummage through them . I left with a large suitcase full of albums which I then ripped myself, and then returned them to him some time later.

what is the law concerning this ?

There's definitely something to do with multi-sensory response which affects how we all react to given situations. (Psycho-babble aside, it is well known that we pick up more information from the written page than from reading the same piece online - something to do with how our brains are wired...)

I used to love the feel of taking out a piece of vinyl, admiring the sleeve etc before playing it. CDs, not quite so much. Ripped CD on my NAS drive, not so much again, but at least I could find the CD if I needed to...

So, I'm with you zen.

Physical ownership of media = greatest emotional attachement and security

Ownership of digital data = some attachement but mainly just the sense of security

Subscription or radio = no attachment whatsoever

I share your feeling on the above ranking, feeling_zen.  The only qualification on my side would be that I no longer "value" or connect to a CD any more than its rip or equivalent download.  But if we are talking vinyl as being the physical media, then I'm in 100% alignment.

Explaining it is much harder.

I, and others, have commented above on our "vinyl upbringing" which I am convinced remains a powerful and formative factor.  When CD arrived with its initially thin & brittle sound and small format with diminished cover art impact, I felt disillusioned and it may be something I've never fully got over ;-)

Funnily enough when I started file streaming (with an Oppo, heresy I know) I discovered I could have life size cover art on the TV screen.  I actually measured it as 14" on our set.  This simple fact alone brought back a pleasure and a connection to the music, which irrational as it may be,  also jolted me into filling every gap possible in cover art metadata.  Its a bit like propping up the vinyl cover against the hifi whilst listening -  or it feels like that to me, anyhow.

Now its quite possible that such things, as well as enhanced album info and a whole lot of other stuff, are also possible with streaming services.  I wouldn't know but it seems likely, so maybe I could yet become a convert if only our internet was sorted.  But only as a supplement.  And I doubt if it could ever remotely come close to the vinyl connection, with the black gold spinning ethereally in a darkened room.....

My emotional response comes from the music I am listening to and not the media. I prefer to own downloads or ripped CDs, but only because I don't like the thought of being completely reliant on a third party for my music, and because I have greater control over music I own should I want to play it in the car or elsewhere in the house.  If I could integrate CD quality or higher music from an external streaming service with my own files, I'd happily do so.

   This post was posited hypothetically of course    .

Lol, I was just on the phone to crime stoppers - told them you have a big moustache!

This post was posited hypothetically of course    .

Ha,

Toby, he could have just paid you a quid to provide off-site back-up & disaster recovery services.  What you do in your spare time is your business..... ;-)

I don't see anything inherently "bad" about streaming, and it could open your world to a lot of new music you otherwise would not have heard, but I would always prefer ownership.  With the uncertainties of life one can never be assured of having the funds or even setup to engage streaming.  And I do use streaming internet radio in a way that has exposed me to many new tunes I would not have otherwise heard...and some of those are now part of my physical collection.

I am 57 years old, and if I live to 80 at $20 a month that would be over $5,500; I doubt I will spend that much money over the course of my lifetime on physical music media.  (That number also does not include the almost inevitable increase in price.)  Of course, I have spent far in excess of that on what I already own for physical media.

I also think it is cool that if I were to move somewhere distant (e.g., Europe) I can bring all my music on one 2TB hard drive and leave my originals in storage with a relative or wherever.

Life seems to be full of situations where they want to "only $20-$50 a month" you to death - and I prefer to disconnect from that dynamic wherever possible.   I have enough owners already.

An interesting comment; it does seem to apply to most things these days. A few days ago, I decided to take out a subscription to the digital edition of Gramophone (I was a subscriber for many years between the late 70s and the late 80s - not the digital edition, obviously), and I discovered that I could not download, or copy an article or a review. Fair enough, but if you stop paying your £80 a year, you are left with nothing.

Life seems to be full of situations where they want to "only $20-$50 a month" you to death - and I prefer to disconnect from that dynamic wherever possible.   I have enough owners already.

This is a good point. Streaming services vary greatly from country to country. In many regions (mine for example) Tital, Spotify, etc are all blocked. If you are happy with subscription and don't suspect life will ever send you to another country then it might be okay.

Some places just leave you well and truly Foxtrot'ed (don't start up that again though please).

Like most people here I have a large collection of my own ripped CDs and more recently hi-res material. I've also been actively using streaming services for about 18 months. Since Deezer's Elite CD quality service became available I've been listening to my own collection less. I'm in my late 30's.

If I really enjoy a piece of music I like to buy a hi-res copy but after having some poor experiences; read bad remastering or upressed CD quality material, I've backed off. One of the reasons I'm interested in MQA is that it 'Authenticates' what the listener is hearing on playback is exactly what the engineers heard in the studio. Right now buying hi-res music can be something of a lottery.

This is starting to sound like a faux AA meeting!

Hello, I am 54 years old, annnnd - I HATE media.

I converted to streaming CDs and DVDs ASAP and thereby regained two cupboards of space in my living room.

I have 2.5-3k albums, mainly in the loft! I am now methodically ripping these ...and FAR prefer these 9624 rips to most of the other HiRes files I have bought ....and having them available to stream round the house is great.

What I won't do is upload the files to a web based cloud. This does mean that I need to properly plan both my IT resilience but my DR solution.

I love the modern technologies that have made this music readily available.

M

I get the impression other people feel the same in this topic, but I just don't like the idea of a company having the monopoly over my music, and that if all of a sudden if I can't afford to subscribe or lose my internet connection or the company goes bust then I can't access my music. I like having it stored locally and to be able to do what I want with it, including putting it on my iPod for listening in the car or when I go on holiday where there might not be the best of internet connections for streaming.

Being a member of generation Y (born in '88), I'm not too sure whether music 'ownership' is a generational thing or not. I have always been partial to downloading, but as I started to improve my hi-fi, I started buying far more CD's in the pursuit of better sound quality. I've gone back towards downloading again with the advent of CD quality downloads becoming more widely available. Although I still buy albums if I like them, I have really enjoyed being able to download CD quality singles instead of buying full albums for the sake of one or two tracks I like.

I have tried Qobuz, but despite finding the odd couple of decent albums, I found myself going back to my own music more often than not. I notice as well with most of the streaming services, there are gaps in their libraries; as a result I think that having my music to hand locally (be it from downloads or CD rips), all together in one place is the most convenient thing for me. I might be being picky here as well but I also think that although Qobuz sounds excellent, I feel that playing the actual file locally sounds ever so slightly better.

In conclusion: Music ownership is definitely the way for me, and I dread the thought of streaming becoming the only method of accessing your music.

+1