I cancelled my Spotify account some time ago due to a band I liked at the time (Thank You Scientist) having their catalogue dropped making me realize that I do, in fact, own nothing -- but I was not happy about it.
During a trip back to my parents a couple of years ago I found an old CD binder of mine that was packed full of old music that I thought I had lost, so I took that home with me and started the slow process of ripping music to my hard drive. Foregoing MP3 I decided to rip them as WAVs since I have a big disk and a pair of Sony M4s and it was like a new sonic universe had been opened to me.
I have about 200 CDs in my collection now, a lot of them old ones that I did end up losing but repurchasing. There's apparently a niche enough market for them that some arbitrage can happen. For instance, using Amazon as a spot market I found a CD for $5 used at a local book store that sells for $40 minimum at Bezosland (Dance Gavin Dance - Mothership for those curious). My mom has also come in clutch, finding Drive Like Jehu - Yank Crime at some flea market local to her and throwing it into my Christmas stocking last year.
I can't stress the quality of the music with a good set of headphones and a lossless rip. And best of all I own this music forever.
I didn't know such a thing was still around, sucks they finally got to it. Gives me memories of the Napster days when we'd exploit the school's T1 all day to download music then I'd bring my parallel port Zip drive to hook up to the school's computer to take the files home to burn to CDs to give to friends. That was the only way, USB wasn't common yet. There was zero network and PC security at school back then and us high school kids knew how to problem solve. As far as I'm concerned those were the glory days of the internet.
I'll give the music industry a bit of credit, they learned to make things reasonably available at not a stupid price. You don't have to get Sony Music+ for $14.99 and that gets you only Sony artists and some scraps they put together to say they have a billion songs. Then oh wait you wanted that artist, well they are a Virgin Premium exclusive, that will be another $14.99.
We must be roughly the same era. Loved napster at college. Kazaa? eMule?
I remember one year at college there was a job fair, and one company was giving out USB thumb drives. Probably like 8mb or 16mb or something. Awesome!
People were waiting in line like 20+ minutes just to get one.
Truly the glory days of the Internet.
I will also have a soft spot in my heard for 90s Something Awful and JeffK.
No love for Limewire?
I used Kazaa. Never like Napster. I have about 650 CD's - I ripped them to 320k upon purchase and then just burn them as required to blank discs so the originals can stay unused in storage.
I must truly be the old fart here. I remember when the only way to get your music on the high seas was to download multi-part compressed archive files on NNTP servers, aka news groups, or on IRC channels.
Now pardon me while I make my way back to my rocking chair. Lol