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.
As a fellow physical media lover, I wish I'd had the foresight (and the drive space) to rip all my old CDs as FLAC back in the day. I ripped everything I had into 128kbps MP3s at the time. Then I went and used the CDs in the car, portable CD player, etc. until most of them weren't that great condition, got tossed, etc. and I have almost none of them.
So unfortunately, at the time music is one of the only things I still pay to stream, albeit not Spotify. I just enjoy the expansive library available that I haven't had the time to build up. I do have a handful on my NAS and a few physical CDs I picked up at an estate sale. There's actually tons at the flea markets around here I should look through them more. For me, I go more for blu-rays. I have no streaming services, when I want to watch something, I acquire it and either watch the disc or rip it if it's a TV series or I want to take it with me. Since I care about maybe 1% of modern content, it's pretty easy to find what I'm looking for.
Soulseek is still going, lads. I rediscovered it recently on recommendation from a fren. Everything I need in FLAC whenever browser searches fail me, which is nearly 100% of the time these days. Frequently now I order physical albums (to patronise the bands) then head straight to soulseek to nab it in lossless digital before it arrives in the post.
tagging u/dagthegnome and u/KeeperOfTheGate in case you guys also didn't know.
Wow, I used to use Soulseek and it had dropped from my mind entirely. I had memories of an IRC-like downloader but figured it had been axed by this point. My man.
Been cranking out the downloads all day -- thanks again.
No worries, man, it was a bit of a revelation for me too. The fact that all the same chatrooms, full of all the same kind of annoying spergs, were still there from 20 years ago, almost brought a tear to my eye. Just goes to show sometimes the best solutions are the old ones.
Thanks for the tip, wasn't familiar with Soulseek. I've got a few CDs that won't rip properly for various reasons.