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PaperclipPerfector  26d ago (text post)   3182 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Does anyone still 'collect' music (i.e. keep locally stored copies in some kind of organized database, regardless of format) in the current age of ubiquitous streaming?

I assume that Spotify (and the rest) has all but killed the idea of 'keeping' music on your local computer or phone amongst the youth.

As someone who has a music collection going back to when I first started obsessively ripping CDs to my PC in my teens, I find that I mostly keep doing it through force of habit, and the slight fear that things I like might disappear. Some of the older files in my collection are hard or impossible to find online these days. But with so many different streaming options and, now, an AI that can produce radio-quality music in seconds it seems like there's really no point to keeping a large local music collection unless its related to your career in some way.

So if you DO still store music locally, what are your reasons and methods?

I don’t have Internet at my house, nor do I have an unlimited data plan, so I make reasonably extensive use of my song collection. I also don’t trust that everything I like will always be available, so I greatly prefer to have locally saved recordings.

I…what? How are you here? Phone internet?

Yes, static, mostly text-only sites like this one don’t use much data, so it’s not a problem for me to participate here. If I want to stream anything or otherwise use the Internet more extensively, I either stay late at work or go to the library. It isn’t a huge imposition given my lifestyle, and it saves me hundreds of dollars per year.

It is funny, but I know people like you EXIST who live mostly 'unplugged,' but it is still pretty surprising to find one in the wild, happily outside of the angry egregore that most of us inhabit.

Eh, I’m here, aren’t I? I’m clearly not that happy.

I will say that I enjoy the absolute bafflement on some people’s faces and in their voices when they learn just how disconnected I am from large sections of modern life. I don’t have home Internet, I don’t have a TV, I refuse to download all but a very few mobile apps, I’m forever forgetting my phone at home or in the car, and these days, I’ve almost entirely given up radio as well. Other than news I pick up from IRL conversations, my connection to the modern outside world is mostly through a handful of websites, including this one.

There are some things I am not happy about in life, but my voluntary semi-seclusion from modern life isn’t one of them.

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