I'm now buying CD's of things I really enjoy. Digital music is trash. Not because of "fidelity" or any of that shit. Because they want to rent it to you, and Itunes in particular will fuck with your library.

Fuck the "cloud" scam.

I still buy CDs when I can and rip them to mp3. If I can't buy it on CD, I will record it online and concert it to MP3 so there's no way they can just take it out of my library.

quote:

Originally posted by arcwelder:
Itunes in particular will fuck with your library.

This is true. My workaround, as soon as the album is purchased from iTunes and downloaded to my library, I go to the hard drive, find the downloaded songs, and copy them to another folder (I call that my MediaArchive). That folder becomes a permanent repository and backup.
 
Then I go back to iTunes and delete the newly downloaded album and its cloud associations. After that, I use iTunes to import the previously saved songs/album into iTunes (File, Add to Library, or Ctrl-O). Now you have the real songs in iTunes, not some cloud shadow of them, and you forever have the saved songs outside of iTunes' reach.

Decades ago when storage was expensive, I burned all my CDs to lossy-but-tightly-compressed MP3s, and used decent shuffle play software - i.e. not iTunes - to play them. MediaMonkey in my case, there are others.

Since you're RIPping nowadays, in the days where storage is $/TB instead of $/MB, I'd suggest you consider doing it to lossless Flac files.

A couple years back, after doing a critical listening test to the same CD done to FLAC and to MP3, on a couple of CDs I knew very well, I reburned my entire disc set to FLAC. Everything that plays MP3 these days plays Flac files, too, and while they take up a multiple of the space of MP3s, they are audibly better.

It took a while to do, but my digital collection plays fine on my phone, PC, car and audiophile setups. I have no need for regular radio, XM, or free or paid streaming services...All I listen to is the 'joel9507 station': 11K songs, 2.2K playlist of favorites - available free, 24x7x365.

FLAC is the better format if you care about fidelity not mp3.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
FLAC is the better format if you care about fidelity not mp3.

True, but the files can be huge and most speakers/earbuds are not quality enough to tell a difference. I'm typically listening to my library in my truck on my way to/from work.

You can download almost any song you want from YouTube. There are numerous ripper sites to just save the audio from a YouTube link. I ripped my CD collection decades ago to mp3; now I just get a digital copy from whatever source to save to my library. MusicBee is MUCH better than iTunes. SCREW ITUNES.

At my age I just want the song to listen to in the car and my ears aren't tuned any longer for "fidelity".

This is my workaround to get the songs I want in mp3 format. https://ytmp3s.nu/qr4E/

[thread drift]

after copying my CDs to MP3 and then to a thumb drive, I am lost for how to get my Dodge Charger to:

a. show the album cover image
b. play by album
c. play in order of the album
d. allow "jumping" to an artist/album

Currently all I can get is an alphabetical source by artist and song title (no album title filter) with all the data showing on a single line of the Charger's head unit.

[/thread drift]

I still buy CDs, maybe 2-3 per month. Been steadily buying CDs since they first hit the market in the early-mid 80s. Once in a blue moon, I'll buy a vinyl album at a garage sale, but I will not buy discs manufactured recently.

I do not stream music, never did. I have purchased songs from iTunes 3-4 times when the service first came out, but stopped because the files were crap. I burn a lot of my CDs into FLAC files and load them into my living room music server, basically a Lenovo laptop & DAC connected into an audio system for casual listening. Occasionally, I will sit down in front of my reference audio system and listen to CDs. I love CDs.

I believe this is one of the rare times Para should allow cursing in the subject line.

Agreed - fuck Apple iTunes.


Rick

iTunes? We don’t need no stinkin’ iTunes!!!

Reluctantly, i’ve gone digital. No streaming. There are no music stores left

0-0

quote:

Originally posted by arcwelder:
Because they want to rent it to you, and Itunes in particular will fuck with your library.

Fuck the "cloud" scam.

Years ago, my iPod crapped the bed. It was the 60 gig version, and I had spent many hours burning CD's at the lossless level which takes longer. I had a bunch of purchased stuff on there. I checked with Apple, if it was lost on the device, it was gone. No way to recover it. No problem, since I had it on my Windows desktop in iTunes right? Nope, I had to download a program, load my library onto that, which somehow made it readable to an iPod. It was all loaded from the git onto itunes. iTunes, what the hell. Anyway, after a couple of tries, and trying different download conversion programs I finally got one to work. Of course, that took many hours to re-download onto the new iPod.

Great. I start the thing up, look at my track count, it was less. I look at my itunes library, it's all there, but not transferring to the iPod. I again contact Apple. Well, some CD's have copyright protection so you can't burn them. Uh, excuse me, I OWN the CD's by purchasing them, they ARE downloaded and IN my itunes library, and what about the ones I purchased from itunes? Can't help you, out of our hands.

That's when I kicked ALL Apple products to the curb. Since then, I have owned a few desktops, several laptops, countless cell phones, bought music online. Not a one Apple. Fuck them and their proprietary/doesn't play with others bullshit. I purchased an Astell & Kern DAP and never looked back. Easy to load music back and forth, I can pull the SD micro card and play the music on my DAP, computer, laptop, car, etc. Even though the internal capacity is 64g's it supports up to 1t cards (new players accept 2T) and you can swap them back and forth so basically endless. Pull one out and put the next one in. My one gripe with A&K is their now older players no longer support Tidal. I get it, and even at that it still kicks the crap out of any Apple device used as a music player, and you don't need to have other Apple products so it works.

So, yea, fuck you Apple.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Tonydec,

There is software available that can record anything that goes through your sound card (Audacity comes to mind). No need to "fuck the cloud" or "fuck Apple" or "fuck You Tube Music". If you bought it record it and save to your hard drive or thumb drive or whatever.

Fuck the cloud scam is a retarded comment.
Streaming is an option, nobody is forcing you to obtain content this way.
It is a business that has many advantages including sampling new music.
Doesn't have to be the only way.
Apple with their proprietary format should be a warning.

quote:

Originally posted by Blackmore:
This is my workaround to get the songs I want in mp3 format. https://ytmp3s.nu/qr4E/

Wow !! Nice site. Thank you.

I use the iBroadcast app on my Android stuff, don't know if or how it works for Apple products. Been using the free version for years, big upgrade from iTunes for me.

quote:

Originally posted by arcwelder:
the "cloud" scam.

Just now figuring that out, are ya?

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:

quote:

Originally posted by arcwelder:
the "cloud" scam.

Just now figuring that out, are ya?

No, it's simply been true the whole time. Some folks still think it's "convenient."

Yeah, I got fucked with the iTunes/Music apps too. Had all my burned CDs on it. Then when I had trouble transferring to new devices (Mac or new iPhone) I thought getting an Apple Music subscription would be a good idea.

Well that's when I got fucked. Some of the albums wouldn't download again and it turned out the version I had was no longer available. But I had it downloaded from CD before, so how did I lose it? Total pain.

Luckily for me, I copied all my MP3 files to a separate folder when I switched computers. So if I keep out of Apple Music I can find all my old stuff.

I’m puzzled by the comments in this thread. I’ve purchased many pieces of music, mostly classical, from Apple. They seem to be securely stored in the built-in Apple Music app on my iPhone. And presumably backed up in the cloud.

Admittedly, it’s been awhile since I’ve bought a piece. Has something changed?

quote:

Originally posted by arcwelder:

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:

quote:

Originally posted by arcwelder:
the "cloud" scam.

Just now figuring that out, are ya?

No, it's simply been true the whole time. Some folks still think it's "convenient."

For a lot of people it IS very convenient, particularly those who want to use their media on multiple connected devices. But there are down sides to it that for me make it a non-starter.

So when I rip CDs the .mp3 files all go into a file/folder structure on my hard drive (same one that Windows Media Player uses). I can copy that structure unchanged to a thumb drive and plug that into the player in my truck, or into my living room CD player. The CD player only barely supports the folder hierarchy, provides no UI at all other than back/forward buttons on the remote, and is clueless about playlists, but it's better than swapping CDs every N minutes. The truck player is pretty smart, it allows me to select by artist or album, and even supports playlists. It's great for long drives.

Yeah, .flac is a higher quality format, but after playing with it for a while I found that: (a) The player in my truck doesn't recognize it, and (b) My hearing is no longer acute enough (if it ever really was) to hear a difference between .flac and .mp3.