Do you buy music anymore?

In reply to WonkoTheSane :

I never actually *play* my CDs.  They're ripped to my computer and by extension my phone.

But when the DRM inevitably goes teats-up it's nice to know that I can just re-rip the albums as needed.  Can't do that when the DRM system forgets you exist.

Just as a thought exercise, I'm curious how a CD compares to $/streams:

$15 for a CD. Doesn't matter how many songs are on it since we'll look at total number of songs played over a lifetime. 

Let's say you leave it in your daily car and play it constantly for a 20 minute commute which comes out to 6 songs. When I used to listen to CDs, this was pretty typical. I didn't change it out until I got tired of it or, at the very least, I cycled through just a handful of CDs. 

Commute is twice a day, so that's 12 "streams" per day. 

5 days per week for 50 weeks = 3,000 streams. 

Now you are burned out or they release a new CD, so you put it away to collect dust. 

That's $0.005 per stream - same as the high end on spotify. This was my first cut at the numbers too, so I think it is very interesting how this particular use case landed right there. Even if you are using a bunch of different artists' CDs over this imaginary year, your contribution to the industry is the same if you are buying the same number of CDs per year or streaming the same number of songs per year. 

There are also plenty of "mouths to feed" when it comes to a CD, especially if you bought one from a store like FYEntertainment. Remember that one? haha 

I started this math not knowing where it would go, but it does help seeing the math. I was never a big CD buyer (like I said above, one would stay in the radio for a while), so my total contribution to the artists of the world is probably higher now through streaming than when I bought CDs. 

Duke said:

In reply to WonkoTheSane :

I never actually *play* my CDs.  They're ripped to my computer and by extension my phone.

But when the DRM inevitably goes teats-up it's nice to know that I can just re-rip the albums as needed.  Can't do that when the DRM system forgets you exist.

 

Yeah, but that hasn't happened <ominous music>YET!</ominous music> since I bought my last CD (10(?)+ years ago from a bar/street band), and if it does, I can just buy CDs and rip them like I used to...

I mean, half of my Mp3s were from emusic.com (I think it was?) back in, like, 1999 or 2000.   That was my first music subscription service.   That's how long I've been on legally-purchased music.    Lots of awesome punk albums not available to me as a central-pennsylvanian at that time.

I buy vinyl of albums I like, but since most of my music listening is in the car or watching videos/concerts on YouTube.........not much need for it. 

Hell, neither car we own even has a CD player. 

We do try to go concerts of bands we like and buy merch. 

In reply to cyow5 :

When I buy CDs, I'll buy them directly from the musician wherever possible. Gives them a much bigger piece of the pie and it often leads to a bit of a connection - when I ordered the most recent Jivewires album, I mentioned I'd caught their first show back in the 80s. The band members signed a poster for me and stuck it in with the CD. Same with the Shuffle Demons.

I have a bunch of music from emusic as well. It wasn't really a streaming subscription, it was more like buying monthly credits in a massive music store and you got DRM-free MP3s for download. Great for discovery and I'm still listening to some of it.

This post reminded me that I didn't have a copy of the first Jivewires album on my computer. It was released on cassette only. So I just bought the MP3s from Bandcamp :)

I buy CDs at shows or merch. I may never play the CD but that's not the point of buying it for me.

On Bandcamp, yes. It's DRM-free.