Continuing with CDs?

you have to fuck a hd up pretty bad before the data on it is completely irretrievable.

That's not entirely true. I've had an external (Maxtor) drive fail that wasn't fucked with at all, and internal (IBM) drive that, well, it was involved with Microsoft products, so I guess was doomed to fail. (Back on a Mac, thnx Bill.)

Secondly, have you ever paid to have your data retrieved? I did, once, for 40GB worth of data - and paid about $1K/10GB (aka $4K). Now I've got two external drives, backing up my backup of my backup. But I would guess that, for example, $4K to retrieve one's digital library would, by cost alone, define "irretrievable."

Youch. I had no idea. That's crazy expensive.

when you say fail do you mean it was completely beyond repair/no way to salvage at all?

Geir you assume no one downloads whole albums, then?

Some do, but way too few. We need to get back to the early to mid 70s where typical album acts such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Yes and Genesis dominated absolutely everything.

i've had a few drives fail; i'm not sure what the problem was, but it had to do with the b-tree something or other getting corrupted, and no operating system (windows, mac, dos) could read certain sectors. I'm relatively positive running norton on the drive made it worse actually.

"We need to get back to the early to mid 70s where typical album acts such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Yes and Genesis dominated absolutely everything."

Geir you should go back in time Terminator-stylee and kill Malcolm McClaren's mother or something.

People need to see an entire album as an artistic statement, and not just pick single tracks.

so funny. geir's far from the only person who thinks this, and i shake my head sadly at every one of them

anyway

Will you bother trying now to sell off your existing CDs? - possibly, but it may end up being too much effort
Will you leave them as a record of 80s/90s to early 00s buying? - some of them i might, but there's not really any need
Will you continuing buying CDs selectively alongside downloading, for reasons of completing certain artists or genres? - kinda.. i like having the disc if i'm a big fan, mainly for liners & pics. i couldn't give two hoots about the "extra quality" of a cd vs mp3 (which is pretty hypocritical of me considering i am obsessed by the difference with regards to my own recordings)

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

if disk warrior fails, use that.

We need to get back to the early to mid 70s where typical album acts such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Yes and Genesis dominated absolutely everything.

Christ you sound like my boyfriend haha.

i used something called stellar phoenix succesfully as well, but it only works on FAT formatted drives

I've got a room with racks on almost all the walls (except the one with a couch on it). My CD collection is a bit of a changing art collage of spines, when I had it in the same room as my PC I almost memorized the color flows.

The volume of my racks is the limit of CDs I'll own, about 4500 or so. I try to purge 100 or so every year but the inflow is still greater than the outflow and all the truly horrible albums have long since been sold. I'm now at the Ned Point, where I'm ripping and selling albums that aren't bad but simply never grabbed me. I figure I'll have reached my limit in 3-5 years.

But, yeah, I have fetishized the physical. I love getting a CD in the mail, or tracking down something hard to find even if I've already downloaded it. But I also want to make my own rips because almost no one sells high-quality VBR's of the stuff I buy.

They may end up in boxes one day after I've ripped them all and we decide to repurpose the music room.

when you say fail do you mean it was completely beyond repair/no way to salvage at all?

I had the internal drive repaired out of apparent necessity (it held all of my class notes/outlines and crashed a week ahead of my first year law school exams). I only say "apparent" b/c, well, it didn't seem to improve my grades much (sigh).

The external drive, as I still had (and have!) a vast majority of my music on CD, I didn't look into salvaging b/c it just didn't have a pulse (i.e., it'd turn on sometimes, but usually not, or wouldn't get recognized by any of my PCs/Macs) and given the aforementioned expense and lack of the necessity above, just wasn't worth saving.

People need to see an entire album as an artistic statement, and not just pick single tracks.

I wholeheartedly agree and it's the single greatest driver of my continued purchasing of CDs. I think the only thing that sabotages the argument is artists that don't deliberately set out to make an album per se (and are, by design singles artists). But then, I rarely find myself impressed by such singles artists and even less frequently cite them as influential either in my continued study (as it were) of music or their impact on their peers.

1. No
2. Some, yes
3. Definitely

I won't buy anything with DRM though. That's already ballsed up a couple of my artist collections.

1. No, never have have, don't think I'll start now. I'll always have the nagging feeling that just one day I might be dying to hear Miranda Sex Garden's first album at 2AM

2. Yes, being a relatively nostalgic person, browsing my collection always reminds me of my musical phases. Also, and mostly, for me a CD collection is a relatively social thing, whereby guests can check out what I have, pick sth out to put it on or borrow it. Obviously, you could also do that by browsing my iTunes library but that strikes me as somewhat unsociable

3. Yes, but like said upthread, these days I usually dowload first and then buy what I really like. Somehow, psychologically, I can only engage seriously with a song or an album if I have it on CD. Old fashioned, I know.

Can I be the only person who buys music from itunes?

those who are ripping and selling may want to take a look at this thread:

The Data Migration Thread

Anyway,

1. Probably not very many more, I sold or traded around 200 about a year ago.

2. I will leave them, not so much as a record of buying, but as a more reliable data backup than some hard drive or DVD-R.

3. yes, as long as stuff continues to come out in CD-only formats and not on vinyl.

Can I be the only person who buys music from itunes?

With the rise of Amazon's DRM-free, higher bit-rate downloads?

You might rabbit. You might.

Will you bother trying now to sell off your existing CDs?

i have been thinking about a big purge lately, but i find it really difficult to part with archives. like others here i still enjoy the physical artifact though organizing and moving it all is a chore and not nearly as exciting as it once was. i think the best way to purge is just to continuously edit. i am sure that eventually i will convert everything to flacs and be done with the physical objects.

Will you leave them as a record of 80s/90s to early 00s buying?

maybe. it is fun to find random half-remembered boxes of media.

Will you continuing buying CDs selectively alongside downloading, for reasons of completing certain artists or genres?

yes, but i am not a completist except in very rare cases. i use a few digital music shops and i use p2p. anything i really like that i freely download off the net i buy or try to buy, either on cd or vinyl, from an actual physical shop or any of the good online shops of esteemed record stores from around the world. with mp3 i also go the other way where i will buy vinyl and then download a digital copy off p2p.

god i wish we had amazon mp3 store in the UK

have bought some DRM tracks out of impatience. i lived with low-bitrate mp3s for years so a few more won't really hurt altho the big general 'under-192kbps' purge continues and i've deleted thousands of mp3s in the last 2 years having replaced them with better rips (inc. many from 2nd hand CDs).

Can I be the only person who buys music from itunes?

the man who put the 'I' in 'itunes'

I think the only thing that sabotages the argument is artists that don't deliberately set out to make an album per se (and are, by design singles artists).

That kind of artist doesn't deserve to be popular.

hahahaha

"That kind of artist doesn't deserve to be popular."

Yeah how dare they release brilliance in three minute spurts. If a musician can't produce an entire 7 or 8 albums of pure unadulterated melodic genius then I SHALL CLOSE MY EARS TO THEM.

lol@people still falling for "Geir"

He's still FUNNY!

That kind of artist doesn't deserve to be popular.

As Stephen Colbert might say, "nailed it!"

If a musician can't produce an entire 7 or 8 albums of pure unadulterated melodic genius then I SHALL CLOSE MY EARS TO THEM.

Ditto.

Perhaps I shouldn't have, so late in the evening, "wholeheartedly" agreed with the sentiment that ...people need to see an entire album as an artistic statement, and not just pick single tracks. People don't "need" to do anything; in some/many ways I'm glad most of the music I buy is unpopular, album-oriented, fill-a-CD-oriented music.

However, in my view, it's unfortunate that people in general, i.e., measured in terms of record and/or MP3 sales, tend to reward the immediate, one-hit, here-today, gone-tomorrow artists (Fergie, anyone?) to the exclusion of those that demonstrate the creative prowess required to bundle together a collection of eight or more songs over the course of one album (versus over the course of a career). It's the sustained attention an album requires that requires 45 or so minutes of a listener's undivided attention that appears to be going further by the wayside.

Of course some singles-driven artists return to popularity (i.e., the top of charts) with regularity, but the disposable nature of their product and, in my view, people's gravitation away from album driven artists (or, really, albums themselves) isn't, in my view, a positive development (assuming, it's still a "development"). But then I can't imagine artists with a nascent or established penchant for albums, versus those predisposed to singles, will tailor their decisions according to what people want or will buy.

Put another way (and, admittedly, as the most patently obivous/obviously lazy example): would The Beatles have been as demonstrably influential had their career ended with "Help!"?

do not tempt me with such visions

Put another way (and, admittedly, as the most patently obivous/obviously lazy example): would The Beatles have been as demonstrably influential had their career had started with "Help!"?

one-hit, here-today, gone-tomorrow artists (Fergie, anyone?)

Fergie just saw her fifth straight single from The Dutchess go top 5, which no one's done since Mariah Carey in 1990-91. So she's hardly "one-hit." Not sure how you can be so sure that she'll be "gone tomorrow," either, unless you know something I don't.

This is all I know.

For those losing the same battle with inference deficit disorder: "gone tomorrow" could be interperted (and or meant) literally, or figuratively.

But maybe that's a semantic debate for a different thread.

I know that you don't literally mean she's going to die, but poor reviews don't necessarily kill off careers, especially not when the object of said reviews is lighting up radio airplay and iTunes sales.

Um yeah, I think five Top 5 hits pretty much means that we're going to be hearing from Fergie for a little while longer.

(Corporate) radio airplay as counterpoint?

I equate "gone tomorrow" with career longevity beyond one album of five hits ("London Bridge," truly today's "Eleanor Rigby"). In the unfortunate and likely event Fergalicious enjoys fame and fortune beyond "The Dutchess" it'll only reinforce my suspicion that the public's attention span parallels its appreciation for disposable commodities (aka waste).

Btw, Fergie is the first solo female artist since Toni Braxton (93-94) to pull five top 40 hits from a debut album.

Toni who??????

Put another way (and, admittedly, as the most patently obivous/obviously lazy example): would The Beatles have been as demonstrably influential had their career started with "Help!"?

Subtle; touché.

That came out wrong, what I meant to say was,

In the unfortunate and likely event Fergalicious enjoys fame and fortune beyond "The Dutchess" it'll only reinforce my suspicion that the public's attention span is inversely proportional to its appetite for disposable commodities (aka waste).

Will you bother trying now to sell off your existing CDs?

Nope and likely never. I recently bought a hi-fi CD player that's given my collection new life.

Will you leave them as a record of 80s/90s to early 00s buying?

My CD collection is a record of most of the music I've ever liked; mostly I maintain it now with thought of handing it down to my kid(s).

Will you continuing buying CDs selectively alongside downloading, for reasons of completing certain artists or genres?

I occasionally download to preview but until downloads provide audio quality equal to CDs (i.e., consistently and legally), I'll continue to rip 320kbps/LAME MP3s for the iPod, but keep listening to my discs at home.

And in further effort to get this thread back on topic, I read an interesting "special report" in the latest Rolling Stone (aka the Yearbook 2007 issue) last night, relevant to reason why some folks that poo-poo the downloading have a superiority complex.

The article is "The Death of High Fidelity" by Robert Levine (and until this blogger gets a takedown notice from said periodical, you can read it here.

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/2835/im003778qr4.jpg

Will you bother trying now to sell off your existing CDs?
Absolutely not. I'm no more likely to sell all my books and buy a Kindle. I think it's ridiculous.

Will you leave them as a record of 80s/90s to early 00s buying?
No, I'll keep buying them as I come across stuff I want. As pointed out above; they have music on! They're not ornaments.

Will you continuing buying CDs selectively alongside downloading, for reasons of completing certain artists or genres?
No. I don't really download and I'm not particularly completist about individual artists / genres etc. I'll keep buying them because they're my favoured method for listening to music.

A CD arrived in the post on Friday. I've just ordered another two new CDs. I'll probably receive a handful for Christmas, too. I love music and my primary method for listening is through very good a hi-fi; I don't use an iPod anymore as I don't commute on the train anymore. When I'm choosing what to listen to I like to be able to see all my music together with images to prompt my memory. I like the idea of 'albums' where songs are ordered deliberately. I like to be able to look at artwork and credits in a CD case as I listen to an album. I like that we've got shelves in the livingroom with 1,500 or so CDs on them. The harddrive on our MacBook died a week or so ago, and we've lost a lot of files and photos of stuff we never got round to backing up. I like the tangibility of a physical object with music on it; I think losing the physical object can cause you to lose some... respect, or love, for music, lose some sense of its value. It just becomes lists of data to be collected and never listened to, tagged, ordered, and ignored. I did the downloading thing and didn't enjoy it. (Link.) I want to listen to music because I enjoy it, not because I feel obliged or compelled to form an opinion or to be able to say "I have listened".

I would have taken you for a vinyl fetishist.

Too young! Plus there's never been a decent place to buy new vinyl in Exeter since I got into music.

"Do you have many CDs?" That was the first, and refreshingly insightful question, the owner-slash-salesman of the local hi-fi shoppe asked me when I began my search for an upgrade to my crap-to-begin-with carousel. The implication being that if I hadn't, maybe there'd be no point in making such an investment. Fwiw, I went with a Rega Apollo.

The Turn Me Up! organization, referenced in the article I cited above, has an interesting goal and Web site; I'm curious to see what becomes of their objective(s), "to make the choice for a more dynamic record an option for artists."

Btw, Turn Me Up! hearts the Nick Southall piece, Imperfect Sound Forever, under the "Music Dynamics In The News" header at the bottom third of its homepage.

I sold of a bunch of CDs recently, but it was mostly stuff that I'm just not into all that much anymore and haven't listened to in years. My flow of incoming CDs hasn't really abated all that much, save for budgetary reasons. Other than that, I don't really see much reason to dispose of what I've got. I take a lot more pleasure in going down to the record store and finding an unexpected used copy of something that I'm interested in than I do in just going online and downloading the files.

Plus, I always seem to forget what music I've got on my computer. It's much easier to keep track of the physical CD's, even if I do have to lug them all around whenever I move. I will admit, though, being unable to properly keep track of my digital music does indeed lead to some enjoyable moments of (re-)discovery of its own.

mac data recovery worked pretty well for me in this case as well along with prosoft's data rescue.

I'm quite anal retentive about how I organise my file tree/tag individual mp3s/etc.--but that's dealing largely with music ripped from my own CDs, and will be for as long as physical media is sold. CDs/LPs may be largely "archival" functionally, but I'll never plunk down money for a download in my lifetime, if I can help it. Mp3s and hard-drives are great conveniences, but I trust them very little to hold up.

So more to the questions, no, not selling off physical media in my life, outside the occasional purge of lesser material.

Always buy physical media because it's solid, real, sounds good, and is durable, and gets me into shops. The thought of completism wouldn't enter into it.

I still buy CD's. Over 6 fatal computer crashes in my lifetime have told me it's worth the $4 extra dollars you pay - plus you get a physical CD, case, and artwork. And it gives you a reason to go to the record store... all pluses for me.

Though admittedly if all record companies began offering "free" mp3 downloads in addition to vinyl I would easily stop buying CD's for that reason. I really don't do much with CD's aside from drive them home and admire the artwork every once in a while.