sneaky feelings ([info]14icedbear) wrote,
@ 2008-09-30 17:28:00
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ramblings on a question
i think i might finally get an ipod sometime soon. not this month, because i had to pay for a car window already, but maybe christmas at the latest. yeah, i haven't had an ipod up to now. keep in mind that i've only had my own computer for a couple of years. yeah, also weird. but anyway.

this has lead to all sorts of thoughts about music, owning music, the importance or lack thereof of having a physical thing like an lp or a cd, all that sort of thing. things keep serving to remind me - two separate friends talking about getting rid of all their cds, the fact that i got a whole bunch of cds stolen the other day, etc.

i'm not 100% wedded to the idea of owning the physical artifact, but i'm pretty sure i don't want to have a completely electronic collection of music either. i think if i get an ipod i'll start to have more and more music in electronic form only, and i'm okay with that. but i want to have some overarching rationale i'm trying to adhere to somehow rather than just going with the flow.

if i only buy cds (i don't listen to records much and don't even have my turntable set up at the moment), i will almost certainly listen to less music. what i do have can easily get neglected. but even if i can't always tell a difference, there is something about the idea of constantly listening to compressed files that gets me down. they're not the same as a .wav file, much less an analog recording.

a lot of you reading this, friendslist people or otherwise, have been dealing with this question longer and/or in a more in-depth, complicated way than me. quite possibly there are facets to this that i haven't thought of. so i'd like to know - what do you think? how do you handle this?

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(Anonymous)
2008-09-30 11:34 pm UTC (link)
One could delight in the best of both worlds: continue purchasing desired CD's and rip them to high bitrate MP3 / AAC. For other less desirable purchases, buy electronic only.

As for listening to compressed files, .wav as in the full CD are still compressed, they're just compressed using a more primitive codec. High bitrate MP3 should sound close to audio CD. One could do a test of each format on the same song for one's self quite easily, if so inclined.

Do let us know what you discover!

Please accept the assurance of my utmost respect,
Jash P'whar Al Bene

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[info]secondperiod
2008-10-01 01:15 am UTC (link)
Tommy made it easier, I guess, because he went through a period where he thought it was fun to break CDs and their cases, so we packed up most of them and moved them into the garage. This sort of made me shift the way I feel about the wall of Cds in the house

I have had an iPod for almost 2 years, and I've had Tommy for a little more than 2 years. I think it was just luck that the 2 events lined up like that. So, yeah, even though I was sure I wouldn't do so, I have come to regard CDs as somewhat disposable. Though I am buying more vinyl now, too. And CDs, when / if they are really difficult to get or have special packaging or come with bonus crap that a sucker like me feels he has to have...

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[info]hipsterdad
2008-10-01 02:36 am UTC (link)
Well, the harsh reality that I've uncovered, after amassing a sickeningly huge CD collection (about 2000), is that I didn't need to buy all these things in the first place. A good 20% of these I bought either because I heard a good review or I heard one good song on WRAS, and they proved to be money poorly spent.

I went digital about two years ago, and while I still buy a decent number of new CDs a year - ten or eleven so far in '08, so I'm down by about two-thirds my old number - what I'm buying are things that I know I'll enjoy, and also because I still have that collector's need to obtain things from favorite artists (new Cure October 13, for instance, new Jenny Lewis to buy this weekend). I'm saving a lot of money buying individual songs from iTunes, and backing those up onto CD-Rs in case my drive were to crash. I heard a snippet of Wild Strawberries' cover of "Tainted Love" a few months ago. It makes a lot more sense for me to buy that for 99 cents than to hunt down a (presumably) hard to come by album for a good deal more, to get a song I'm going to listen to, what, three or four times tops?

The actual physical artifact is really only important to me anymore in cases of favorite artists. You'll pry some of my picture discs and weird 10-inch singles and 6-song 45s and classic vinyl boots from my cold dead fingers, but The Bowie Wonder or Oh-OK's "Wow" have a magic to them that transcends the actual contents of the package... but you know, a fellow on my friends list posted an mp3 of Ted Cassidy's "The Lurch" the other day, and I just don't have that record, and my iPod makes it very easy to listen to the next best thing to the real thing... :-)

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[info]stopremembering
2008-10-01 07:45 am UTC (link)
i'm always gonna buy real albums. moving em around gets boring but, the rest of the time they're great.

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[info]transistorblast
2008-10-01 11:27 am UTC (link)
Owning an iPod becomes a high maintenance deal. For all of the touted benefits of having easy portability for a large music collection, you have to spend a considerable amount of time getting that music into the iPod (ie., converting your CDs - or vinyl - to mp3 or AAC through iTunes or other programs). It ends up consuming time, time, time, doing this. And God forbid your iPod gets "wiped" (memory reduced to nothing), as happened to me once. I needed to reload all of my music back to my iPod - even with a back up drive, I still needed to reconvert many CDs to mp3s again because my computer's memory isn't enough to store every CD I've converted, so I routinely delete many of them.

That being said, I do listen to much more music than if I didn't own one. Plus, I love listening to podcasts (of both the talk and music variety), and I think that is, secretly, the best reason to have an iPod. (Actually, buying an iPod mini and only listening to podcasts is a great idea, if you don't want to make the commitment of spending considerable energy converting your CDs).

(However, I do not like NPR podcasts, which are dreadful and duller than butter knives...)

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[info]14icedbear
2008-10-01 08:03 pm UTC (link)
that is a good point about podcasts. well, that makes two good points because the risk of losing files is a big deal as well. i suppose you can back them up, but that could be a lot of work as well.

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[info]gaylekingston
2008-10-01 04:00 pm UTC (link)
I kind of think of my ipod as one giant mix tape. I just put random songs on there if I like them and keep the thing on shuffle. Sometimes if I hear about a new album, I might download it and put it on my ipod just to see if I like it. If I do, then I will buy it. If not, it gets deleted. The one thing that is nice about an ipod is that it is very portable. I listen to it in the car and also while I am working.

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[info]budcort
2008-10-01 04:01 pm UTC (link)
I've been happy with digital music for a while now. All the talk of lost quality hasn't done much to stop me and I don't find converting the files troubling. Every once in a while I'll buy a CD on a stray impulse, but most of the time I buy vinyl. CD's still come in handy when I forget my iPod, but most of the CD's in my car are free CD's and mixes.

One of us, one of us.

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[info]14icedbear
2008-10-01 08:04 pm UTC (link)
that sounds very reasonable, and i already thought of you and susan as being a good example of a compromise arrangement, but then you guys are more into vinyl than i am so i'm not sure i could do quite the same thing.

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[info]pastels_badge
2008-10-01 04:11 pm UTC (link)
My experience has been that having an ipod and sometimes downloading things did change the way I listened to things, in similar ways to what people have already mentioned. (Actually, I have this nagging idea for a journal article about this stuff that refuses to go away, so I might have to write it sometime soon. But I think it might involve reading a bunch of Benjamin or something so it could take a while.)

Sometimes I am more willing to try things because I'm less invested in them. I'm less likely to buy cds, more likely to buy vinyl. I feel weirder buying things I've never heard but have promising indications about--I feel like if I am going to buy a cd I have to either have heard it already (possibly because B got it off of indietorrents or something), know I'll probably like it because I like the artist so much, or listen to it in the store or else it seems kind of risky and wasteful. Oh, though one other exception is if the cd is relatively obscure. It might help if it was fancy or exciting in some way, too. Lately, if I know I want a copy of something I'm a lot more likely to look for vinyl, even if it means trolling ebay for weeks instead of just grabbing a readily available cd (witness my recent hunt for a nice vinyl copy of Another Green World, which I could get a cd of very easily).

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[info]stopremembering
2008-10-01 06:05 pm UTC (link)
man, i been wanting to get on torrent stuff. you guys know any good sites and know how i can get on?

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[info]mybloodyself
2008-10-01 07:16 pm UTC (link)
The only things I buy digitally are only available digitally. I guess I'm clinging to the past or something, but I like buying records and CDs.

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[info]14icedbear
2008-10-01 08:10 pm UTC (link)
yeah, i do too. i like having a thing. i can't quite seriously consider purging stuff, i just wonder if maybe i should.

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[info]djearlybird
2008-10-01 07:25 pm UTC (link)
I'm not much of an audiophile, so I don't really mind the "compressed" format of MP3s. They don't seem that much lower-fi to me than CDs, even though I know the bitrate is smaller. Not that I really know what that means...

In agreeance that podcasts are the best things about iPod ownership. I currently have a 45-minute commute to work (each way), which enables me to listen to This American Life, Sound Opinions, The Best Show on WFMU, etc.

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[info]bp1101
2008-10-03 11:19 pm UTC (link)
yeah me too, podcasts are my main use of the ipod. that and music in the car.

i'd budget for some sort of car adapter. assuming your car stereo doesn't have a built-in adapter already and/or your not willing to spring for a direct digital installation i'd get one of those fake-tape adapters (if you have a tape player) because usually you'll get better quality and volume than an FM transmitter. and i think they are usually cheaper than an FM transmitter. the fake-tape things don't simultaneously charge the ipod though like an fm transmitter worth buying would.

you don't mention whether you use your computer for music already or what you expect your listening habits to be. before any music is on your ipod it'll be on your computer...and i find myself using my computer for music more than my ipod except when i'm "on-the-go".

also, i'd recommend looking at used/refurbed ipods because there isn't much in the latest models to recommend them. i have a touch and i have to try really hard to use the fancy features. the main problem with older ipods is the battery performance degrades over time which is a problem only if you expect to be using it when not near an outlet.


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