Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

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How do you purchase digital music

Poll ended at 2020-07-01 08:01

I buy downloads
9
20%
I pay monthly for streaming
17
38%
I play ripped copies of my CDs and Vinyl
17
38%
I play free downloaded rips
2
4%
 
Total votes: 45

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springwood64
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Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by springwood64 »

I'm wondering which approach to take: buy lossless downloads and store them locally, pay once and then forever free, or pay for the rest of my life for streaming.

What choice have you made?
Last edited by springwood64 on 2020-07-01 13:32, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by Defender »

I prefer ownership of my music as I fear the total running costs will be higher over 20 years timeframe with downloads. One drawback of the model I choose is with a free subscription you might explore music which you dont know more likely.
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by u252agz »

I have recently gone from buying to renting with Quobuz.

I used to use an off the shelf NAS drive / ripper and good ones cost around £1000 . I would guess at a shelf life of around 5 years and potential intermittent reliability /IT issues - my Rip Nas went to the dealer every 2 to three years and finally died at year 7.

Once this is factored in with the cost of buying CDS/downloads - it is much better value for me to rent.

I find in my system Qubuz premium is very good - much better than my back up NAS drive, which I do not miss at all. Spotify and Tidal were also good, but not as musical .

The ability to try new music for free ( once you re on a plan) is the other big advantage of course.
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by lejonklou »

I have a question: Could the alternatives in the poll be rephrased? As they now read, I don't know what to answer.

Buy - free?
For the rest of time - means?
Tense: Past, present, future
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by matthias »

lejonklou wrote: 2020-06-26 12:13 I have a question: Could the alternatives in the poll be rephrased? As they now read, I don't know what to answer.

Buy - free?
For the rest of time - means?
Tense: Past, present, future
Agree, it sounds strange.

Better in my view:

I buy downloads.
I pay monthly for streaming.


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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by matthias »

I pay monthly for streaming from Qobuz and never looked back.
Zero interests "to own" music and store it on a NAS etc.
A few CDs I play from CD transport, no interests to rip CDs.

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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by springwood64 »

lejonklou wrote: 2020-06-26 12:13 I have a question: Could the alternatives in the poll be rephrased? As they now read, I don't know what to answer.

Buy - free?
For the rest of time - means?
Tense: Past, present, future
Yes - it was rather badly worded. I upped my game and re-worded it
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by maffe »

Little difficult to answer with the alternatives given.
I have all my CD’s ripped to NAS and I rent music for streaming. My wife on mother in law uses the family account more then I do. I use streaming services to explore and find new (for me) music and lacy listening.
Most music I consume I play on the LP12.
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Post by Spannko »

u252agz wrote: 2020-06-26 12:04 I have recently gone from buying to renting with Quobuz.

I used to use an off the shelf NAS drive / ripper and good ones cost around £1000 . I would guess at a shelf life of around 5 years and potential intermittent reliability /IT issues - my Rip Nas went to the dealer every 2 to three years and finally died at year 7.

Once this is factored in with the cost of buying CDS/downloads - it is much better value for me to rent.

I find in my system Qubuz premium is very good - much better than my back up NAS drive, which I do not miss at all. Spotify and Tidal were also good, but not as musical .

The ability to try new music for free ( once you re on a plan) is the other big advantage of course.
My thoughts exactly, including the costings to justify using Qobuz!
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by ThomasOK »

I truly dislike the fact that whatever industries that can get away with it will try to keep you from owning things and instead get you to pay for it forever. This is popular with all types of software: music, movies, TV shows, computer software, etc. My main computer is no longer supported by Apple with new versions of the operating system as they consider it obsolete since it was made in 2008. The fact that it still has more power than almost any of the iMacs or notebooks, with 2 2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon processors, 32GB RAM, a 320GB SSD system drive and lots of additional storage and an updated video card seems to mean nothing as Apple just wants me to buy a new one. But it still runs the versions you could purchase of PhotoShop, Illustrator, In-Design, Word, Excel, etc. which all are fully capable of handling my needs. I have no interest in paying over $50 a month to use the new versions. I also have no interest in paying $100 to $200 for cable TV and then paying for all the special channels. I have as few subscriptions as possible. I have cable for internet, cell phone and the usual household utilities. I can count the number of iPhone apps I paid for on the fingers of one hand and have some left over.

I like owning my music and since it all sounds better off the record, and I have over 2000 of them, I don't often listen to digital anyway. Of course, I am also an outlier in that I work in a Hi-Fi store so I have free access to all the streaming platforms and can look for new music there. Even so I don't find myself using it all that often. When I hear or read of some music I am not aware of I often check it out on YouTube or the artist website. So streaming or paying for downloads are not for me. While I'm at it also ticks me off that when you buy a record it often comes with a free download for an MP3 version, but they almost always want you to pay extra if you want to download the high-res version. I already paid for the highest res version so why would I be interested in the crappy, compressed download?
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by beck »

I buy new and second hand cd’s and records.

Youtube is used if I want to check something out.
Playing cd’s…………
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by u252agz »

My suggestion to spring wood64 is to try Spotify, Tidal and Quobuz in turn
and see what you think.

There are free subscriptions usually available for all three from anything from one month to three months.

Then work out the annual cost of a good NAS drive, and buying music.

I trialled all three streaming services from January this year and have only just started paying for Quobuz.

For me an Inuit Zen mini with separate PSU was around £1500 and would have to last 9 years to be cheaper than my £15 a month Quoboz subscription. And that’s without buying new music.
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by V.A.MKD »

I vote for 3rd option ...
In general, I buy cd’s and records and play ripped files in car and on iPod ...
Music First ...
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by springwood64 »

u252agz wrote: 2020-06-27 10:22 My suggestion to spring wood64 is to try Spotify, Tidal and Quobuz in turn
and see what you think.
I'm trialling Qobuz now. I've imported playlists from Deezer (ie recreated them from scratch: what a faff).

Interesting how much more popular renting via streaming is over buying downloads.
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by sunbeamgls »

I subscribe to Qobuz to get best quality streaming (that I've heard so far) and to Tidal for its wider coverage and because it suits the rest of the family better (I probably wouldn't bother with Tidal if it was just me).

To find out what I might like to buy I read recommendations online, personal recommendations and listen to Radios 6 and Paradise. I then check these on the streaming services and explore the artists further. What I really like I buy in the following order of preference:

High res download if the price is not silly
Used CD to rip
CD quality download
New CD to rip
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by u252agz »

Spotify family at £15 a month for 6 users is great value and the music is quite musical ( I preferred to Tidal but not to Quobuz)

But on my devices the software ( which is otherwise great) only seems to connect to one or two of my Four Linn streamers and it is very frustating


So this week I regretfully cancelled Spotify - and will only reinstate if more than three members of the family start using it.
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by matthias »

IMO, in comparison to the maintenance costs of a Kandid, streaming from Qobuz is not too expensive.

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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by Math »

I often buy downloads on Bandcamp from the smaller bands, the great thing about Bandcamp is that they only take 12 to 15% of the money, the rest goes directly to the artists or the small labels. Some music is even free or "pay what you want".

I also use Tidal that has broadened my musical taste. It's great for finding new music, and also really cool to be able to listen to something someone mentions on speaker reviews or on forums right there and then.
Not everything can be found on Tidal or the other streaming platforms, that's why I still buy downloads.

I have a NAS for all my ripped and downloaded music. It's not often I need to rip anything, only if I need to buy something on CD that can't be found anywhere else. This is not happening very often.
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by Naimless »

In an average month, I will listen to around 80% new material and 20% old stuff. I have Qobuz and even if I play an old album I will choose the highest res. Qobuz version instead of my own rips. I could never afford to buy all the new stuff I listen to and even if money was unlimited, I would not buy an album I have not heard before, but I can do this easily with Qobuz. Qobuz discovery is good at recommending artist I might like. I also find that I use Shazam frequently when watching Netflix, Prime TV, etc. With lots of box sets using music in their productions, it’s easy to find out what it is with Shazam and then queue it up in Qobuz. In an ideal world, Qobuz would have Shazam built in. I don’t find it very easy to actually buy music nowadays unless you want iTunes or Apple Music quality.
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by Newton John »

I buy downloads - rarely now I have Qobuz subscription

I pay monthly for streaming - yes, I increasingly use Qobuz since I got Roon

I play ripped copies of my CDs and Vinyl - yes, for the bulk of my listening

I play free downloaded rips - no, I wasn't aware there is such a thing


My buying habits have changed in last couple years since subscribing to both Qobuz and Roon. Also, I stopped buying vinyl around the same time.

It's the integration of Qobuz and my local digital library on HDD through Roon on NUC ROCK core that has made the difference. I now buy only if the album in question is not available on Qobuz or if I want a better mix/mastering or surround sound version.
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by FairPlayMotty »

Matt,

Very interesting. I'd always wondered how it worked in practice.
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by matthias »

FairPlayMotty wrote: 2020-09-26 21:28 Matt,

Very interesting. I'd always wondered how it worked in practice.
I checked it with the original version of Kind of Blue from Miles Davis. With WiFi off both me and my wife found the musicians playing better together and the music made more sense. The sonics did not change.

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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by FairPlayMotty »

matthias wrote: 2020-09-26 21:41 I checked it with the original version of Kind of Blue from Miles Davis. With WiFi off both me and my wife found the musicians playing better together and the music made more sense. The sonics did not change.

Matt
How it should be. The best digital version of that album I've heard is on the two CD Miles Davis & Bill Evans - Complete Studio & Live Masters. Some of the other versions (Dual Disc), SACD etc. left me cold.

H10 bought - thanks Matt.
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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by matthias »

FairPlayMotty wrote: 2020-09-26 21:58 How it should be. The best digital version of that album I've heard is on the two CD Miles Davis & Bill Evans - Complete Studio & Live Masters. Some of the other versions (Dual Disc), SACD etc. left me cold.
I compared nearly all versions on Qobuz. The remastered ones are all worse, the original one is simply the best.

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Re: Quality digital music: Do You Buy or Rent?

Post by FairPlayMotty »

matthias wrote: 2020-09-26 22:10
I compared nearly all versions on Qobuz. The remastered ones are all worse, the original one is simply the best.

Matt
I have the original still, I'll rip it. Some of the remasters were silly. The session tapes had hiss. Some versions erased the hiss (and more I'm sure).
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