Published 2025-12-03
tag(s): #failures #music
A few blogs I follow are building (or did it a while ago) music collections, and setting up their own private streaming services. This is great for a few reasons:
On the last point, you would think paying a couple bucks in royalties only once when buying a
CD or digital download, is less than the...well, stream. Of income. Like, if you listen to a
song over a streaming service...stream of income...no puns intended. Now I hate this sentence.
ANYWAY.
Because music services pay about 0.000000000001 cents per playback, I am not so sure that they
are better, even in the long run.
Privacy is self-explanatory.
The ownership and independence thing are related.
There's an Argentinian singer I discovered by chance[1], but then out of
the blue when 2024 started her two albums vanished from Spotify.
If I had downloaded those songs, that wouldn't happen.
When we moved to Apple Music, I checked and her first two albums were still not available.
Suddenly a few months ago they showed up again. In both services, so clearly it was some
licensing issue...but I wonder for how long will these records be available...?
Some artists offer their albums via digital downloads. But not this singer in particular, and
it's not the only example. There are a few songs that are from like, anime openings. I have no
idea if they offer digital downloads that I can also buy from the US.
If they don't, there's always the CD route.
But in that last case, I would have to import the CD...from Japan? I guess?
And I don't even have a CD reader in any device in this house. Funnily enough, the
last CD reader we had available was in the 2016 Dodge Journey we sold before moving back to
the east coast.
And honestly, I don't think I have the willpower to spend the time ripping the CDs. Even if I
buy the CD and then download the music illegally just to skip the process, there's quite a few
things that I've been checking how to get legally and it is huge PITA.
Of course, the real option is to...just not listen to those things. There's an lot
more music out there that I can get easily.
But I figure at least the 0.000000000001 cents are better than those artists getting $0 from
me. So...Apple Music it is.
You can tell I've given this quite some thought, and I reached the pretty lame conclusion that
it is something I could do, but it is more effort than I want to put in it, and the
replacement isn't 1:1.
So at the end of the day, I take the lazy way out.
This one is one to keep in mind when I get judgy with other people, like "bUt YoUr PrIvAcY".
Look how easy it was to get me to give it all up. Just because I want to listen to Card Captor
Sakura's second ending on a rainy Sunday morning.
Sigh.