Greedy Buggers
Music. What's that?
The entertainment industry has consumed itself with greed. I don't listen to music anymore. I don't buy music anymore. I don't download music anymore. I don't care about the pieces of music "data" that I still have.
The fall to oblivion began with the introduction of digital audio. It sounded so clear. It promised to last forever. The enjoyment in the listening became lost.
Okay, so there were technical mistakes made with the early introduction of digital audio. Time, experience and degrading the digital information via DACs which added noise and strongly compressed playback formats such as MP3 brought some of the enjoyment back to listening.
The downsizing in reproduction fidelity was accompanied by the movement to ear buds and personal plugged in listening. Sorry, but a room filled with high fidelity music is so much more useable ... or wearable (one could work and play in a room filled with music) ... than those damn ear buds or headphones.
Only MP3 scaled up doesn't sound so wonderful as records or improved uncompressed DA ... and who needs uncompressed DA to listen through ear buds.
Finally the whole charge per song for hobbled MP3 compressed samples with constraints disincentives and stipulations of 'license-to-device' and 'limited-time-license' makes the ownership experience very unsatisfying.
There is no reason to collect a personal library when all the crappy intangible material is available "on demand", a click away from downloading for a handsome transaction fee, only to disappear forever in some 2 TB hard disk with a million other files, that eventually gets bricked lost or thrown out 6 months to 10 years hence.
I have spent 10s of thousands of dollars on music in my life. Records were horrible. Tapes were worse. CDs promised perfection and eternity but proved to be abrasive cognitively demanding storage media which failed to live up to it's promise of durability.
Now I am offered crap MP3 Low Fidelity 'locked license" rubbish to stuff up my bodily orifices under dire threat of prosecution and incarceration should I attempt to assemble an heirloom collection. .. Why bother collect rubbish that can be acquired instantly in a virtual format without any sense of tangible presence?
Why pay $$ for exactly the same items I paid $$$$$ several times over in the past with the assumption of having a personal library of a scarce valuable limited tangible piece of history.
As far as I am concerned the entertainment industry can go pickle their entire endless limitless inventory and choke on greedy royalties supplied by other customers.
I don't listen anymore. I don't watch anymore. There is no longer enjoyment from it.