I’m curious to hear how everyone’s relationship to music has been shifting.
I used Spotify for a good number of years because a friend of mine was paying for my account, but over time I found myself using it less and less in favor of Bandcamp, and this past year I lost access to Spotify, as all the BS they’ve been pulling lately finally made my friend cancel his subscription and switch to another streaming service. I did not ask to be added to his account this time.
At this point I have hundreds of albums on Bandcamp and at least a couple hundred CDs, and I love it that way. I do have quite a lot of music on my Kompakt (CalmMusic is a lifesaver) but I also got myself a designated DAP (digital audio player) so I could have a device dedicated entirely to music and nothing else. It’s felt like relearning how to enjoy music, going through the process of purchasing albums one by one, curating my own non-algorithmic playlists, using CDs in my car again, and sometimes totally putting the phone down and walking away from the internet entirely just to listen to my music. Genuinely a very healing experience for my attention span and love of art.
Anyone else have a mindful music story?
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I only listen to music on Vinyl these days. It becomes an “experience” again. And a highly enjoyable one at that.
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I ripped my cds to flacc and use music bee. Still have Spotify because some stuff is not anywhere else. It’s nice to use the Mk as a DAP, but I’m not sure if my relationship with music changed because of it. I noticed I tend to listen to the full album now, so there’s that.
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As part of a family subscription, I have access to Spotify. I use it primarily for audio dramas from my youth, and—above all—to sample new albums to see whether they are worth purchasing on CD or vinyl.
I have ripped my CDs in lossless format and, in addition, —well— “acquired” MP3 versions of my vinyl records. I used to be a regular customer at a Ukrainian MP3 store where I could buy entire albums for just a few cents. Eventually, my music collection looked just as chaotic as Spotify, and I simply deleted the whole mess. Consequently, my digital music collection now consists exclusively of albums that I also physically own in one form or another.
For playback, I bought a 7th-generation iPod with a 160GB hard drive. To Kompakt-users it might seem almost unimaginable—but it actually plays album tracks in the correct order!
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