How many folk now use streaming and have sold all their other audio equipment?

[struth]

A little flabbergasted TBH at the level of hostility in your reply, I'm not criticising anyone for what they like, I'm simply just explaining what I like - why does it upset people so much if they like something different, especially if it's digital?

nowt wrong with digital Tim. its my most used format by miles. i may have gone this way as it was much easier on my hip, but i am pleased i did.. open mind wins every time

[jandl100]

Thanks Jerry. To be honest when I last looked for it on Spotify it was not available. Another cookie for you.

Actual picture of me eating my prize

[montesquieu]

Of course it's disputable, - what price do you put on a golden sunrise or a spring daffodil? .. the 'value' of both is immense yet the cost is nil.

Your mistake is to conflate 'cost' with 'value' in purely economic terms; appreciation of an art form is not irrevocably bound by your crude equation (even though art snobs like to think it is)

Fatuous comparison. Recorded music is an economic commodity with a price and a market. A sunrise isn't and doesn't. The comparison with TV is far more appropriate.

I've never said that streaming has no benefit, I use it myself to find new music to buy on vinyl and CD - generally if I've listened to something half a dozen times it's time to buy a copy so I can listen at higher quality.

What I do maintain is that infinite choice cheapens the experience and is already having a detrimental effect on listening habits and the perception of value of recorded music in people's lives. (As does ubiquitous muzak, which is simply noise pollution).

Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea who recently died, had many strange attitudes but one I admired was his resistance to putting the whole Ikea inventory online. He wanted people to have to physically make the journey to the store, to work to make a choice and to work again in many cases to build up the purchase. That striving added to the perceived value at the customer. I think he was onto something.

[Primalsea]

Actual picture of me eating my prize

Jerry, I can see why you don’t use vinyl anymore. Static must be a real bitch with that coat of furr, although dusting you hifi must be quite easy.

[Jimbo]

Actual picture of me eating my prize

[Macca]

Actual picture of me eating my prize

You're a lot more blue than you used to be.

[Macca]

Cookie monster in re-hab:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...854B&FORM=VIRE

[struth]

[User211]

It isn't on TIDAL. No cookie for me

I may try Deezer Grant.

[Sherwood]

Of course it's disputable, - what price do you put on a golden sunrise or a spring daffodil? .. the 'value' of both is immense yet the cost is nil.

Your mistake is to conflate 'cost' with 'value' in purely economic terms; appreciation of an art form is not irrevocably bound by your crude equation (even though art snobs like to think it is)

Exactly! This is yet another example of an assumption or claim not supported by empirical evidence or verifiable. The reality is that, as individuals, the value we place on a commodity is not determined by its price, but by a set of personal preferences. The exception is where purchases are motivated by "conspicuous consumption" and the desire to demonstrate an individual's superior social status and greater purchasing power.

When most of us started our music collections, we were strongly constrained by our limited budgets and so inevitably had a small music collection that we listened to more frequently. Furthermore, many of us started our collections when young and impressionable, and when we had the luxury of repeated listening and forensic scrutiny of the few albums we owned. For many, it was also a time of limited alternative entertainment opportunities (i.e. two or three terrestrial tv channels, and very limited radio options). It is not difficult to understand how we developed a special fondness for a few albums. However, to argue that having access to a much wider choice of music is to diminish the pleasure we derive from music is just nonsense.

Of course, we must factor in additional elements to our current listening choices. We can now choose to listen to specific tracks and albums at a time that is convenient to us, and, at a marginal financial cost that is (effectively) zero. Monetary prices are therefore no longer the constraint on our listening choices: time is. Relatively speaking we have gone from being money poor and leisure time rich; to money rich and leisure time poor. We also have many more opportunities for how we spend our leisure time (e.g. Netflix, computer gaming, and various forms of computer browsing and social media). Clearly, for many young people, music does not rank high on their list of leisure pursuits. It is also true, that for many people on this forum, that music has become less important as a leisure activity than it was for them in the past. It is the broadening of choice as to how we spend our leisure time and changing social preferences that determine the popularity of music as a leisure time activity. It is nonsense to suggest that greater financial accessibility to music diminishes its value. To suggest this is to make the choices required by income/price constraints a "virtue" rather than a financial necessity!

Geoff