11 ms·

The digital death of collecting

64 points by __Joker 5y ago

redis_mlc 5y ago
Warning: long-form artsy article.
rembicilious 5y ago
In the long run, everything is ephemeral. A digital archive could potentially last longer than a book or a vinyl, as long as the archivist takes care to maintain the integrity of the data.. Except in a sense that isn’t true at all. In the distant future the archived material* is actually a copy of a copy ad nauseam, but perhaps a more perfect preservation of material than the Mona Lisa today. *”material” being the relevant information.
- jimmydorry 5y ago
  Kind of like the 'ship of theseus' thought experiment.
  - kmmlng 5y ago
    But in this case it seems a lot more clear that it doesn't matter if it is the original or merely something that resembles the original. I don't care about the actual bytes on a hard drive, the grooves on a vinyl or whatever else the medium may be. This is all just a manifestation of something which is beyond the material realm. I care about the song, not the specific way the song is represented in the world of matter.
SilverRed 5y ago
This article comes off as "man yells at cloud" >the changing interface makes me feel like I’m suddenly operating unfamiliar machinery, piloting an ungainly tractor in a construction site. I can’t perform the same actions I used to, and so I can’t use the app in quite the same way. This sounds like a good thing honestly, It will keep your brain from solidifying and becoming entirely non adaptive as your preexisting knowledge was all that was needed. Constantly learning new things is literally good for you even if the new knowledge isn't more useful than the old was. A child sees the new spotify UI and works it out within minutes, if you can no longer do this, it's an actual issue and you should probably thank spotify for keeping your brain active for a little longer.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- DJHenk 5y ago
  Learning to operate new machines is good. But The article talks about how a collection is a way of relating to the world. How it is a 'personal monument'. It's not good when your personal monuments get disassembled without even consulting you beforehand.
- null_object 5y ago
  > A child sees the new spotify UI and works it out within minutes, if you can no longer do this, it's an actual issue and you should probably thank spotify for keeping your brain active for a little longer. Your post so entirely misses the point of the entire article that I wonder whose cognitive decline we should be worried about. The author isn't bleating meaninglessly about how these applications move interface elements around and confuse his ossified brain, it's about the way the interfaces change to align with the profit-motive of the corporation in ways that are often not aligned at all with the user - the nominal 'owner' of the artifacts (your pictures or your music or books).
  - noiwillnot 5y ago
    My father got online in his 60s in ~2000 for business reasons. Email, video-conference, banking, auctions, etc. Today he gets confused every time Outlook or another provider changes its interface. He is losing control and making himself vulnerable to scams.
    - pmlnr 5y ago
      > losing control and making himself vulnerable to scams This! Thank you, this was the one thing I was never able to put into words.
    - rchaud 5y ago
      Gmail's mobile changes irritated me enough to switch over to the barebones Samsung Email app on my phone. I'd suggest having your dad use an email client app to avoid disruptive UI changes on the email vendor's app.
hanklazard 5y ago
I can definitely sympathize with the author. My answer has been to get away from Spotify altogether. Instead I buy vinyl, tape, or FLAC. And this gives me an opportunity to plug my favorite website for music: https://bandcamp.com https://bandcamp.com ! Bandcamp allows you to buy music from your favorite artists at reasonable prices, and have the opportunity to download an archival lossless copy to keep on a self-hosted music server (or just your laptop). Strong recommend from a long-time user.
inasio 5y ago
I remember many years ago spending a good amount of time making playlists and starring my favourite songs on the KDE media player. Then KDE4 happened and everything was lost. Same thing happened at least a couple of times, and it's a real pity. I used to make nice playlists (tapes...) and share them around, and get some cool ones from friends with better taste than me, not so much anymore...
quxbar 5y ago
My Spotify account is the last 10 years of my musical growth and experience, and I can share a song or an entire playlist with anyone at any time. My physical book library is spread out across 3 states and I tend to get back about half the books I lend out. I'm not about to drop the books, but if I could trade them all for a PDF library tomorrow it would be hard to say no.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  You can, though not for free. https://1dollarscan.com/ https://1dollarscan.com/
- xyzzy123 5y ago
  Of my spotify favourites of about 200 tracks I've had about 5-10 become "unavailable" over about 2 years :/ Its not enough to make me ditch the platform (there's always more out there) but it's annoying. At least they leave the greyed out tombstone there so I can get them some other way.
pram 5y ago
I collect vinyl. I won't bore everyone with all the romantic details, but I have found one very interesting effect to my listening: having to physically put the album on the turntable, and flip it over, has made me far more attentive to the music. When I was a teenager listening to CDs on the bus I'd really sink myself into an album, and listen to it dozens or even hundreds of times. Now I'm back in that mode, it's not just passive consumption anymore.
- jasode 5y ago
  >I collect vinyl. [...], but I have found one very interesting effect to my listening: having to physically put the album on the turntable, and flip it over, has made me far more attentive to the music. I'm not debating you but just mentioning how I ultimately came to the opposite conclusion: the limitations of physical media like vinyl and cassettes put an artificial ceiling on my music enjoyment. I wrote a previous comment about digital libraries revealing my true preferences for music: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13572752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13572752 I like to sit for hours with expensive headphones to study & analyze lots of music (for example compare and contrast tracks) and flipping vinyl records prevents that in-depth exploration.
- svckr 5y ago
  Also, more about the aspect of collecting, rather than listening to music: discogs.com If you're a collector, digital platforms like discogs give you access to a way bigger market. (And I imagine there's something like that for pretty much everything one could collect.) I think I spent more time browsing discogs than any physical record store, even before those were forced to close their doors due to the pandemic.
cm2012 5y ago
Looking at all the people I know and their houses, I'd say that collections are far more often a burden than a boon. I praise digital "all you can eat" style offerings for freeing us from unhappy hoarding.
- Nursie 5y ago
  Yep. Recently moved continent and wasn’t at all sure what to do with my CD collection. I mostly stopped adding to it over a decade ago, I have it all ripped but I barely ever bother playing those files because Spotify has basically everything and why bother? The only reason I didn’t dispose of them is because I think of them as a sort of physical license to the rips.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - H1Supreme 5y ago
    > Spotify has basically everything and why bother? So you don't tether yourself to a single company that could change their terms/prices on a whim? Plus, unless you're streaming on their "very high" setting (320kbps), there's a noticeable difference in quality on half way decent speakers.
    - dageshi 5y ago
      You either tether yourself to a companies whim or you tether yourself to piles of physical stuff you have to manage for the rest of your life. Personally I'll take digital every time the choice comes up.
      - nayuki 5y ago
        False dichotomy. You could rip all your CDs and scan all your books, and there's a good chance it'll fit on a single hard disk drive. Don't forget that digital storage technology density is improving every year, while books and CDs aren't getting any smaller.
gtsnexp 5y ago
The author certainly hasn't experienced Roon...
bodge5000 5y ago
Anyone who listens to music or reads books more closely when they're physical, if that works better for you you're doing the right thing, and more power to you. Personally for me its made no odds whether its digital or physical, but whatever works for you. That being said, I have noticed the snobbishness that comes with physical versions of things doesn't always reflect more enjoyment of the actual content. I've tried talking to certain people about specific books, and all they want to talk about is the format the words are written on. I try to move onto the actual content itself and they're disinterested, almost as if the content of the book is secondary compared to the paper it comes on. It's even stranger with vinyl, as there is an objective loss of quality. As I said, if you enjoy it more despite (or even because) of this, more power to you. But its not higher quality than digital, its just more work to operate. Whatever gets you closer to the content is what I'm trying to say, but remember, it's what works for you, its not a universal solution. Edit: Didn't expect this to be controversial much, but judging by the downvotes maybe so. Most of the time when I've spoken to people about this previously it hasn't been so much because they've sworn they're not this kind of person, so maybe some of you are just more self aware about being a bit of a snob. Kudos to you, I suppose. Or maybe people are thinking I'm talking about anyone who enjoys physical media, in which case remember the age old rule; if it doesn't sound like I'm talking about you, I'm not talking about you.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  It's probably somewhat like classic cars - they're objectively worse in most ways (slower, less comfortable, less reliable, less safe) but people enjoy the experience.
  - bodge5000 5y ago
    Oh absolutely, as I say I have no problem with people enjoying them more, I would if I could put up with the lesser reliability, but within the large circle of people that like classic cars, there is still that smaller circle that don't actually really ever drive them, but will talk endlessly about how good the driving experience is versus disgusting modern cars. I guess people like to be a part of an exclusive group, even if they don't particularly enjoy what the group does. I'm probably guilty of it somewhere, though I still don't think its right
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dvh1990 5y ago
There's a whole other side to this that is positive, because there's some truth to the phrase "The things that you own end up owning you". Maybe, just maybe, owning less things could be to our collective benefit.
dTal 5y ago
This article conflates digital/physical with ownership/rental. You can still collect music digitally! Buy CDs, rip them, tag them, keep them all in one big folder and use a music player that lets you browse them. Download DRM-free mp3s. This was the standard model from 2000 to 2010 - remember Napster? how quickly we forget! Take back control!
- amelius 5y ago
  Some songs aren't even available on CD anymore. I've been thinking about writing a Spotify ripper.
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    I'm using audible, and I use a software to backup all books I paid for in a non DRM format. A spotify reaper would make tons of sense.
  - sva_ 5y ago
    > I've been thinking about writing a Spotify ripper. https://github.com/pisto/oggify https://github.com/pisto/oggify
  - artificialLimbs 5y ago
    eDonkey seemed to have the biggest collection of rare-ish music when I last used it years ago.
  - willis936 5y ago
    And some songs aren't available from streaming services. OCRemix fan works come to mind, as does anything foreign. I paid 50 (50!) USD for an imported CD of Duke of Pianeet's Singularity.
  - password4321 5y ago
    https://hn.algolia.com/?query=interviewfor.red&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=interviewfor.red&type=comment
- xyzzy123 5y ago
solarkraft 5y ago
I digitally collect music (directly digitally bought from the artists).
fleddr 5y ago
I wonder how many people commenting read the article in full, as it seems most points did not come across. It's not singularly about owning music media versus Spotify, the author lists many other issues with collecting in the digital sense. Such as apps updating and breaking or moving your carefully curated digital collection. Services that may shutdown entirely. Links that break. Timeline algorithms removing personal choice and discovery. In general, digital being very fleeting and impersonal.
neovive 5y ago
I agree that the nostalgic feeling of physical items and "old" software evokes a much stronger emotional response than modern algorithmic-based "platforms." It comes down to a trade-off between convenience and commitment. Building an extensive CD or record collection took time, money and physical space. Playing a recommended list on Spotify or Amazon requires only the monthly subscription -- very little personal investment. The instant gain up front comes with the potential loss of nostalgia/memories down the road -- the "good 'ol days". I do empathize with the author. I hope the next generation is able to enjoy nostalgic tech experiences similar to those I feel when seeing a WinAmp video, hearing AOL's infamous "you got mail" greeting, or the old dial-up internet sound. But I'm sure future generations will always have something reminisce about. It will just be bigger things like ... "remember when we had to actually drive our cars!"

64 points by __Joker 5y ago

Warning: long-form artsy article.

In the long run, everything is ephemeral. A digital archive could potentially last longer than a book or a vinyl, as long as the archivist takes care to maintain the integrity of the data.. Except in a sense that isn’t true at all. In the distant future the archived material* is actually a copy of a copy ad nauseam, but perhaps a more perfect preservation of material than the Mona Lisa today. *”material” being the relevant information.

jimmydorry 5y ago
Kind of like the 'ship of theseus' thought experiment.
- kmmlng 5y ago
  But in this case it seems a lot more clear that it doesn't matter if it is the original or merely something that resembles the original. I don't care about the actual bytes on a hard drive, the grooves on a vinyl or whatever else the medium may be. This is all just a manifestation of something which is beyond the material realm. I care about the song, not the specific way the song is represented in the world of matter.

SilverRed 5y ago

This article comes off as "man yells at cloud" >the changing interface makes me feel like I’m suddenly operating unfamiliar machinery, piloting an ungainly tractor in a construction site. I can’t perform the same actions I used to, and so I can’t use the app in quite the same way. This sounds like a good thing honestly, It will keep your brain from solidifying and becoming entirely non adaptive as your preexisting knowledge was all that was needed. Constantly learning new things is literally good for you even if the new knowledge isn't more useful than the old was. A child sees the new spotify UI and works it out within minutes, if you can no longer do this, it's an actual issue and you should probably thank spotify for keeping your brain active for a little longer.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
DJHenk 5y ago
Learning to operate new machines is good. But The article talks about how a collection is a way of relating to the world. How it is a 'personal monument'. It's not good when your personal monuments get disassembled without even consulting you beforehand.
null_object 5y ago
> A child sees the new spotify UI and works it out within minutes, if you can no longer do this, it's an actual issue and you should probably thank spotify for keeping your brain active for a little longer. Your post so entirely misses the point of the entire article that I wonder whose cognitive decline we should be worried about. The author isn't bleating meaninglessly about how these applications move interface elements around and confuse his ossified brain, it's about the way the interfaces change to align with the profit-motive of the corporation in ways that are often not aligned at all with the user - the nominal 'owner' of the artifacts (your pictures or your music or books).
- noiwillnot 5y ago
  My father got online in his 60s in ~2000 for business reasons. Email, video-conference, banking, auctions, etc. Today he gets confused every time Outlook or another provider changes its interface. He is losing control and making himself vulnerable to scams.
  - pmlnr 5y ago
    > losing control and making himself vulnerable to scams This! Thank you, this was the one thing I was never able to put into words.
  - rchaud 5y ago
    Gmail's mobile changes irritated me enough to switch over to the barebones Samsung Email app on my phone. I'd suggest having your dad use an email client app to avoid disruptive UI changes on the email vendor's app.

hanklazard 5y ago

I can definitely sympathize with the author. My answer has been to get away from Spotify altogether. Instead I buy vinyl, tape, or FLAC. And this gives me an opportunity to plug my favorite website for music: https://bandcamp.com https://bandcamp.com ! Bandcamp allows you to buy music from your favorite artists at reasonable prices, and have the opportunity to download an archival lossless copy to keep on a self-hosted music server (or just your laptop). Strong recommend from a long-time user.

inasio 5y ago

I remember many years ago spending a good amount of time making playlists and starring my favourite songs on the KDE media player. Then KDE4 happened and everything was lost. Same thing happened at least a couple of times, and it's a real pity. I used to make nice playlists (tapes...) and share them around, and get some cool ones from friends with better taste than me, not so much anymore...

quxbar 5y ago

My Spotify account is the last 10 years of my musical growth and experience, and I can share a song or an entire playlist with anyone at any time. My physical book library is spread out across 3 states and I tend to get back about half the books I lend out. I'm not about to drop the books, but if I could trade them all for a PDF library tomorrow it would be hard to say no.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
You can, though not for free. https://1dollarscan.com/ https://1dollarscan.com/
xyzzy123 5y ago
Of my spotify favourites of about 200 tracks I've had about 5-10 become "unavailable" over about 2 years :/ Its not enough to make me ditch the platform (there's always more out there) but it's annoying. At least they leave the greyed out tombstone there so I can get them some other way.

pram 5y ago

I collect vinyl. I won't bore everyone with all the romantic details, but I have found one very interesting effect to my listening: having to physically put the album on the turntable, and flip it over, has made me far more attentive to the music. When I was a teenager listening to CDs on the bus I'd really sink myself into an album, and listen to it dozens or even hundreds of times. Now I'm back in that mode, it's not just passive consumption anymore.

jasode 5y ago
>I collect vinyl. [...], but I have found one very interesting effect to my listening: having to physically put the album on the turntable, and flip it over, has made me far more attentive to the music. I'm not debating you but just mentioning how I ultimately came to the opposite conclusion: the limitations of physical media like vinyl and cassettes put an artificial ceiling on my music enjoyment. I wrote a previous comment about digital libraries revealing my true preferences for music: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13572752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13572752 I like to sit for hours with expensive headphones to study & analyze lots of music (for example compare and contrast tracks) and flipping vinyl records prevents that in-depth exploration.
svckr 5y ago
Also, more about the aspect of collecting, rather than listening to music: discogs.com If you're a collector, digital platforms like discogs give you access to a way bigger market. (And I imagine there's something like that for pretty much everything one could collect.) I think I spent more time browsing discogs than any physical record store, even before those were forced to close their doors due to the pandemic.

cm2012 5y ago

Looking at all the people I know and their houses, I'd say that collections are far more often a burden than a boon. I praise digital "all you can eat" style offerings for freeing us from unhappy hoarding.

Nursie 5y ago
Yep. Recently moved continent and wasn’t at all sure what to do with my CD collection. I mostly stopped adding to it over a decade ago, I have it all ripped but I barely ever bother playing those files because Spotify has basically everything and why bother? The only reason I didn’t dispose of them is because I think of them as a sort of physical license to the rips.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- H1Supreme 5y ago
  > Spotify has basically everything and why bother? So you don't tether yourself to a single company that could change their terms/prices on a whim? Plus, unless you're streaming on their "very high" setting (320kbps), there's a noticeable difference in quality on half way decent speakers.
  - dageshi 5y ago
    You either tether yourself to a companies whim or you tether yourself to piles of physical stuff you have to manage for the rest of your life. Personally I'll take digital every time the choice comes up.
    - nayuki 5y ago
      False dichotomy. You could rip all your CDs and scan all your books, and there's a good chance it'll fit on a single hard disk drive. Don't forget that digital storage technology density is improving every year, while books and CDs aren't getting any smaller.

gtsnexp 5y ago

The author certainly hasn't experienced Roon...

bodge5000 5y ago

Anyone who listens to music or reads books more closely when they're physical, if that works better for you you're doing the right thing, and more power to you. Personally for me its made no odds whether its digital or physical, but whatever works for you. That being said, I have noticed the snobbishness that comes with physical versions of things doesn't always reflect more enjoyment of the actual content. I've tried talking to certain people about specific books, and all they want to talk about is the format the words are written on. I try to move onto the actual content itself and they're disinterested, almost as if the content of the book is secondary compared to the paper it comes on. It's even stranger with vinyl, as there is an objective loss of quality. As I said, if you enjoy it more despite (or even because) of this, more power to you. But its not higher quality than digital, its just more work to operate. Whatever gets you closer to the content is what I'm trying to say, but remember, it's what works for you, its not a universal solution. Edit: Didn't expect this to be controversial much, but judging by the downvotes maybe so. Most of the time when I've spoken to people about this previously it hasn't been so much because they've sworn they're not this kind of person, so maybe some of you are just more self aware about being a bit of a snob. Kudos to you, I suppose. Or maybe people are thinking I'm talking about anyone who enjoys physical media, in which case remember the age old rule; if it doesn't sound like I'm talking about you, I'm not talking about you.

HPsquared 5y ago
It's probably somewhat like classic cars - they're objectively worse in most ways (slower, less comfortable, less reliable, less safe) but people enjoy the experience.
- bodge5000 5y ago
  Oh absolutely, as I say I have no problem with people enjoying them more, I would if I could put up with the lesser reliability, but within the large circle of people that like classic cars, there is still that smaller circle that don't actually really ever drive them, but will talk endlessly about how good the driving experience is versus disgusting modern cars. I guess people like to be a part of an exclusive group, even if they don't particularly enjoy what the group does. I'm probably guilty of it somewhere, though I still don't think its right

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dvh1990 5y ago

There's a whole other side to this that is positive, because there's some truth to the phrase "The things that you own end up owning you". Maybe, just maybe, owning less things could be to our collective benefit.

dTal 5y ago

This article conflates digital/physical with ownership/rental. You can still collect music digitally! Buy CDs, rip them, tag them, keep them all in one big folder and use a music player that lets you browse them. Download DRM-free mp3s. This was the standard model from 2000 to 2010 - remember Napster? how quickly we forget! Take back control!

amelius 5y ago
Some songs aren't even available on CD anymore. I've been thinking about writing a Spotify ripper.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  I'm using audible, and I use a software to backup all books I paid for in a non DRM format. A spotify reaper would make tons of sense.
- sva_ 5y ago
  > I've been thinking about writing a Spotify ripper. https://github.com/pisto/oggify https://github.com/pisto/oggify
- artificialLimbs 5y ago
  eDonkey seemed to have the biggest collection of rare-ish music when I last used it years ago.
- willis936 5y ago
  And some songs aren't available from streaming services. OCRemix fan works come to mind, as does anything foreign. I paid 50 (50!) USD for an imported CD of Duke of Pianeet's Singularity.
- password4321 5y ago
  https://hn.algolia.com/?query=interviewfor.red&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=interviewfor.red&type=comment
xyzzy123 5y ago

solarkraft 5y ago

I digitally collect music (directly digitally bought from the artists).

fleddr 5y ago

I wonder how many people commenting read the article in full, as it seems most points did not come across. It's not singularly about owning music media versus Spotify, the author lists many other issues with collecting in the digital sense. Such as apps updating and breaking or moving your carefully curated digital collection. Services that may shutdown entirely. Links that break. Timeline algorithms removing personal choice and discovery. In general, digital being very fleeting and impersonal.

neovive 5y ago

I agree that the nostalgic feeling of physical items and "old" software evokes a much stronger emotional response than modern algorithmic-based "platforms." It comes down to a trade-off between convenience and commitment. Building an extensive CD or record collection took time, money and physical space. Playing a recommended list on Spotify or Amazon requires only the monthly subscription -- very little personal investment. The instant gain up front comes with the potential loss of nostalgia/memories down the road -- the "good 'ol days". I do empathize with the author. I hope the next generation is able to enjoy nostalgic tech experiences similar to those I feel when seeing a WinAmp video, hearing AOL's infamous "you got mail" greeting, or the old dial-up internet sound. But I'm sure future generations will always have something reminisce about. It will just be bigger things like ... "remember when we had to actually drive our cars!"