CD vs HDTracks vs Streaming - how to manage music purchases in the digital age.

I'm finding I was getting too hung up on the physical container and ended up focusing less on music as a result. I'm now putting a moratorium on new purchases of physical media for the time being.

 

Here's a start:
https://medium.com/@Coppertino/10-best-sources-to-download-lossless-music-841fdc7768db

I've used bleep, 7digital, murfie and hdtracks

 

Agreed. I'm getting hung up on the "ownership" question. With multiple sources of downloaded music, how do I keep track of that "ownership" as opposed to having the physical CD available? As long as the backup works well and there's no accidental deletions of files, there should be no problem.
If there's a severe crash of harddrives - it would be a disaster to try and replace everything.

And for the question about artwork it comes down to reviewing my own behavior. Do I really pick out those CD's to look at the booklet vs viewing them digital? If not....then I guess it's settled for me.

The verdict would then be: make sure the digital backup is in order and is so safe that it's highly unlikely that anything would be lost unless a fire destroys my NAS.

 

I am very underwhelmed with HDtracks- both price and quality-wise. I have bought a few recordings there (always discounted)- maybe three or four total. One was an audiowank binural thing for fun, and another was a new restored/remastered version of "So What" - which was impossible to resist. That said, I'd have been just as happy picking that up on a CD, doing a secure rip, and putting it in a crate with the others.

What I find crazy is the inconvenience and lousy pricing of buying lossless music online- having to comb a load of sites to actually find what I want and then being expected to pay through the nose. That makes it more annoying than buying and ripping a CD. What's even more crazy is that it's often more expensive than buying a physical CD from Amazon and having it shipped to me. Given the favourable marginal cost of digital downloads, that's somewhat fucked. Add to that the fact that places like HDTracks are squirrelly about allowing you to re-download stuff, and it's facepalm-inducing.

It's a little hilarious that the most convenient and cheapest option is often still getting a CD shipped. Once they're all securely ripped and stashed on your NAS (and hopefully backed-up), you're golden.

 

Exactly! But that assumes that you, if found important, need to scan artwork/booklet as well. But is the extra cost of a digital download worth it?
I'm not entirely convinced, it might be a case-by-case question.

 

I buys CDs and rip using EAC and Accurip to Image files + Cue sheets. Most of the music I have was originally released on CD and this allows me to capture the most complete structure and layout of the release.

I have worked in a 'ripping factory' for an online music service and I know that the goal is to ingest as fast as possible - burst mode rips, metadata errors and general lack of care are the order of the day. I've even had to correct HDTracks metadata and it leaves me with little confidence in whoever is slinging those bits around.

 

If I'm looking for an older release I go amazon or eBay and get it used for typically pretty cheap. Rip and forget. Occasionally though I have a yearning to buy some new release and I'll search a few sites and see if it's reasonably priced. The other day I wanted the new Hector Plimmer release and 7digital had it for cheaper than bandcamp. $8.49 is not bad IMO (16/44 FLAC). Then you can have some frustrations as well though. Like 7digital has a site for each country. When I looked up the new Jamiroquai album they had it on sale for a reduced price on their U.K. site but it wasn't even available at all on their US site. If you're in the US they make you buy from the US site. I'm sure you can get around it somehow but I didn't want it THAT bad.

 

Hell, I bought the NiN "Not The Actual Events" EP directly from NiN.com. The zip file not only contained random MacOS cruft files, the FLACs had no metadata at all. It felt very amateur hour.

 

What if it does burn up? I think an online backup service (or some other method of offsite backup) is a good idea and I actually had to use mine last year. Took a while to restore but in the end it was no biggie and totally worth it!

I switched from Carbonite to SOS a couple of years ago because SOS has the fastest upload/download speeds.

 

Yes. But cost becomes a factor for such a solution. Google Drive 2TB is about 20 euros a month right?

 

I have a rotating offsite backup strategy - 2 x 4tb drives using Acronis. Next step is a journalling filesystem on top of that.

 

I pay $60 a year for unlimited. It autosaves new files or changes to files every night. It also saves every version of a file if you change it.

And that's much faster if you need to restore! However I don't have a trustworthy place that I can store drives and change them out daily or weekly with new backups. I'm willing to pay the $60 a year for ease of use/set-and-forget of an online service.

 

Google Drive?

 

http://www.findhdmusic.com/ is your friend.

 

That's what I use. The standard backup app on my Synology NAS does incremental backups to Google Drive, I have them on an automatic schedule.

 

I use Spotify for discovery and casual listening.

When something bubbles up out of casual listening to a more regular rotation, I'll buy a used CD of it from Amazon, rip it to FLAC with dbpoweramp, and save it to a "my Rips" folder in my digital music library. That folder gets backed up via Arq to Amazon S3 so I can feel great about tossing the physical CD.

 

SOS Online Backup

 

I use Crashplan. I don't have immediate access to those backups, they're just for emergency recovery.

 

A while back, I merged my collection with my dad's collection and ripped everything. It ended up being somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 CDs that are now all stored in a closet in his listening room. We've each got a couple of backup drives locally and copies in various cloud storage spots.

 

Crashplan here for backup. I buy mostly (used) CDs - very little digital download. Until the cost comes down to less that CDs, I see no reason not to purchase CDs.