The digital death of collecting(kylechayka.substack.com) |
The digital death of collecting(kylechayka.substack.com) |
Take back control!
A sense of genuine scarcity, specialness or rarity. Things that others do not, or cannot have. Items that have a sense of historicity about them. Hidden gems, secrets or banned things that only the collector posesses. Things with their own stories.
Physical collections have this interesting property that they tend to automatically become more unique and interesting over time as they accumulate history and comparable items are destroyed or lost.
Arrangement, curation and the search for completeness within a chosen field can count for a lot. But I posit that hoarding commercially released, widely available digital files cannot really satisfy a true urge to collect. Producing and trading bootlegs is a lot closer.
I suppose NFTs could fill some of the gap here but they seem like simulacra to me.
I've been thinking about writing a Spotify ripper.
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.
I still collect things I care about, I have tons of FLACs (some ripped from my CDs, some bought online) from artists that are meaningful to me and whose music is significant in my view.
I'm still grateful for Youtube and Deezer (I hate Spotify's UX so I'm never there) for providing me access to music I wouldn't necessarily collect, but I'm now also not at will of some radio DJ when I want that kind of ephemeral music in my life.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 ! 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.
>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.
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.
The author isn't really talking about physical objects that accumulate around the house seemingly all by themselves. The author's talking about collections that are deliberately, lovingly curated as a labor of love.
The difference is critical. It's not entirely unlike how I knit and sew purely for pleasure, while my grandmother did so because her family couldn't afford off-the-rack items. The physical details of the two activities might be similar, but what was actually happening there was radically different.
My dad's best friend has a huge batman memorabilia collection. It's worth millions and has been lovingly collected over 30 years.
He hasn't gone on vacation in decades because he's scared someone will steal from it if he's gone too long.
The only reason I didn’t dispose of them is because I think of them as a sort of physical license to the rips.
And by ads, I don't mean free tier ads, I mean Spotify draping their entire app with ads for a new Drake album, for free and paid users alike.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/03/spotify-users-push-back-at...
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.
*”material” being the relevant information.
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!"
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.
Maybe, just maybe, owning less things could be to our collective benefit.
There are desirable differences aside from "more work". Many people listen to vinyl rips because the original mastering had greater dynamic range. Here's a decent looking article on the subject:
https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness...
Of course, there are reasons to listen to vinyl beyond "more work", that was bad wording on my part. The point I was trying to make there was the myth that vinyl was of a higher measurable quality than other formats.
Raw measurable quality isn't everything, thats certainly not my point, but there will be those that believe the myth and use it to inflate their ego. No doubt people do this with FLAC as well, and thats no better, but at least its true to some degree.
At least for me, there is an element of "I preserved this myself" that would make an older car a point of pride. Eg if I had owned a car for many decades and worked on it myself, it maybe objectively worse than a new one but it's something I had a part in.
I feel this way about parts of my house that I worked on , versus hiring someone.
I am not sure if this is the factor for most collectors (perhaps "I own this" is enough for them) but just throwing this out.
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
As for the actual topic at hand, I think again its whatever floats your boat. I personally like to organise everything myself, but I know many people who use software or services specifically because the providers works that out for them. I can see the logic in that, and kind of wish I could be a bit more like that, it'd certainly make things easier.
Off onto another tangent but somewhat related, it reminds me of the ipad update that came in last week. I was furious about it, it ruined my neatly arranged homescreen and I had to go in again and rethink everything. I asked my younger brother about it, who also owns an ipad, hoping for someone to share in my frustration, but he just thought it was funny. As it turns out, he brought an ipad specifically so he wouldn't have to worry about things like organising his home screen and trying to maintain order. I am who I am, but I do envy that attitude a bit.
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).
Today he gets confused every time Outlook or another provider changes its interface. He is losing control and making himself vulnerable to scams.
Hell, if something caused the icons on my phone to be rearranged, I'd be pretty damn mad. According to the logical end of your viewpoint, phones randomly rearranging the icons would be a good thing because you have to relearn everything?
There are ways to truly foster neuroplasticity. This ain't it.
I'm very good at learning a new user interface. The problem is when you change things up, you take someone who has become proficient and drop them down a few pegs when you change up too much. Ever wonder why, even with the changes that are present, the core concept of an application like Photoshop is still there, virtually unchanged? One or more edit windows, a toolbox, option panels, and menus. Even though it's been expanded on, the window layout of the latest Photoshop CC is very much rooted in that of the earliest versions.
This! Thank you, this was the one thing I was never able to put into words.
You can't impress visitors if your book and music collection is on a NAS in your office, no matter how many tens of thousands of media items you own.
To me it looks either like trying too hard or just hoarding.
Empty space is the real Veblen these days!
They have almost every music on earth, except the few remaining artists who decided not to publish to streaming platforms.
So if you're unhappy with Spotify, you can switch to Youtube Music, Amazon Music or Apple Music and still find all your songs.
I wish we could say the same of video (Netflix/Prime/Disney+/AppleTV/...)
There are other companies who offer similar services, and they will fill a gap should Spotify fail.