I have not been streaming that long, since about 2021. Since then the conduit has been a fast and furious upgrade path leaving behind the vinyl system I sold. I love it. I have a nice CD playback system from the early 200's I kept. I hardly ever use it. My streaming system is as good as I can affordably make it as I am retired and now have more limited funds. (See my Virtual system) To me the learning has been fun and I love the convenience.
The streaming revolution.
If you had told me in my early days of listening that one day I would have easy access to virtually the entire recorded music output of mankind mostly in glorious sound and at a cost of pennies per day, I would have thought you a wild futurist.
This revolution has come with it a predicament of delirious proportion. What to listen to? Even If you limit yourself to one musical genre, the choices seem endless. It indeed is like a kid in a candy shop for a music lover.
I’m not complaining. I’m just in awe!
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I’ve slowly been increasing my streaming . I also play many files burned to my NAS. One advantage of streaming is switching between these files and Qobuz relatively seamlessly. The plethora of choice does come with decreased attention span. Since it is so easy to change recordings, and there is so much choice, one does develop some ADD in their listening habits. In my genre of choice there tends to be a high deletion rate. Many recordings disappear from streaming services after the run of reissues in physical media have stopped. This might be less of an issue if one’s listening is mainstream pop/rock. |
At first, I was a bit of a skeptic about streaming, but I have jumped in and have found ti to be wonderful. A wide choice of music in all genres; I can even get George Szell and the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra performing Beethoven symphonies in HD--Beethoven's Fifth Symphony by Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra was one of the first two LPs I owned in the late 1950s, the other being Tommy Dorsey with Frank Sinatra! I bought an Innuos Stream 1 with LPS1 power supply and the Phoenix USB module, and I have played CDs only once or twice in the past six months. And, I am checking out new performers as well as old favorites. All that for an entire month for about the price of a sandwich, fries, and a drink at Chik FIl A. |
In related news, Spotify pays artists a lavish one-third to one-half of a US cent per stream, although musicians in this Reddit thread say it is often even less: https://www.reddit.com/r/spotify/comments/13djsl9/how_much_do_artists_make_on_spotify_case_studies/ In contrast, Tidal pays around 1.5 cent and Qobuz 2 cents per stream (5 times more!). You have to be fair, though: somebody has to pay for Spotify CEO Daniel Eck's 600 million euro investment in a German war drone manufacturer, of which he is also chairman. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/17/spotifys-daniel-ek-leads-investment-in-defense-startup-helsing.html Factor in Spotify's legendary garbage sound quality, and it's a mystery why any sane person still patronizes Spotify.
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While I do utilize streaming, it is more for discovery and convenience than sound quality. I have enjoyed the ability to listen to new music in the genre that I prefer at the time, this gives me new options to explore. When I do find an artist or album that I like, I most likely buy the CD, then immediately rip it to my NAS. Most of my listening time is directed to my own music on the NAS, while I keep all of my CD's in safe storage. There's something about "owning" the music and providing a decent payback to the artist. |
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