We live in the streaming age. We don’t own anything, and big tech corporations who rake in the millions.
Spotify’s Daniel Ek put his foot in it by flippantly saying that creating content costs “close to zero” back in June (sure Dan, tell that to anyone who’s ever professionally recorded an album), Apple seems to have all but forgotten about the humble existence of iTunes in favour of Apple Music, Google ditched Play Music in favour of YouTube music, and the stream train shows no sign of stopping.
I get it and I’m guilty of it. I have Spotify and for the most part I’m happy with it as a pleb consumer. As an artist and someone who owns an iPod or two? hoo boy, do I miss the inconvenient times of having to buy and download music.
Actually I think I miss the chase more; the hunt for a $25 CD that is all killer, no filler (I think the last full album I bought that gave me that feeling was Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero back in 2007, if that gives you any idea), and swapping tapes/CDs/files with friends because they had cooler music than you.
But -to borrow a quote from Jeff Goldblum like Kirk Van Houten wants to borrow a feeling- “life, uh, finds a way”.
This too-long-didn’t-read leadup could just end with “you can still download music” and I could finish things up here before my work shift starts with about 30 minutes to spare, but I’m relying on eyeballs here so I’m not going to do that to you.
But yeah, you can totally download full albums, in whatever filetype you want, to have and to hold forever (or at least until your hard drive shits itself).
FLACS MP3S AND WAVS OH MY!
Yeah there’s The Pirate Bay and other dubious means, but I’m going to blindly assume you wanna support the artists you listen to. As far as your copyright infringing shenanigans go, I don’t wanna know about it, and I didn’t just hear you click on uTorrent.
I’m also going to blindly assume you’re fucking lazy like I am and don’t want to rip your entire CD collection (or, also like me, you’ve completely thrashed your favourites and they’re un-rippable, either way).
A lot of bigger-name-than-your-mate’s-band are making the move to Bandcamp, basically the standard for downloading music. They even have their own app so the process is relatively painless.
zDigital and 7Digital I would suggest as your go-to for any of your big-name bands. The ones that sell out stadiums and charge $120 for a hoodie with their name on it. They both include music lockers for you to download again at any time, and all the files are DRM free. The one downside I have with these two are other filetypes are separate purchases (with the lossless files being a little bit more expensive), which is kind of a bummer.
If you want a nostalgia kick and own a Windows PC, iTunes still exists. It’s still a jank mess and the files are all in m4a so caveat emptor there. But hey if you still own an iPod, don’t wanna download Rockbox, and want to keep your player as OG as it’s ageing components allow, it’s your best bet. (Mac users: iPod support still exists in modern Mac hardware, but I haven’t owned a MacOS pc in donkeys years but apparently the iTunes store still exists for you guys?)
[INSERT PLAYER PUN I CAN’T THINK OF RIGHT NOW]
It goes without saying, that glass rectangle you may be reading this on right now is a perfectly capable DAP (or Digital Audio Player. Basically iPods for people who dabble in enough snobbery to call them DAPs). It’ll play anything you throw at it with some trickery and app downloads. The best one I’ve found is Poweramp for Android. Dunno about iOS but Vox seems to be reasonably rated.
If you’re running off of a Windows PC? Come on, man. The original and the best. Can confirm it still whips the llama’s ass. There’s probably others, but I don’t caaaaaare. Winamp is great… Almost.
Mac? Vox again, Elmedia player, or y’know, apple music/itunes.
But say you wanna switch dump all your music onto something that isn’t connected to notifications, phonecalls, and Candy Crush, where you tell it when to pause. Hell, something with a headphone jack. I don’t have much experience on this front, but I _almost_ recommend the FiiO x1. I say _almost_, because it’s quote old and would be an eBay job. FiiO still makes players though and some of them look decent. There’s also the usual suspects of Sony, Astell & Kern, HiBy, et. al.
There’s other players that won’t break the bank on Amazon if you wanna go down that route that seem pretty good on paper, and the Chi-Fi scene has pretty much exploded with how decent some of the players are, from reviews I’ve checked out.
There’s also just… getting a manky old iPod. Either getting iTunes and running it as it was intended or modding it with flash storage, whack a new battery in, or -if you’re particularly brave- adding USB-C functionality.
I could go on about this but all you need to know there are choices. Both for the budget-conscious, and for those with more dollars than common sense.
There’s more I could bang on about, but I’ll spare you a rant about headphones. That’ll come later.
Hopefully this helps the one or two of you that are looking to break away from streaming services!
Till next time…
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