Good thing you've got the Royal family to put on your money.
The Random Post Thread
- Thread starter JHDK
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IdRatherBeSkiing
Sherbert is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
The new coins are extra wide to accommodate the current king's ears.
Over the weekend, we took a ride to the Burlington Mall along the Rt. 128 loop in Massachusetts. I was pleasantly surprised that it was bustling with people, and finding a parking space was the usual cut-throat affair, like in the olden days (I guess when unemployment's nearly zero, people like to shop at upscale places - end of rant).
Anyway, I wandered into a Newbury Comics for the 1st time in years. So you know how it was reported that album sales have surpassed CD sales? Now I know why. The place has one little section of CDs; you go from A to Z in the span of about 12 feet. But the albums are spread out over entire aisles of racks, and all the feature racks - like new releases, and top sellers - are albums. The prices haven't changed; albums are still $28 - $33, which means I'm not buying any. Also, the majority of the store's real estate is dominated by action figures, graphic novels, posters, videos, and various other "gift ideas".
In a way, this is not surprising; since most people are downloading new (and old) music. And those who do visit a physical store are looking for big, physical things - like albums; rather than digital media that they can't play anyway. My younger daughter often buys me albums for my birthday (those are the only new albums I have). I was buying her CDs of new artists that I thought she'd like, but she no longer has easy access to a CD player; there's not one in her laptop or iPad, and I'd have to loan her my external CD/DVD burner.
But who's buying all these $30 albums? And what are they playing them on? I don't see any signs of a turntable renaissance. All I see is the ones that convert albums to USB. I've also seen these ridiculous statistics, that a high percentage of people buying albums don't have anything to play them on. So what's the deal?
Anyway, I wandered into a Newbury Comics for the 1st time in years. So you know how it was reported that album sales have surpassed CD sales? Now I know why. The place has one little section of CDs; you go from A to Z in the span of about 12 feet. But the albums are spread out over entire aisles of racks, and all the feature racks - like new releases, and top sellers - are albums. The prices haven't changed; albums are still $28 - $33, which means I'm not buying any. Also, the majority of the store's real estate is dominated by action figures, graphic novels, posters, videos, and various other "gift ideas".
In a way, this is not surprising; since most people are downloading new (and old) music. And those who do visit a physical store are looking for big, physical things - like albums; rather than digital media that they can't play anyway. My younger daughter often buys me albums for my birthday (those are the only new albums I have). I was buying her CDs of new artists that I thought she'd like, but she no longer has easy access to a CD player; there's not one in her laptop or iPad, and I'd have to loan her my external CD/DVD burner.
But who's buying all these $30 albums? And what are they playing them on? I don't see any signs of a turntable renaissance. All I see is the ones that convert albums to USB. I've also seen these ridiculous statistics, that a high percentage of people buying albums don't have anything to play them on. So what's the deal?
IdRatherBeSkiing
Sherbert is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
Well, it's not quite that dramatic, but the value of a "never played" album would be significantly greater than the value of a "mint condition" album. But that only applies to albums that have a high collectability value - rarities, out-of-print desirable recordings, etc. I would say that the vast majority of albums sold in Newbury Comics are not going to go up in value - regardless of condition - for many years, if ever.
I still think CDs are better, but confess that it's been a couple of years since I've bought one.
IdRatherBeSkiing
Sherbert is NOT and NEVER WILL BE ice cream.
That's the unknown in collecting. You never know what album will be valuable in future.
I still have the big stereo rig, so that's why I buy CDs. And my CD player is a lot closer to being a top-tier unit than my mediocre turntable. So I can't justify paying $30 for a less convenient album, when I can pay maybe $12 for a CD that will probably sound better in my setup. Like I said, the kid already buys me albums for the nostalgia of it.
Having said that, I'm not even buying CDs every year anymore. There's stuff I plan to buy on CD, that I don't get around to ordering. I think a lot of that had to do with finishing my listening room, and moving things around. That has now settled down, and I finally have all my CDs and albums back on shelves, and in order.
Also, I was frustrated by the whole ripped music thing. At least half of my ripped music was in .WMA format, which is no longer supported on Android. It's the battle of the billionaire geeks. Just recently, I came across a good Google Play app for my phone (ironic, eh?) that efficiently converts .WMAs to .MP3s. But I still had to do it one music folder at a time. Anyway, I got done with that last weekend, so now I'm less uptight about buying more CDs.
I think I have a good idea of what will not be valuable in the future (at least to me).
I still have a lot of CDs that I need to re=rip because I lost those hard drives several years ago. I haven't had the energy to re-organize my collection and figure out what all I need to rip again.
I ripped all my CD’s years ago and haven’t bought one since. I have a hard drive with the music. But I subscribe annually to iTunes Match, which allows me to stream my entire collection of music at all times (unless on airplane mode).
My family has bought a few albums recently just to have. We do have a record player but they seldom use it.
My family has bought a few albums recently just to have. We do have a record player but they seldom use it.
If you don't have your files in at least two places, you don't really have it.
Sage advice from one of my old IT guys. I didn't have enough redundancy with my MP3s, so I lost a ton of them when those hard drives failed.
I've got a RAID network hard drive. (A couple of them) I also have a portable drive I try to copy the important stuff to. In theory, I have at least 3 copies.
Sage advice from one of my old IT guys. I didn't have enough redundancy with my MP3s, so I lost a ton of them when those hard drives failed.
I've got a RAID network hard drive. (A couple of them) I also have a portable drive I try to copy the important stuff to. In theory, I have at least 3 copies.
that's a good call. anything I truly care about I have on 2 micro SD cards and my computer hard drive.
And I still worry it may be lost.
I guess I should also have it in the cloud.
Yeah, I’ve talked about before, but I lost a ton of MP3s, photos, work archives, and other stuff when I had a couple of hard drives die. Fortunately I still have most of the music on CD, but it’s still a pain in the ass. The lost photos I’ll never get back.
All my music is on my phone, the home laptop, and a thumb drive. Most of it is also on my work laptop too. Our pictures/videos are on the home laptop and backed-up on the thumb drive. Most of the pictures are also on my work laptop, and the earliest few years of digital pictures are burned to DVDs, as are the videos.
I may have said all this already but in the late 90s I started an mp3 collection. Along the way I warned people about DRM (Zune, iPods, etc). More recently I warn people about streaming (like Neil Young saying 'get all my music off of Spotify right now'). 25+ years later and I have that same mp3 collection and listen to music from it everyday. Been using Winamp since the 90s. Since Scotch's suggestion of using my phone to store the mp3s I use AIMP for that. It's the only way to fly!
I only have a little bit of what I have ripped on my phone. I've got 50GB on my server that I should copy to my phone.
When I think of Werther's, I think of 70 year olds. Is there some tie between Spring Break and Werther's I'm unaware of? Something like an Altoids BJ?
Check this out. You know how you start typing a question into Google, and it tries to guess what you're going to ask, based on some combination of your online activity and the most frequent entries? Well the other day, we finally updated our will (after taking 3 international flights together within 12 months). And one of the things we did involved our daughters and our deed, for which the state of Maine offers advantages.
Anyway, I had been doing online research about it. So when I later started to ask another question related to retirement, I typed "can you" and Google came up with a list of "likely" questions. The first 2 were clearly related to my earlier search; but look at the rest (I swear this is 100% straight from my phone):
I must also clarify that at no time (to my recollection) have I asked about freezing anything. And I certainly haven't asked about the other thing! I mean, WTF?!
Anyway, I had been doing online research about it. So when I later started to ask another question related to retirement, I typed "can you" and Google came up with a list of "likely" questions. The first 2 were clearly related to my earlier search; but look at the rest (I swear this is 100% straight from my phone):
I must also clarify that at no time (to my recollection) have I asked about freezing anything. And I certainly haven't asked about the other thing! I mean, WTF?!
Can you do it? Can you dig it? Can you explain it? Can you feel it? Can you feel the force? Can you get to that? Can you get away? Can you handle it? Can you talk? Can you imagine how I feel? Can you hear those pioneers? Can you hold me? Can you love me? Can you read my mind? Can you jerk like me? Can you stop the rain? Can you stand the rain? Can you stand the pressure? Can you find it in your heart? Can you feel the love tonight? Can you please crawl out your window?
(Can you see what I did there?)
(Can you see what I did there?)