Apparently Amazon wants you to buy CD's

In reply to revrico:

Which android app is this?!

it's a modified apk for pandora, google it or PM me if you can and I'll send you a link. Unless this forum doesn't care and I'll post it here. Things do seem really lax here, but I'm still erring on the side of caution with things that have caused problems on other forums.

I recently found spotify...I cant even understand why music is still for sale?!

Make a playlist, play that specific playlist. Listen to a few ads here and there. So far, I havent had a hard time finding some moderately obscure 90s punk and ska, or some fringe EDM stuff. I will gladly listen to a commercial every 4 or 5 tracks for this kind of access to music.

Pandora can go take a long walk off a short pier...tired of babysitting my stations. When my 90s hip-hop station starts playing Iggy Azelea, thats when I check out.

In reply to 4cylndrfury:

And I have the exact opposite reaction. Pandora Free was a berking revelation after suffering through Spotify Free's incessant, lengthy, and repetitious ads. I haven't given up much selection but I literally hear about 1 ad every other day on Pandora.

I have a traditional Mexican station on my Pandora, because sometimes you've gotta have aie-aie-aie in your songs. Now half my ads are for Home Depot in Spanish. I kid you not. Makes me laugh every time.

iadr wrote: I've never bought a CD. Ever. Nor would I pay for music. Ever. That is a business model that has been imploding for most of my life. Sorry Duke, but not paying for music is not piracy, it's common sense. You brought to fight to me, the reader, btw.

Whatever. We've been through the whole copyright / intellectual property thing a million times. Unless the owner of the rights is giving the music away, or you're streaming legally, or you're paying for the material directly, you're stealing. It's not a matter of opinion. Whether you care or not is entirely up to you, but the fundamental act doesn't change.

I was not expecting this to turn into a discussion about the morality of piracy.

I was just boggled by the logic of getting a CD and MP3 album for less than MP3 album with no CD. That's like "A burger is $10, but a burger and fries will only be $9."

Actually, the Papa Johns website showed two specials this Monday. Large three topping for $10, or a large five topping for $9.99. I kid you not.

drainoil wrote: I still am rocking my cassette tapes from the late 80s, early 90s. Um and I don't consider myself a "hipster" lol. Still love my cd's also. Will never get rid of my Appetite for Destruction and Mechanical Resonance cd's.

Did Appetite get released on CD originally? I still have the tape.

Duke wrote: In reply to 4cylndrfury: And I have the exact opposite reaction. Pandora Free was a berking *revelation* after suffering through Spotify Free's ***incessant***, lengthy, and repetitious ads. I haven't given up much selection but I literally hear about 1 ad every other day on Pandora.

That's impressive. For the week I didn't have a hacked Pandora app, it got to be 3 to 4 ads between EACH song. let alone being stuck with 6 skips is just E36 M3, especially when it decides that your folk station needs more katy perry and insert any other talentless pop puppet name here

(aside, how do I get astrisks to show up as astrisks instead of making italics?)

Teh E36 M3 wrote:

drainoil wrote: I still am rocking my cassette tapes from the late 80s, early 90s. Um and I don't consider myself a "hipster" lol. Still love my cd's also. Will never get rid of my Appetite for Destruction and Mechanical Resonance cd's.

Did Appetite get released on CD originally? I still have the tape.

Yes, it did.. the early ones even had the better cover art..

stuart in mn wrote:

revrico wrote: People still pay for music?

Along with similar statements like People still write checks? People still have land lines? People still read newspapers? People still wear wristwatches? etc. I vote for an automatic ban whenever someone uses one of them.

People still drive manual transmissions?

MadScientistMatt wrote: I wonder if Amazon is sitting on too many CDs and needs to get them out of their warehouse?

The but stuff they have. The smaller stuff..... https://www.createspace.com

They print real time. You'll never know the difference. They do the same for books.

I don't do CDs for the same reason I don't do books, which is that I hate clutter and they are a main contributor of it.

revrico wrote:

Duke wrote: In reply to 4cylndrfury: And I have the exact opposite reaction. Pandora Free was a berking *revelation* after suffering through Spotify Free's ***incessant***, lengthy, and repetitious ads. I haven't given up much selection but I literally hear about 1 ad every other day on Pandora.

That's impressive. For the week I didn't have a hacked Pandora app, it got to be 3 to 4 ads between EACH song. let alone being stuck with 6 skips is just E36 M3, especially when it decides that your folk station needs more katy perry and *insert any other talentless pop puppet name here* (aside, how do I get astrisks to show up as astrisks instead of making italics?)

Huh. I just use the Pandora web interface, not the app. I've never done anything to block ads. I've been using it for months and I hear a handful of ads a week at most. Maybe once every other day, there will be a single brief "Hi, this is So-and-So from Some Band - thanks for listening to us on Pandora." and then it's on to the next song. With Spotify Free I would hear the same repeated ads probably 30-40 times a day, usually in blocks of 3 about every 2nd or 3rd song.

When I started each station, I spent 3-4 solid days liking or disliking things as they played. Now they stay on target without much intervention. My only complaint is that if you like a given song by an artist that it picks, it can be a little slow to add other songs by that same artist, and just repeat the one song it knows you like. That could be a function of limited catalog, though.

For asterisks*, you just have to use a single one. If you use another one anywhere in the post, it will think they're tags.

I've tried most of the major steaming services, used Pandora for a while, but when I discovered Slacker, I quit using any others. It actually seems to pay attention to my likes/dislikes and banning of artists, unlike anything else. I have a free account, so I still have ads, and am limited to ~6 skips. I've rated songs enough that I rarely skip though.

I'm not sure on the dynamics of the skipping, but it seems like listening to two songs after 1 skip, replenishes the skip you used, so it's 2:1. Their ads are repetitive, but it's usually 2 30 second ads, with an occasional ~10 second "this is Slacker" ad, for every 6 songs.

They are crafty though, if you mute the ap on the phone, it'll pause the ad, so if you don't want to hear the ad, you have to turn the volume down to 1, not all the way or mute.

I buy CDs, get the mp3s, then store the CD away immediately. I have a couple of big rubbermaid totes full at this point. I'm increasingly convinced it's the only way for me to actually own the music and play it wherever I want for as long as I want. If it ever goes poof, I've already got my hard-copy backup. AND I'm supporting the artists.

I sold all my CDs last year. Everything is ripped and backed up. Hell, since 64 gig flash drives are so cheap, I put my entire music collection on two of them and carry one around in each vehicle. So, I feel like I'm covered.

At a minimum, I will only buy CD's and rip to .flac: getting noticeably lower quality SD level mp3 format at a higher price makes absolutely no sense when you have a nicer HD audio format. Ideally, SACD is really where it is at when considering a music purchase, unfortunately can't rip them to .flac unless it's a hybrid SACD with CD audio tracks.

Online purchasing digital copies of shows/movies is the same thing as mp3s to me...if it's something I've not seen, then would rather stream it using free or paid monthly/annual subscription services for the same lower than Blu-ray quality. If it's something I have seen and would actually like to own, then I'll purchase the Blu-ray to get the best picture and sound quality, often for a much lower price.

I'm picky with my purchases and selectively buy only certain titles whether music or videos/movies; have a home theater/audio setup that I've spent years putting together and tuning - not going to play low quality content on it when I have the choice of proper quality content, especially if said content is cheaper.

Vracer111, an audio/videophile...who is considering spending a significant ammount of money on upgrading and improving a pair of Denon AH-D2000 headphone; and it's not to listen to low quality mp3 files...

I'm relatively new to Pandora, but then again, I really don't listen to music but about twice a month for an hour or so. The pleasant surprise was that Pandora found some very obscure tracks (by each of the two acts for which I named a station) that have NEVER been released on a CD.

I'm talking about old bands, and songs that were only released on vinyl, or maybe 8-track.

But again, I only listen to music very infrequently, so maybe I'm too easily impressed.

CDs are useless to me. I typically stream music to hear new stuff and figure out what I really like, then buy the 12" if I really love it (which usually includes MP3 downloads and sometimes - get this - a CD!). It makes listening at home feel like so much more of an event, especially with the Andrew Jones speakers I scored on Craigslist hooked up to the old NAD receiver and Technics turntable I got as hand-me-downs. Family thinks I'm crazy for holding onto the stuff but I think it sounds better than the digital 7.1 crap.

I have no shame in torrenting artists I've never heard that were recommended to me, as many of them turn out to be crap and I delete them to get the space back pretty quickly.

pointofdeparture wrote: CDs are useless to me. I typically stream music to hear new stuff and figure out what I really like, then buy the 12" if I really love it (which usually includes MP3 downloads and sometimes - get this - a CD!). It makes listening at home feel like so much more of an event, especially with the Andrew Jones speakers I scored on Craigslist hooked up to the old NAD receiver and Technics turntable I got as hand-me-downs. Family thinks I'm crazy for holding onto the stuff but I think it sounds better than the digital 7.1 crap. I have no shame in torrenting artists I've never heard that were recommended to me, as many of them turn out to be crap and I delete them to get the space back pretty quickly.

I typically find new music through Youtube, as I'm really into Vocaloid mainly...then I try to find albums on CD if possible.

NAD does makes nice audio stuff, all the amps and the reciever I have (used as a pre-pro/pre-amp) are from NAD, bought as 'new' refurbished units for huge discounts...