streaming has a history of being data intrusive. and buying from most online stores show itemized music receipts to the credit card company (and don’t typically allow giftcards). buying in person is nice, but harder to get new music.
any tips?
streaming has a history of being data intrusive. and buying from most online stores show itemized music receipts to the credit card company (and don’t typically allow giftcards). buying in person is nice, but harder to get new music.
any tips?
Buy CDs. Fun and affordable if your music tastes can be found in thrift stores.
See if your local record store will order in new releases or otherwise for you on CD. Mine does and it’s not a very large store.
From there, rip to a computer where you either copy it to a mobile device for listening or self host your own streaming service such as Navidrome or Jellyfin.
The streaming service is easy to self host and I’d love to give more details. You can also “borrow your friend’s CDs to rip them” and stream content that you didn’t necessarily pay for.
+1
In case you don’t have an optical drive, new ones cost only slightly more than a CD these days.
Here’s some guidance on which models are especially good at audio ripping:
https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/10/audio-cd-ripping-hardware/
(Note that the best ones cost a bit more and don’t come with a USB enclosure, but could be mounted in one.)
99% of new PCs lack a CD drive.
If someone wants to put together a physical CD collection then <$50 is a small investment for a external CD drive. Thrift store CDs are cheap but it still has its costs. Streaming service subscriptions add up as well.
You can buy a USB CD drive for relatively little cash
Your local library may even lend one or have a machine with a drive. Probably intended for digitising stuff and writing discs from them, but if there’s software, it’ll work in reverse as well.
You don’t have to buy an entire new pc for that.
you can buy and install one yourself, or get a usb one for ~$20
It is highly impractical and arbitrary to tie a digital download to a physical piece of media, especially if you have no plans to use it after ripping. Waiting until it arrives or going to a now-rare disk store, and then almost immediately either throwing into the trash or bothering to resell - neither feels good.