I understand from what I've read that the likes of Spotify pay an absolutely puny amount of money to the artists. I get the convenience thing, but I am a 90s kid and after moving from cassette, never strayed from CDs. I still think they are great, even with the current vinyl revival & obession with using the internet for everything. I realise I'm in a minority but I read an article the other day on a music forum I use, saying that CD sales actually went up last year for the first time in ages. It may seem laughable now to some, but I wonder if there will be a CD revival at some point (I've noticed used prices going up recently), when the hipsters who buy £90 turntables in supermarkets get sick of shelling out £25+ for an LP!
I just like the old fashioned thing of owning the physical product when it comes to albums. I play CDs at home and in the car, but have it all in iTunes too on my laptop (and backed up on external drive), and use the last iPod Classic with the click wheel (2009 I think) when out and about. I have 2 of the exact same Sony iPod dock speakers in different places as well, but at home, playing a CD is my first choice. It works for me.
CDs / iPod are my little escape from relying on the internet. My brother got a new car not long ago which didn't have a CD player in, as a lot don't now, he told me that he had to bite the bullet and use streaming. He then told me that when driving, if he runs out of data on the SIM card or is in a bad signal area, the music will just stop playing. That would drive me insane! If this makes me a dinosaur, so be it, but I'm not a fan of having to rely on the internet to hear music. Other things I dislike about streaming, other than the artists being paid so little:
I've heard countless complaints on music sites about certain songs just vanishing seemingly without reason, or obscure songs that are never on there in the first place. There are cases of an artist's entire body of work being removed due to a dispute, or of the artist not wanting their music on there to begin with. If you care about things like masterings / best versions of albums, it seems like with streaming you just get what you're given. It's a sad but widely known fact on music forums that when a band issues any kind of 'deluxe reissue/remaster', it's often compressed / brickwalled and a lot harsher on the ears than the original release. I think generally the version of any album on streaming is a fairly recent one, despite whether or not that is the best sounding one. A friend who solely uses streaming was raving about the deluxe version with bonus B-sides of some album being on there, but I bet it sounds awful, unlike the original masterings of those songs. I get that some people don't care about that stuff, and will take convenience over anything, but I care and would hate for control of things like that to be taken away. I can have whichever version of an album I prefer on my CD shelf and in my iTunes library.
Example of this: The Cure's classic 'Disintegration' album. The 1989 original CD sounds a little murky, but it fits with the music & era in which it was recorded. The 2010 'remaster' sounded horrific. The original was given a massive volume boost perhaps for modern platforms, it was an awful listen, especially through earphones. On songs like 'Prayers For Rain', the bass (and I love bass, see my avatar) was so heavy it sounded like my earphones could blow at any second. Unlistenable. I'll bet it's this horrendous version of the album that's on streaming platforms. I never want to hear that version again! When I went back to the original CD, it was like welcoming back an old friend.
I think it's generally the case that bands make more money from touring than from album sales anyway, but I like to support the artists I love. Also, the last 2 years have been horrendous for touring bands, the last thing these artists need is people playing their music for free. I know some bands did 'lockdown concerts' and I supported one by possibly my all time favourite band, Guided By Voices. In Summer 2020, they played a hometown show behind closed doors, which was filmed. Not a Zoom split screen mix of them all sat in their homes, a socially distanced show in a proper venue. As usual they played over 50 songs, it was incredibly weird with no crowd, but they played a great mix of newer songs and old fan favourites. They have been known to put out 2-3 albums a year so had loads of new songs they wanted to play but of course were not able to tour. Anyone who bought a ticket for the show was given a link to login and stream the 'concert' live for 24 hours. It was then extended to give people a few more days to watch it. Perhaps the best thing was that ticket buyers were also given a download link the next week to get the audio of the whole show to keep.
I love that they did this at a time when they were frustrated at not being able to tour, and people needed their mood lifted. I was delighted to buy that ticket, support a band who were barely getting any money at the time, watch a great gig, and get the download as a lasting memory. At a time when the world was crazy, people's lives were turned upside down, had their holidays cancelled, daily lives disrupted and not much to be happy about, they brought a ray of sunshine which I was so grateful for. Things like that won't be found on streaming services.
Ultimately, the main thing is that people enjoy the music and support the artists, whether that is by streaming, CD, vinyl, or other legal means.
