I bought my first album from iTunes 10 years ago and it is right there in my external HDD since iTunes does not have any sort of DRM anymore (it was removed years ago). Unless computers in 20 years do not allow people to have local data and force them to use The Cloud (at which point i'd probably stop using computers altogether outside of necessity), i do not see them disappear.
If fact i rebought several albums i had in CD format because i lost some of the CDs after moving and a bunch of M4A files in a folder are more convenient than a bunch of CDs in a box (although TBH i do get the nice feeling of having something to look at that is physical... but only for things i really like and for me that is usually games not music).
There is an awful lot of music simply not streamed, if you live near a college town or in any city of say 80,000 people then there probably some local bands, chances are good they’ve recorded some stuff and outside of that run of CDs, the music is nowhere else. It’s not like we’re losing part of the Beatles catalog exactly but if you’ve bonded and heard that band a few times it might be meaningful.
I just pulled mine out of the attic after they had been sitting there for more than a decade. It's dry up there, but not cool at all. I'm in central Texas and in the summer you can only be up there for a few minutes at a time because it's so hot.
I bought dbPowerAmp and ripped them all to ALAC. Only a couple of them couldn't be accurately ripped and that's because of scratches on them (some of them are from the mid-80's and have had rough lives).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that they are remarkably durable.
Well, you can buy a new 3.5" floppy disk drive for $15 right now. The problem are proprietary formats, like Zip disks - just avoid those.
Parts of my MP3 library are 20 years old. Why do you think keeping them spinning a few more decades will be any harder?
>But for a local iTunes library you need IT admin skills to manage it, to back it up, to transfer it from one machine to the next, perhaps to understand that you can access the music without iTunes, etc. The vast majority of the public don't know how to do that.
Honestly, I think that's why streaming is taking over. Apple's approach to solving the sync problem was to rethink the whole paradigm, and so we got Apple Music instead of smarter iPhone/iPod sync. Sure, they get service revenue in the bargain, but to me it seems like an easy play.
Only real problem is that I ripped them at 128Kbps. For some tracks I've gone back and re-done them at a higher bitrate.
MDISC are supposed to last for 100 years or so.
The same place and way you keep all your other digitally purchased music. Just like the music I buy from bleep, Bandcamp or directly from artists.
What’s the problem here?
Ways to enjoy music: stream it on Spotify or insert a CD. Pick one.
?????
I mean, DRMless, local media doesn't obviate streaming which has its own valuable niche, from discovery to the fact that my 200 GB music library cannot fit on my phone, but that library is on Dropbox.
In 30 years, the format might be unrecognizable, but... I don't get the problem either.
>But for a local iTunes library you need IT admin skills to manage it, to back it up, to transfer it from one machine to the next, perhaps to understand that you can access the music without iTunes, etc. The vast majority of the public don't know how to do that.
Oh, we're operating from an assumption of pre-Internet tech literacy. Then, yeah, I don't know. The computer-as-radio/physical-media dichotomy might be the way to go. Enjoy those CDs. uwu Put thing in thing and hear sound. Zug zug
If we're talking actual files, it's just basic file management skills, and maybe some simple knowledge of ripping (assuming we're not taking the EAC lossless route). Almost everyone in my office (which are mainly non-tech people) have the former.
>...how are people going to keep that over 30 years?
It's way more likely someone's going to burgle my remaining CDs than they are to destroy every instance of my virtual collection.
Might look different and be called different, but I bet there is some service offering most music in existence in 2050.
If you get deep into any small/independent music scene you’ll find CDs are still king.
My father was so ethical and bought a lot of music from some service of his ISP (Planet music or something), it is all lost. I'd never pay for DRMed music. At least with Spotify you know you don't own anything and just pay for access to a lot of stuff as long as you pay.
CDs I bought in the early 90s are there, in a box. I'd like to see people's iTunes collections in 30 years...
Yes, I know that CDs have a shelf-life and that real long term storage would involve backing them up. But CDs still seem a better option than the current alternatives.
Edit:
The issue even with a DRM-free local iTunes library is: how are people going to keep that over 30 years?
If you have a CD you only need to have a CD/DVD/Bluray player, which are still ubiquitous, and to push a button.
But for a local iTunes library you need IT admin skills to manage it, to back it up, to transfer it from one machine to the next, perhaps to understand that you can access the music without iTunes, etc. The vast majority of the public don't know how to do that.