[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Would anyone here like to buy my collection of digital music? Any takers? Seriously, you can’t resell it. Those suckers have been scammed. (don’t get me wrong, if it’s the only way to get a score I might dish out cash).

Not sure that’s so.. I mean, I did not buy my digital downloads to sell them, so I don’t feel scammed. They are mine to keep and play in my collection. Sure, a good LP/CD collection has more resell value. You cannot officially “sell” a collection of digital files when you don’t own the copyright. But other than that, I have no problem with a digital download collection. I must have bought hundreds of titles as digital download (including some like EXTREME PREJUDICE and Donaggio’s DOMINO which were later withdraws from all streaming/download platforms).

I suppose most of us here have a considerable collection of some form of physical media, be it CDs, maybe some LPs or Blurays/DVDs/whatever.

Music is important to me, always has been, and when I started to be interested in music, the only surefire way to listen to “your” kind of music was to buy it. On LP, on CD, you had to buy a particular album (regardless of film score, soundtrack, pop) to listen to it.

Nowadays, that is in many cases no longer necessary. Platforms like Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer, etc. offer high-resolution music sound delivered straight to your streamer… you subscribe, and there are millions of albums you can just listen to… So in a world like that… would I still have spend to much money on a music collection as I have? Would I still have a shelf in our living room filled with CDs? Not sure, maybe not. I mean, I could just pay my $20/month to play the catalog of Warner, Decca, Universal, BMG, Sony, DG, and, and, and… not every album I want would be there, certainly not all film scores and film score albums, nope, but nevertheless more wonderful music most would hope to hear in a lifetime.

Of course, not all music I want is available for streaming/download, yes, albums can be withdrawn (has happened to albums I bought digitally), but to be able to buy purchased music, you need a setup to do that. If you want to play LPs, you need a turntable, and amplifier, and speakers/headphones, if you want to play CDs, you need a CD-player, and amplifier, and speakers/headphones. If you want to stream music, you just need your smartphone (which you probably have anyway), and speaker/headphones. So your overhead is low. Sure, if you really want high-quality sound, you may want to set up yourself with a high-quality streamer, an amp, and high-quality speakers, but most people don’t care that much about sound quality once it’s reached the “OK” level. So the overhead for streaming is low, and the return is enormous.