Dumb $16 Antimustachian mistake I made Friday... Un-planned obsolescence

[MBot]

Last year I didn't buy much non-essential - clothes, music, contact lenses, home items. It was a good spending fast from anything that wasn't essential.

I also got rid of a lot of stuff: desktop computer, furniture, a lot of things I rarely used. For music I listened to less overall and used streaming options when I wanted

So this Friday I thought I'd special-order one CD I had wanted for six months, thinking I'd put the songs on my phone ( iPhone work pays  for)  And I would pay for it from the store down the street to support a local business.

So I do the pre-order, pay cash, walk out of the store, walk back to work and realize....

I own nothing that can play the CD anymore. I also own nothing that can rip the CD, because I have nothing with a CD drive. I stream all my music and all I download is podcasts. What a literally useless purchase when I should have just paid $10 to download directly (I've never downloaded an alb before/paid for it).

My frugal year means my entire method of listening to music is now obsolete. Im going to see if they'll just special order a book instead with the cash. Ha ha.

[DSA]

Is there a library that has a computer with a CD drive you could use? Maybe find a computer store and use it to rip the tracks? Alternatively, find a way to secretly pirate acquire the tracks elsewhere, feeling morally justified that you already paid money?

[MBot]

I think the most efficient option is to pay half and download it to the iPhone. I'll just cancel the special order entirely. It's so weird to not think through a purchase like that though.

[skyrefuge]

Ha, that's a good one.

If the order cannot be cancelled, then I'd just download it through non-legal means (I'd judge that legal and moral if *I* was doing the judging!)

Otherwise, yeah, just cancel the order and download legally.

Either way, download (or just keep streaming). In an age where music is both listened to and delivered electronically, CDs are an anti-environmental, anti-mustachian anachronism. Why dig up some petroleum (to make the CD/case), chop a branch off a tree (to make the booklet) and drive a big truck hundreds of miles (to deliver the CD from manufacturer to retail), when you could skip all that and get the music more conveniently, more cheaply, and in a method where more of your money goes to the music creators?  Especially since it sounds like you've decluttered anyway, so why allow CD cases back into your life?

[James]

We try to order music directly from the musician when we can, usually just downloading the music because having the CD doesn't make sense to us either. Local stores can be nice, but unless you are hanging out there listening to CDs I'm not sure what value the local store has in regard to music. While I appreciate the whole "buy local" idea in general, I find it hard to justify a lot of the local stores I'm supposed to support...

[I'm a red panda]

Do you have a friend who can rip it to a USB drive for you?

[lifejoy]

lol on two separate occasions I sent friends a cd for their bday or post breakup. Hey were like, uhm thanks! But I can't use it... :P

[Kaspian]

*Sigh* ...Sort of sad.  It used to be an incredible experience to buy an album.  You hadn't heard all the tracks on it yet--maybe just a hit or two on the radio if the band was popular enough.    Open the package to find photos and lyric sheets inside.  Excitedly put it on a player for the first time, Side A.  Listen to rich tunes through tube speakers while you appreciated and lorded over owning such an amazing piece of cover art and the music hidden within.  New vinyl has a smell.  I miss that.  It was actually a whole experience. 
(Sorry, just reminiscing.  I grew up in the 80s and luckily caught the tail end of records.)

[jrmrjnck]

Three things:

• You can buy an external USB CD drive for about $20.
• CDs are still the only way to legally get lossless digital copies of most music.
• I recently bought a CD from Amazon. Not only was it cheaper than the mp3 album, but it also came with a free mp3 album available through Amazon Music (which I guess is a Prime thing). As long as these trends continue, I will keep buying CDs (when I buy music at all).

[RetiredAt63]

You sent me on a side trip down memory lane  ;-)
One of my students (years ago) was really into Wings when it was big.  He told me how lucky I was, because I was there for "Paul McCartney's first band".  Yes, he was referring to the Beatles.  That was an odd moment.

And I still have a pile of vinyl, although I don't play it much.  My player needs a new needle.

*Sigh* ...Sort of sad.  It used to be an incredible experience to buy an album.  You hadn't heard all the tracks on it yet--maybe just a hit or two on the radio if the band was popular enough.    Open the package to find photos and lyric sheets inside.  Excitedly put it on a player for the first time, Side A.  Listen to rich tunes through tube speakers while you appreciated and lorded over owning such an amazing piece of cover art and the music hidden within.  New vinyl has a smell.  I miss that.  It was actually a whole experience. 
(Sorry, just reminiscing.  I grew up in the 80s and luckily caught the tail end of records.)

[dragoncar]

You can't return it?

[skyrefuge]

It used to be an incredible experience to buy an album.

I maintain that the incredibleness of the experience (and I had the same incredible experiences with CDs that you did with vinyl) had far more to do with our age at the time of the experience rather than the details of the experience itself. Everyone's greatest musical experiences and memories tend to come from that teenage/early-adult period, and I think that extends to all types of emotional experiences. People today in that age range may be "missing out" on the album-buying experience, but I'm quite confident that they are obtaining those same feelings of incredibleness through other modes (like building that giant city in Minecraft or whatever).

To believe otherwise implies that happiness comes from extremely specific things and experiences, which is antithetical to Mustachianism.

• CDs are still the only way to legally get lossless digital copies of most music.

CDs are not "lossless" either. 44kHz/16-bit is a degredation of the 96kHz/24-bit or whatever that was used in the recording process, and definitely a degredation of the 3-dimensional sound waves that existed in the recording studio. So it makes no real sense to reject mp3s in favor of CD, since the lossiness of either format is unlikely to be noticed.

Agreed however that it's dumb that a physical version of something can be bought for less money than the electronic version!

[frugalnacho]

*Sigh* ...Sort of sad.  It used to be an incredible experience to buy an album.  You hadn't heard all the tracks on it yet--maybe just a hit or two on the radio if the band was popular enough.    Open the package to find photos and lyric sheets inside.  Excitedly put it on a player for the first time, Side A.  Listen to rich tunes through tube speakers while you appreciated and lorded over owning such an amazing piece of cover art and the music hidden within.  New vinyl has a smell.  I miss that.  It was actually a whole experience. 
(Sorry, just reminiscing.  I grew up in the 80s and luckily caught the tail end of records.)

I think you are just associating those things (lyrics sheets, vinyl smell, cover art) with the good experiences you had.  I have had good experiences opening up a cassette tape.  I also experienced getting a fresh cd.  I have also experienced downloading an album.  For some of my favorite albums I don't think it would matter exactly how it was delivered, because I still have fond memories of them no matter how  I acquired them.  It was still exciting putting it on for the first time on cassette deck/cd player/computer and listening to it.

[AllieVaulter]

I completely understand what happened to you!  Last year I got a chromebook and I went on a trip and packed a DVD to watch...  I have no CD drive anymore!  It's been a strange transition for me too.  Does your work computer have a CD drive?  You could rip it after work one day. 

[guitar_stitch]

[...]when you could skip all that and get the music more conveniently, more cheaply, and in a method where more of your money goes to the music creators?

Not so much...  More of your money goes to content distribution networks that normally would not be players in the game.  The artist still gets the shaft.

[skyrefuge]

Not so much...  More of your money goes to content distribution networks that normally would not be players in the game.  The artist still gets the shaft.

Hmm? No, there has always been a "content distribution network", and the content distribution network in the electronic world (a few internet-connected servers and some software) is way cheaper than the content distribution network in the physical world (CD manufacturing, truck-driving, brick-and-mortar point-of-sale). Music creators get ~$7 of each $10 album purchase through iTunes, etc., which is way more than they got under the physical system.

Of course if an artist partners with a record label, then it's up to that contract to determine how that $7 is divided, and the artist still may very well get the shaft in that case, but that has nothing to do with the distribution method. And unlike the physical distribution network, an artist can gain full and equal access to the electronic distribution network without the help of a label, so they can capture that full $7/album if they'd like, compared with the $1/album they might get under the old label+physical system.