[goatinaboat]

When all you had was physical media, you listened to albums over and over got to know them, relished the new albums you purchased and had to take the time to decide between one or the other.

Yes, it's a totally different experience now, I don't know how old you are but I suspect we are both of the generation that straddles both models.

On the one hand, I do love the convenience, my phone can identify a song and I can have the artist's latest album a minute or so later. Amazing! But on the other hand music used to be a visual and tactile experience too, enormous amounts of effort went into creating album art and inlays (especially with records), you might study it as you played the music, run your fingers over the sleeves as you chose the next album to play, display your music collection in your living room for guests to browse, etc. Or you keep an old album that reminds you of a time or a place or a person. Or the hours spent with friends traveling to and trawling through record shops in the nearest big town looking for something. Nowadays that activity would be considered a complete waste of time but actually as a teenager those were some halcyon days.

I'm not going to say for anyone else if the new way is better or worse, but for me, something has definitely been lost in the rush to streaming.

[ghaff]

You sound like me.

Streaming in general has changed a lot of things. Probably for the better but can't make an omelette without cracking eggs and all that.

Video is the same way. We've mostly lost the collective cultural experience of Must See TV Thursday (or whatever). Or not. I haven't watched the series yet but Baby Yoda certainly made the rounds. Though there is a definitely increased cultural fragmentation of which at least some of the consequences are a clear negative.

In general it's all mostly a positive but some things get lost along the way. Time to play some Apple Music playlist :-/