Me, too, but only if there’s a need to play croquet. Otherwise, I’d just as soon say a farewell to cutting my grass.
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I guess I still like the idea of having a collection of physical media. In my case CDs.
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This is from another thread - @ sdolezalek Showing (off) your Roon setup.
I am in the beginning stages of setting up a new music room and I very much like this concept.
–MD
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Very pretty, but sort of antithetical to the Roon ethos, isn’t it, having all that physical media so handy?
Roon is primary, just need a place to store with easy access for whenever.
–MD
That is always my first choice. Sadly some things aren’t available. For example, Grateful Dead Dave’s Picks.
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This is music accumulated from over 40 years and like @ garym has said, many are no longer available for purchase. Also I am not going to throw them away.
–MD
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But you are able to hold on to the music for as much as you want and play it for your own benefit wherever and whenever. Is there anything else needed?
I suspect that we are headed back to a time in which music is far more ephemeral than it is today. Note that I said “headed back to.”
We are about a century into the recorded music era. Prior to this time, music was dependent entirely upon performance. Music would come and go, much of it appearing briefly before disappearing forever. And some of that ephemerality once more may become the status quo ante in a streaming only future.
Now, I may not necessarily like that reality. I think that public possession of mass media is somewhat akin to the press as the Fourth Estate of government. It is an important hedge against loss, damage, or revisionism. Think of the Universal Studios archives fire, George Lucas modifying “Star Wars” years after the fact, Disney expunging certain politically incorrect films or shorts, etc.
But balancing the rights to popular culture is complicated. Did actual music owners ever intend for the public to possess what are in essence perpetual personal listening licenses? Or was that music “ownership” on physical media or download merely a temporary technological vestige of the times?
AJ
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Sorry, but your downloaded media will not play now if your internet goes out.
Foobar2000 and LMS are working just fine. There was life before Roon, there’ll be life after.
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Well, people used to say the same with Iphone the first time it came out. Now, no body can leave without it.
I’ve never owned an iPhone.
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We need more people to learn how to play the harpsichord, certainly. But come and go? Music was widely published as scores on paper. And paper has a somewhat surprising track record of lasting longer than most other media.
Indeed. In a word, LOCKSS. Well, OK, only sort of a word.
YouTube, of course. The Internet Archive has troves of music, as well. And check out the new Discmaster site.
Not really. So it is as close to ownership as most people need. I “own” my home too. But If I don’t pay my property taxes the government will take it away from me. So In that sense my digital files are more “owned” than my home.
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Philosophically speaking, we don’t really own anything in life and everything is temporary. It’s all an illusion.
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Huh? That’s not true. Unless you are talking about temporarily downloaded media tied to your spotify or Tidal account, that will go away when you no longer subscribe. But even that works with no internet. I use spotify downloads to listen while on airplanes all the time. No internet needed.
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I think @viet_luu is referring to the fact that Roon 2.0 won’t work unless it has an active internet connection.
Got it. In my case, I can play my files to multiple endpoints (synched or separate streams) via LMS or via a single endpoint via foobar2000. Roon is just one of my music platforms.
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I’m 52, been through the whole thing, Napster, Winamp and the lot… remember Salling Clicker 
?
Not sure if I qualify for “oldster” but it would take some serious change in how the world works today to make me go back to owning music, in any form…
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