I’m an old millennial that downloads and keep what I like. It took so long to download anything on dial-up that the habit was to keep everything for later.
And then because I go camping and cycling in places without network coverage, I took the habit of copying a few hundred of MP3s and a few dozen episodes of cartoons on my phone. That way I have some entertainment even when I’m in a forest without network coverage.
I still can’t understand people streaming music on their phones, music that they probably are going to listen and download again and again and again instead of only once. Why not keep it instead of constantly using bandwidth for the same thing over and over?
Same with watching stuff. Your favorite paid streaming service may eventually decide to remove a series you like, or miss a few seasons. That’s if it’s not on another streaming service. Like, I know I’ll watch and rewatch again episodes of the Simpsons, so I download them. It only consumes bandwidth once and can watch it on repeat whenever I want, even without internet.
You can still pay for stuff, but don’t use the DRM ridden streams that can disappear or can’t be accessed without internet… pay for it if you wish but then, pirate and download a version you can keep.
Or I’m just old and living through “bandwidth scarcity” and really owning stuff left its mark on me.
A big reason is phone manufacturers purposefully restrict the amount of storage on devices and killed expandable storage so that you will be forced use the cloud for everything, and if you want more space on your phone, you need to pay way more money than it actually costs for the difference in hardware cost. We certainly have the technology to have more storage room for media on our devices, but you know… Enshittification.
It can be a bit of a challenge with Android as it doesn’t support NTFS out of the box. So your experience may vary depending on the storage device and the phone.
Android really drew the short straw as far as file system support is concerned. No Ext4 (or anything else for that matter) , no windows filesystems… just plain fat (or exfat). Pityful.
Indeed, that’s one annoying thing I miss about my new phone, as it doesn’t have a micro SD card slot. Another thing about new phones and this “everything cloud” point of view is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult (for me) to plug a USB drive/stick as a temporary ad-hoc storage device. So in addition to not allowing lots of space on the device itself, and removing micro SD card slots, it’s also becoming difficult to just plug a USB stick in an OTG port.
However, MP3s are not that big and anyone used to streaming shouldn’t bat an eye on compression. The loss on files compressed at 192 kbps is acceptable and you can have thousands of files for a few dozen of GBs. Also, when I started to “keep my files”, it was mainly in SD. Those files are perfect for devices with small screens and they are still small enough to be “portable”. A whole season of South Park is like 2.5 GB and my video player won’t tell my it isn’t available in my country. For 10 GB I can have 4 whole seasons on my phone and because the screen is pretty small, quality will still be more than acceptable. So, there’s still wiggle room even if phones will not allow TBs worth of storage.
So if/when Spotify ceases to exist, you lose everything. Even then, they can just decide to remove whatever music you liked “because” and you now lost access to it. In a few decades when people will want to listen to the old songs they used to like on “the Spotify”, they won’t find them anywhere.
It’s already happening for some movies.
EDIT: A friend just told me he did in fact cache some popular local albums on Spotify, and they just removed them. So those albums were accessible on Spotify at some point, but are not anymore.
Also nothing stops us from potentially ripping the downloaded songs into MP3s and this gives you all the access to it. Or just go rip them off youtube.
I was just providing an easy solution that still gives the artists money. Philosophically, just using mp3’s doesn’t inherently give the artist any funds when I can just torrent/rip them.
I’m an old millennial that downloads and keep what I like. It took so long to download anything on dial-up that the habit was to keep everything for later.
And then because I go camping and cycling in places without network coverage, I took the habit of copying a few hundred of MP3s and a few dozen episodes of cartoons on my phone. That way I have some entertainment even when I’m in a forest without network coverage.
I still can’t understand people streaming music on their phones, music that they probably are going to listen and download again and again and again instead of only once. Why not keep it instead of constantly using bandwidth for the same thing over and over?
Same with watching stuff. Your favorite paid streaming service may eventually decide to remove a series you like, or miss a few seasons. That’s if it’s not on another streaming service. Like, I know I’ll watch and rewatch again episodes of the Simpsons, so I download them. It only consumes bandwidth once and can watch it on repeat whenever I want, even without internet.
You can still pay for stuff, but don’t use the DRM ridden streams that can disappear or can’t be accessed without internet… pay for it if you wish but then, pirate and download a version you can keep.
Or I’m just old and living through “bandwidth scarcity” and really owning stuff left its mark on me.
A big reason is phone manufacturers purposefully restrict the amount of storage on devices and killed expandable storage so that you will be forced use the cloud for everything, and if you want more space on your phone, you need to pay way more money than it actually costs for the difference in hardware cost. We certainly have the technology to have more storage room for media on our devices, but you know… Enshittification.
You can plug a thumb drive in most phones nowadays.
It can be a bit of a challenge with Android as it doesn’t support NTFS out of the box. So your experience may vary depending on the storage device and the phone.
exFAT works, which is supported by windows as well. Should be sufficient for normal movies.
Android really drew the short straw as far as file system support is concerned. No Ext4 (or anything else for that matter) , no windows filesystems… just plain fat (or exfat). Pityful.
Indeed, that’s one annoying thing I miss about my new phone, as it doesn’t have a micro SD card slot. Another thing about new phones and this “everything cloud” point of view is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult (for me) to plug a USB drive/stick as a temporary ad-hoc storage device. So in addition to not allowing lots of space on the device itself, and removing micro SD card slots, it’s also becoming difficult to just plug a USB stick in an OTG port.
However, MP3s are not that big and anyone used to streaming shouldn’t bat an eye on compression. The loss on files compressed at 192 kbps is acceptable and you can have thousands of files for a few dozen of GBs. Also, when I started to “keep my files”, it was mainly in SD. Those files are perfect for devices with small screens and they are still small enough to be “portable”. A whole season of South Park is like 2.5 GB and my video player won’t tell my it isn’t available in my country. For 10 GB I can have 4 whole seasons on my phone and because the screen is pretty small, quality will still be more than acceptable. So, there’s still wiggle room even if phones will not allow TBs worth of storage.
Idk about you, but I struggle to fill my 256 Gb storage. No problem to fill up a 2 TB drive on PC though.
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YOUTH’S ANSWER: Spotify offline download
I love it :)
Always got a stash of backups if network goes down on the road. Love mp3s still tho.
Also we stream so much because we’re used to it. I download replays now tho to save energy consumption in general.
BUT more streams means more money for the artist!
So if/when Spotify ceases to exist, you lose everything. Even then, they can just decide to remove whatever music you liked “because” and you now lost access to it. In a few decades when people will want to listen to the old songs they used to like on “the Spotify”, they won’t find them anywhere.
It’s already happening for some movies.
EDIT: A friend just told me he did in fact cache some popular local albums on Spotify, and they just removed them. So those albums were accessible on Spotify at some point, but are not anymore.
Well I did say I still love MP3s…
Obviously good points.
But we know now subscriptions =/= to ownership.
Also nothing stops us from potentially ripping the downloaded songs into MP3s and this gives you all the access to it. Or just go rip them off youtube.
I was just providing an easy solution that still gives the artists money. Philosophically, just using mp3’s doesn’t inherently give the artist any funds when I can just torrent/rip them.
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