Buying Movies and music

[silvermedalist]

I am a fan of old movies and of course music. Do you think its better to buy from Amazon or Turner Classic for an example? As for music, do you think its better to buy dvd's or to buy I Pods? Or Mp3 players? I am not experienced in I Pods or Mp3 players. I am basically a DVD guy. I have bought full collections of bands such as Led Zeppelin several times over as music technology went from album, to 8 track to casette to CD and so forth. I wish I had kept all the original sleeves my CD's were bought in. I had too much trust in their durability. You know that something else is right around the corner. Another way to make more money on the consumer like me. How many damn times do I have to buy the same f##cking album? As for movies, I notice on Amazon you can buy used? But are they going to stand behind the quality? I am not going to pay $8 a month for netflix. Red Box never has anything you really want. Mostly junk. Blockbuster has run into stiff competition and is about gone in my area. They should have stuck to their dollar movie policy. Greed did them in. Finding old classic movies is not always easy. I know two dealers here that have just about anything, but who the hell wants to pay $3 when you can buy it and own it for a few dollars more? Advice on movies and music more than welcome. Ill give the thread a day or two and see if anyone gives input. Thanks.

[Jahfin]

As for music, do you think its better to buy dvd's or to buy I Pods? Or Mp3 players? I am not experienced in I Pods or Mp3 players. I am basically a DVD guy.

Are you referring to music movies? That's the only reason I can think of that you'd want to buy music on DVD unless you're referring to audio DVDs with surround sound.

I have bought full collections of bands such as Led Zeppelin several times over as music technology went from album, to 8 track to casette to CD and so forth. I wish I had kept all the original sleeves my CD's were bought in. I had too much trust in their durability. You know that something else is right around the corner. Another way to make more money on the consumer like me.

From what I understand, the next big thing (which is already happening) will be streaming movies online which completely eliminates the need for discs (whether they be DVDs or Blu-Ray) altogether.

[silvermedalist]

Are you referring to music movies? That's the only reason I can think of that you'd want to buy music on DVD unless you're referring to audio DVDs with surround sound.

From what I understand, the next big thing (which is already happening) will be streaming movies online which completely eliminates the need for discs (whether they be DVDs or Blu-Ray) altogether.

My mistake. I should have said CD's and not DVD's. More interested in CD's for music. But for old classic movies, some from way back in the forties and fifties even, DVD's if they are out there?

[Jahfin]

With services like Spotify, I suspect music will be going the same way as movies in the future, to a totally streaming service. I'm not a member but from what I understand, once you sign up you can have music sent to any device that has an internet connection.

[silvermedalist]

With services like Spotify, I suspect music will be going the same way as movies in the future, to a totally streaming service. I'm not a member but from what I understand, once you sign up you can have music sent to any device that has an internet connection.

Ill check it out. Thanks. I have looked at TCM a bit and they are pretty expensive. I think Amazon may be better if willing to buy used? I would not care if they were used as long as in good shape. Some of the old movies that are very good are not always easy to find. I mean, you can always find something like the Wizard of Oz or Gone with The Wind just as an example or Casablanfca. But some of the old movies that are very good may not be on DVD. May only be on VHS? I will have to see about the streaming. I have a DVD? VHS player and recorder that i watch movies on. I have not yet burned a movie on it. I ha a brand new box of blank CD's that mysteriously disappeared. Hmmm. One teenager in the house. the mystery continues. Looks like I will be sucking it up and going back to the store. This time Ill keep a better watch. I could always burn some off of Direct TV I guess whenever they come on? A lady on the phone from Direct TV said you cant record the ones you buy from demand. I think she gave me a line due to copyright laws. Like they are not being broken every waking moment. I am rather picky with movies. Buf if its a good old movie I like I would rather just buy it or record it if I can. For what they are charging me a month I sure dont feel a bit guilty about it.

[redrum]

Well, I just bought Napoleon Dynamite on dvd for $.49 and the cd soundtrack for $.11 with $3 shipping for each from Amazon.

Both work fine.

[Strider]

Regarding Spotify, here's a couple articles about it that appeared recently in the LA Times:

Spotify coming 'soon' to U.S., albeit no deal (yet) with Warner Music

July 6, 2011

The Swedish are coming! Spotify, the much-touted European digital music service, released a teaser on its website Wednesday saying it will "soon be landing on U.S. shores."

The message, which triggered waves of media coverage across the Web, didn't exactly tell the world anything it didn't already know.

But the move was surprising because Spotify does not yet have the necessary licenses to play songs from Warner Music Group's extensive catalog, according to industry sources knowledgeable with the negotiations. Spotify has secured agreements with the other three major record labels -- Universal Music Group, EMI Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

Warner, which declined to comment, sits on a treasure trove of music from Bruno Mars, Green Day, Led Zeppelin, Cole Porter and Eric Clapton, to name a few.

While nothing stops Spotify from launching without a deal from Warner, it would be hard-pressed to compete against other music services already in the U.S. market with such a gaping hole in its offerings.

Spotify's entry into the U.S. has been much anticipated, largely because the service is so popular in Europe. The Swedish company claims 10 million registered users, including 1 million subscribers who pay a monthly fee for its premium service.

Its popularity partly stems from its easy-to-use interface, which lets people sample millions of songs from their mobile phones or on their computers. Some would argue, however, that Spotify's success with consumers is also due to its generous free offerings, with lets users listen to the ad-supported service for free, albeit with some limitations.

Spotify has not said whether it will offer the same level of free access to consumers in the U.S.

Copyright 2011 Los Angeles Times.

Spotify delivers the future of music now

By Randall Roberts / The Los Angeles Times

Friday, July 29, 2011

LOS ANGELES — On a recent afternoon while driving down Beverly Boulevard, I had 15 million songs sitting in the little tray between the driver and passenger seat. If they were on LP or compact disc, the entire assortment — available via the Spotify application I’d installed on my phone earlier in the day — would fill dozens of tractor trailers and weigh thousands of tons. Sitting next to my morning coffee, the collection jiggled as I hit a bump, but the music coming out of my stereo didn’t skip a beat.

Assuming an average of four minutes per song, I figure that’s roughly 114 years of continuous music at my fingertips. It includes music as diverse as Baroque composer H.I. Biber, pop star Justin Bieber, Emmett Miller, Ma Rainey, Eminem, Sun Ra and Tyler, the Creator. It’s more than anyone could possibly want or need to listen to, but that’s not the point. It’s that it’s all there, a millisecond away.

This year might not be remembered for a revolution in pop music — so far the most sonically surprising thing on the charts has been Chris Brown’s "Look at Me Now." But we’re currently in the middle of something big, a fundamental shift in the ways in which we experience and interact with recorded music. A notion barely fathomable a decade ago — unlimited access to a huge chunk of the world’s recorded music library — has become reality. With this innovation, not only is the entire experience of hearing and learning about music changing, but the ways in which we share our passion is, as well. And if history is any indication, the way in which artists make music will evolve along with it.

With the arrival of Swedish-born, London-based cloud service Spotify on American shores July 14, along with the progress of Google Music, and the impending launch of Apple’s iCloud music service, this year will be remembered as the year in which keeping our own copies of music, be it physically on CDs and LPs, or digitally as MP3s on our hard drives, became a decision, not a necessity, for both casual fans and music obsessives.

No longer do we need to worry about where to store it, nor try to recover it from a fried hard drive, nor even keep it separate from the collections of our friends. We have been nearing this milestone for a while; with a little work, you can listen to virtually any song for free by cobbling together the search results of YouTube, Rhapsody, Mediashare links and Google search results. But Spotify is on everyone’s lips, and for good reason.

What, exactly, is Spotify? It’s an application that offers users access to high-quality streams of music from throughout history, one whose catalog includes the holdings of the world’s four largest record companies and an equally monolithic consortium of independent labels. It’s currently available by invitation as an application you can download to your computer, smartphone, or Web-connected home audio system.

Once installed, any of these 15 million songs are available for free with a double-click. Don’t feel like enduring advertisements? Pay $4.99 a month and they’re gone, or pay $9.99 a month for premium, which also offers better sound quality.

It works and looks like an alterna-world version of iTunes, albeit with different font and color scheme. Launch the app and on the left side of the screen is a list of folders, a combination of libraries and playlists. Click on any of them to access lists of music. For example, a folder called "Local files" contains all of the mp3s on your hard drive — basically, your iTunes music. Another folder is your "inbox," where any one of your followers can send you songs to hear, and vice versa.

The search engine is where the epiphanies arrive; it’s the portal into the 15 million songs. Search on the song "My Favorite Things" and up pops for your immediate gratification the movie soundtrack recording by Julie Andrews, John Coltrane’s post-bop workout, Barbra Streisand’s 2008 version from "Christmas Collection," and Brad Mehldau’s pensive solo piano interpretation, among others. Hit shuffle and time vanishes, all these melodic, interpretive and sonic ideas delivered from the past into the present. Like a particular song in the database? Click on a star and it places the song, album or artist into an unlimited storage folder called "Favorites."

This genre/chronological equanimity changes the way we digest music, opens up the gates on finding music not through radio, MTV, print, blogs or iTunes charts, but through curious wandering and searching through the vast, seemingly endless bounty like spelunkers looking for cave paintings.

Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek said last week that his plan is to expand the company’s library to contain not just western music, but everything. "Our goal is to have all the world’s music — all the African music, all the South American music, all the Asian music," he told an audience in Aspen, Colo., during an onstage conversation at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference. He’s certainly not there yet; there are still gaping holes — the Beatles being the most obvious — and some songs in the library don’t always load on the first try, early launch quirks that will no doubt be remedied.

"It certainly has changed things for me," musician-producer Brian Eno told me a few weeks back regarding cloud services, "because one of the things I notice that often happens now in the studio when I’m working with other people, is that we’ll mention something — ’Do you remember that song by so-and-so? No, you haven’t heard it? Oh, well, listen.’ We suddenly refer to music a lot in a way that never used to happen."

It used to take work to track down old recordings, he added. "But now it’s all there, it’s all equally present, equally current, in a sense, so I think that really changes the way people think about the music that they’re doing. They don’t so much think now of certain styles being unacceptably old-fashioned, and certain other styles being wonderfully, interestingly new. You make your own patchwork quilt."

Spotify, too, features a glorious sharing tool, in the form of personalized playlists that are as easy to swap with all Facebook friends as double clicking. Within seconds you can be listening to a playlist of 100 songs that your boyfriend just made while stationed in Afghanistan.

You can also subscribe to any public playlist’s feed. I’m on one called "Radiohead Office Charts," which is just what it says: an ever-evolving selection of songs currently in rotation in Radiohead’s London offices. The list comprises 185 songs and lasts 14 hours. If someone there drops a new track into the folder, I’ll see it and be able to hear it immediately.

But the coolest thing about Spotify and the promise of access and sharing is also the simplest: This morning when I woke up, I had no inkling that I’d be educating myself for the rest of the day on the music of early electronic composer Pierre Schaeffer. I’m in deep, and can’t wait to see what’s around the next corner.

Visit the Los Angeles Times on the Internet at http://www.latimes.com/.

Copyright 2011, Los Angeles Times.

[silvermedalist]

What do you all think of Red Box and Netflix? Looks like they have kind of given Blockbuster a run for their money? But when I go to a Red Box machine I can never find what I want Netflix you have to lock yourself into a plan, contract it sounds like and for Gods sake who can watch that many movies? I could not find 7 movies in a month worth watching. Unless i went into the archives of old movies and classics. Its all bullshit I tell you. the whole scamming bunch of thieves that they are. And on Demand is even worse. It costs me enough now to watch Direct TV. I am finished with Time Warner and their lies.

[ledzepfvr]

My daughter signed up for Netflix on line just for the full seasons of Star Trek TNG. No complaints so far, and she worked for Hollywood Video for many years. (which is now gone) They have a lot to choose from but some you have to do through the mail. I asked for a particular off beat movie and they did not have it on line. When we want to watch something we hook the computer up to the big screen for the full effect.

[roblindblad]

Ya buy my CD, an instrumental by me on a stage piano and a synthesizer which were both plugged directly into my CD burner (it's like a live show with no mixing or editing going on) it's got 6 new age, 4 piano, 2 techno, 2 orchestral and 1 acoustic guitar totaling 75:28 of instrumental music.

Here's a free listen and download of one of piano pieces

Piano piece # 13

send me $5.00 along with your e-mail and I'll e-mail it to you in MP3 (320 kbps)

if you want it in CD form send 7.00 + $2.50 for postage and handeling in Canada and the United States $7.00 + $5.00 for postage and handeling in areas outside of Canada and the United States by check, money order or Western Union to: Robert Lindblad 7666 rue Édouard, LaSalle, Québec, Canada, H8P 1T4

[Ady]

For albums I either buy the CDs or download them legally from iTunes or Amazon. This depends on the price and whether I've got a lot of the band's other albums on CD. Say a new live Zeppelin album came out, it would have to be bought on CD. When I bought Gunslinger's Hate Songs in E Minor I went for the download from Amazon as it was half the price it cost on CD.

With any download I always make a backup CD incase I lose all the music off my computer and/or iPod. I learned my lesson with Pink Floyd's Ummagumma which I paid £9.99 to download and lost when I had to reformat my iPod and reset my PC to its factory settings when both went kaput.

For movies I use LoveFilm which is the UK equivalent of Netflix. £15.31 a month for 3 DVDs - unlimited (meaning you can send them back when you like) and unlimited access to over 6000 online titles, which I think is great value. I've not felt the need to buy a single movie on DVD since I first started using the service almost 7 years ago.

I love it when I discover a title in the online package that I've wanted to see for a long time and can just watch it there and then. That very thing happened last night when I watched Takashi Miike's The deadly Outlaw: Rekka.

[Electrophile]

Vinyl I get online, since very few brick and mortar stores anymore carry it, whether vintage or new issue. CDs I buy online as well, as it's usually cheaper. I don't buy movies anymore, since there's so few released that I have any interest in seeing, whether in the theaters or at home. If something really catches my eye, or there's a movie I do want to see that I missed in theaters, I just get it online. I seldom buy anything in stores anymore aside from clothes, food, and shoes. All entertainment things, like music, movies, computer accessories, and assorted knick-knacks, I just get online.

[silvermedalist]

Amazon seems to have some good prices. You can buy used movies there. TCM though a good selection of the old classics want too much for them. So I think if I am to buy some old classics worth owning, I may go with Amazon. Now the library has a great selection and for fifty cents will have just about anything shipped in from a different library if they dont have it. I did rent the 91 version of Madame Bovary to compare it again to the 49 version. The 91 version is in French with captioning. Good but must say the actors in the 49 film were overall better. All the fuss over Citizen Kane has led me to rent it and see for myself. Always rated as one of the best all time movies, I will give it a watch after the wedding. Have to leave town soon for that. I have a cat sitter. Ha. I hope those used movies are worth buying? At Amazon? Some old classics are just worth owning in my opinion. I dont like to buy movies either. But some like Gone with the Wind and Its a Wonderful Life I will revisit from time to time. Xmas movies expecially. I am not an expert on this I Pod thing. So I am debating about that or an MP3 ? I have bought Led Zeppeliin's full collection more times than I can count. And Pink Floyd. And the Who. And the Stones and Beatles.

[Jahfin]

If you already own CDs all you have to do is rip them to mp3's using whatever audio software you already have. I use a Mac so iTunes came with it so it was only a matter of ripping my collection to iTunes so I can play those albums on my iPod. I'm still a fan of the physical product (whether it be vinyl or CD) so I don't purchase downloads. Lots (but not all) vinyl records come with a code so you can go to a website and download the mp3 version of the album. I resisted mp3's until I was gifted with a iPod Shuffle several years ago. Now, I don't find myself hauling around a ton of CDs with me in my car anymore so making the transition was definitely worth it. Now, I have nearly my entire collection of CDs (and then some) at my fingertips. While the sound quality is inferior, as someone that is not an audiophile, I don't really notice it. I see it as no different than the lack of sound quality I put up with during the years I used a cassette player in my car. Since my car stereo is not iPod friendly, I just use one of those cassette adaptors. Works fine until I decide to upgrade my receiver the next time. I'm sure by then that CD players and cassette decks will have since become a thing of the past.

[Virginia]

I joined Spotify recently (free account); I think it's pretty cool! It mingles my iTunes account with their stuff; as long as I'm at my laptop I can listen to whatever I want. I can also share with my FB friends (and can choose what to share).

I occasionally download individual songs; but have only downloaded one entire album from iTunes and that was because it's not widely available for purchase in stores here (and you could download the liner notes as a .pdf file). (White Stripes Under Great Northern Lights).

I also pull CDs into my iTunes collection. Haven't bought vinyl since the late 80s.

For movies, we still buy dvds at the store; we haven't gone the route of Netflix etc. yet, but I think that's coming. We still have a couple of brick and mortar video stores nearby and try to go there as much as possible.

(Edited to add, I prefer to buy media from actual stores, so I can see it in hand before buying; vs buying from amazon etc.)

[silvermedalist]

If you already own CDs all you have to do is rip them to mp3's using whatever audio software you already have. I use a Mac so iTunes came with it so it was only a matter of ripping my collection to iTunes so I can play those albums on my iPod. I'm still a fan of the physical product (whether it be vinyl or CD) so I don't purchase downloads. Lots (but not all) vinyl records come with a code so you can go to a website and download the mp3 version of the album. I resisted mp3's until I was gifted with a iPod Shuffle several years ago. Now, I don't find myself hauling around a ton of CDs with me in my car anymore so making the transition was definitely worth it. Now, I have nearly my entire collection of CDs (and then some) at my fingertips. While the sound quality is inferior, as someone that is not an audiophile, I don't really notice it. I see it as no different than the lack of sound quality I put up with during the years I used a cassette player in my car. Since my car stereo is not iPod friendly, I just use one of those cassette adaptors. Works fine until I decide to upgrade my receiver the next time. I'm sure by then that CD players and cassette decks will have since become a thing of the past.

I once had a good set of Koss headphones and the sound was incredible. I just bought some speakers for my reciever and can now play cds and dvds through these speakers. The speakers are the key to good sound I say. I dont know much about I Pods. Are you using an earpiece for them pretty much or no? A good set of kick ass speakers are necessary to really get the most out of listening to a band like Led Zeppelin. I have never used an MP3 player. So its all new to me. I wish to buy a new acoustic guitar amp soon. But must get my priorities in order. Like, Wedding, wife, trip, etc. Only so much of the green stuff to go around.

[Jahfin]

When I listen to my music through my computer I listen using a set of external speakers. I did have some Koss brand speakers but when I upgraded my system a year or so ago I switched over to the Creative brand. Still, they're nothing state of the art but they're definitely an improvement over the built-in speakers that came with my Mac. Once I acquire a new turntable I'm sure I'll be doing much more listening through my home stereo system which is a whole separate unit from my computer.

As far as the iPod, I rarely listen to it using headphones but when I do, I use the old school style that cover your ears, not the earbud type. Mostly, I use it in my car via a cassette adaptor.