Interesting reads. Should we be buying cassette tape players (boom boxes, Walkmans, if they can be found), turntables, CD players and so forth to have for playing our music collections in 50 years (yes, I exaggerate here re age, but who knows, we all may be part bionic by then listening to music through our ear implants). I don't have anything stored in "the cloud" but do have tons of music backed up to external hard drives along with hundreds of CDs, record albums, tapes and some 45 rpm records. Guess I'll have to buy a spare computer now so I can access the hard drives sometime down the road. My daughter is big on Spotify and whatever it is Amazon has regarding music and its Alexa thing. She's amazed I still listen to CDs, records, tapes. These kids today, what can I say?

[www.theatlantic.com]

[www.bbc.com]

50 years? Maybe soon you could download it all onto an internal chip and take it with you.

Message received. Print your photos and buy vinyl!

Quote
Rokyfan

Maybe soon you could download it all onto an internal chip and take it with you.

1 TB microSD-Card = 1428 CDs of 80 mins [700 MB]


[www.Amazon.co.uk] - £140.00

Data on Flash storage rots. One day it will just come up "can't read that file" I suggest having several copies but there's still not much to do about it when it occurs.

Doesn't "rot".

Forever is a long time.

jb

There's no better expression for it. I guess at some point the structures are too small to work reliably. Remember when such a card had 256MB and it was considered a lot?

Iam 54 years old, born in the vinyl and tapes era, in my case I dont have Spotify or any other streaming services, I copied all my cds to a external hard drive in the .wav format and connected my pc to my Yamaha receiver. This is the way I listen music. Can't listen music in mp3, imagine all the work and creativity of people like Coltrane, Neil Young, Beatles, Stones, etc, etc reduced to a poor quality format.

Bye
Fernando

Quote
Nikkei

Remember when such a card had 256MB and it was considered a lot?

In 1998 a Digital Camera had 32 MB Flash-Memory and in 2001 an 1 GB CF-Card costed $800.

The Music Never Stopped [www.youtube.com]

Quote
Nikkei
There's no better expression for it. I guess at some point the structures are too small to work reliably. Remember when such a card had 256MB and it was considered a lot?

What does 'rot' mean exactly? Is it degrading? Is it the materials being used in the card itself that is 'rotting'?

If that is the case, couldn't other more stable materials be used? Vinyl records don't have that issue-though degrades with each play...I know tape becomes brittle over time, but there you have 'moving parts'.

I mean that I have folders full of photos and randomly, some of them seem to turn into files that can't be read. It happened a few times with music, too. That was tracks I basically never listen to, I noticed it when I tried to copy the folder and it got stuck on the defective file. Your suggestion about more stable materials is in my line of thinking, but I'm afraid that would go along with less capacity. Imagine how tiny the single bit must be in order to fit 1TB on a fingernail-sized flash chip. I have heard that those are basically are all built the same way on a silicium plate and how much the chip can actually hold is determined via an assessment software. But I'm not in any way an expert, can only speak from experience. I've concluded the best way moving forward is having several copies of everything, both on regular hard disks and flash storage.

Quote
treaclefingers

What does 'rot' mean exactly? Is it degrading?

"Data degradation is the gradual corruption of computer data due to an accumulation of non-critical failures in a data storage device. The phenomenon is also known as data decay, data rot or bit rot" - [en.Wikipedia.org] .

How to avoid bit rot: [www.TechAdvisor.com] .

This is more worrying :

[www.nytimes.com]

Quote
dcba

This is more worrying : [www.nytimes.com]

"The Day the Music Burned" - 2008 archive fire at Universal Music - see also here: [iorr.org] .

I don't know what it all means. I started my CD collection in 1988 through a record club. They were cheap. I remember all the horror stories about CDs at the time, how they were going to rot. My James Taylor Greatest Hits from 1988 sounds exactly the same 33 years on. My West German copy of the Stones first album still sounds incredible.

CD sound has actually improved over time, with SACD, Blu Ray, and SHM CDs. I don't know when flash drives first came out. Does anyone have music on a flash drive over 20 years old? How does it sound?

Quote
24FPS

I don't know when flash drives first came out. Does anyone have music on a flash drive over 20 years old? How does it sound?

Flash-Memory's predecessor was (E)EPROM - PCs store their BIOS since decades therein. Flash-Memory as mass-storage became widespread from ca. 1998 onwards with Digital Cameras & MP3-Players and from ca. 2008 as Solid-State-Drives (SSD). Music on a 20-year-old Flash-Drive would still sound the same. I have 25-27 years old Computers which BIOS (EPROM and Flash) still works fine. More about Flash-Memory - [en.Wikipedia.org] .

Mike full on serious blues collector
Found rare 78 in The States that he'd
spent years searching for .....

Valuable carried it with him... didnt let
it out of his sight but then accidently dropped
record & box at airport just before boarding plane .....SS..S..SHATTERED !!!!!



ROCKMAN

Quote
24FPS
I don't know what it all means. I started my CD collection in 1988 through a record club. They were cheap. I remember all the horror stories about CDs at the time, how they were going to rot. My James Taylor Greatest Hits from 1988 sounds exactly the same 33 years on. My West German copy of the Stones first album still sounds incredible.

CD sound has actually improved over time, with SACD, Blu Ray, and SHM CDs. I don't know when flash drives first came out. Does anyone have music on a flash drive over 20 years old? How does it sound?

The digital degradation doesn't make the music sound progressively worse. It would just mean that a file spontaneousle comes up unreadable due to storage failures on the bit level. It's either not an issue at all for years or it comes up as an issue of not being able to play a particular song. The wikipedia link posted by Irix does a good job of explaining it.

i'm 29 and i prefer physical media audio & video and i have hundreds and hundreds of 8 tracks plus hundres more cassettes, records, cds, and even a dozen or so wax cylinders (though no way to play those) and i have a ton of it backed up on my computer but i mostly at home listen to phsyical media and if i go for a walk i bring my samsung my my and listen to cassettes and if i'm in the car going somewhere i'll listen through my phone can't wait to see what condition my tapes will be in after another 50 years

Quote

Re: OT: The day the music died new
Posted by: Irix ()
Date: July 21, 2021 20:55

Quote
dcba

This is more worrying : [www.nytimes.com]

"The Day the Music Burned" - 2008 archive fire at Universal Music - see also here: [iorr.org] .

absolutely unforgivable if for nothing else then the chess stuff
all the more reason for whoever has the rest of the ffso to release it sooner rather then later cause its obvious these idiots can't be trusted to safeguard our cultural heritage for future generations

Quote
ProfessorWolf

can't wait to see what condition my tapes will be in after another 50 years

Looking like that ....


Oxide-/Sticky-shed syndrome , [ReelToReelTech.com]

haven't got any that bad but i have 50 plus year old 8 tracks that still sound great namely jimi hendrix smash hits, otis redding whisky a go go, beggars banquet, and a couple more

Got over 2,000 cd's and not a one of them won't play. They're gonna outlast me...unless I've got the same DNA as Keef or Willie.

Quote
ProfessorWolf

haven't got any that bad but i have 50 plus year old 8 tracks that still sound great

Yep: oxide-/sticky-shed can occur, but doesn't have to - like Disc rot or bit rot.

Teri Landi (ABKCO Chief Audio Engineer) said in 2016 about the RS-Master-Tapes: “They’re generally in excellent shape, which is pretty amazing for 50 year old material. There was no oxide shedding here, despite the fact that the Stones did utilise Scotch 201. We were lucky." -- [TheAudiophileMan.com] .

Keep em in a cool dry place.

i do and i clean, lubricate, & repair them

Quote
shadooby
Got over 2,000 cd's and not a one of them won't play. They're gonna outlast me...unless I've got the same DNA as Keef or Willie.

This is my choice, too. It's simple, easy, and suits me. I've always like physical media... I have a few thousand books, too. (Happened on a beat 1st edition 1st printing Huckleberry Finn for $3 a few years ago. I had it restored and loved re-reading it in a copy Twain himself had held. (He personally inspected every 1st printing volume.)) I just make sure I have plenty of ways to play my cds, and I'm set til I die. Beyond that, I don't care. Have no kids and both of my nephews are musical philistines. I fed them the greats 100s of times and it never once took, so fugg 'em, they're lost causes.

I like this choice. It's saved me a lot of time futzing on computers trying to keep up with digital back-ups, and I believe musicians should be paid for their art anyway.

****
I'm down in Virginia
with your Cousin Lou

The day the music died ..................is the day you lost interest in music

__________________________

Quote
Fernandobsas
Iam 54 years old, born in the vinyl and tapes era, in my case I dont have Spotify or any other streaming services, I copied all my cds to a external hard drive in the .wav format and connected my pc to my Yamaha receiver. This is the way I listen music. Can't listen music in mp3, imagine all the work and creativity of people like Coltrane, Neil Young, Beatles, Stones, etc, etc reduced to a poor quality format.

Bye
Fernando

I ripped all mine to wma files just so I could keep my full collection with me at all times, but I keep the CDs close by when I want to listen to them in fairly high fidelity.

My family talked me into a Spotify account; it's a pain, I was hoping I could easily copy a playlist to it, but no. There's ways that may get you close but way too many missing tracks or misidentified tracks leading to stuff you've never heard of. Though you can upload mp3's via a pc but then you have to then download them to your other devices on the same network. It's all just a major hassle. But they all wanted it so we can collaborate on playlists for trips. I guess it at least does that but took a lot of work to do so.

Quote
dmay
Interesting reads. Should we be buying cassette tape players (boom boxes, Walkmans, if they can be found), turntables, CD players and so forth to have for playing our music collections in 50 years (yes, I exaggerate here re age, but who knows, we all may be part bionic by then listening to music through our ear implants). I don't have anything stored in "the cloud" but do have tons of music backed up to external hard drives along with hundreds of CDs, record albums, tapes and some 45 rpm records. Guess I'll have to buy a spare computer now so I can access the hard drives sometime down the road. My daughter is big on Spotify and whatever it is Amazon has regarding music and its Alexa thing. She's amazed I still listen to CDs, records, tapes. These kids today, what can I say?

[www.theatlantic.com]

[www.bbc.com]

It will be a medical science miracle if I'm here in 50 years trying to play music!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2021-07-22 17:45 by kovach.