I started with records. I had albums and single 45s. I had quite an extensive collection of music compared to my friends mainly because my dad was an avid record collector. I even had a battery powered Close N Play and stacks of those plastic barrels with handles to tote the singles.
Then I had a recorded collection of reel-to-reel tapes. I had a mono reel-to-reel player. I spent hours with a microphone playing my records in my bedroom while recording them to tape. Later in life, I bought a high end quadrophonic recorder and tried to recapture those early days by recording myself playing my guitar. I was able to isolate and merge tracks with 1&4 being a song and 2&3 being my guitar. That is when I figured out that unless it is my own composition, I can't play guitar worth a damn.
My first car had an 8-track. I also had a Crazy-8 battery operated player. I rebought a lot of my record collection so I could play it in my car. My car had an AM radio. I even bought an FM-Converter for it.
My home stereo advanced to 8-track as well. I had an 8-track recorder. Even at that early age I realized I was buying music that I already had.
Then, again, everything switched to cassette. Again, I found myself buying my collection over again. I had racks upon racks of cassettes. I had a dual deck recorder, a car stereo and a walkman. The scratch from records turned into the hiss of tape.
When CDs finally came out, I figured this was the last time I was going to need to replace my collection. I had a muti-CD player for my stereo, a multistack player for my car and a walkman. I started rebuying the music I had already paid for once again. It was crystal clear. I had towers of CDs, book shelves full of CDs, Cd album folders for my car, Cds, Cds, Cds. So many Cds I had trouble storing them for lack of space.
Then, one day I inserted a CD into my computer and ripped it to electronic format. I hooked my computer sound output to my stereo and bingo bango, I was hooked. I started ripping my collection to my computer.
I ripped so much music to my computer I was running out of space. I started buying hard drives and drive enclosures. Then my processor failed and I lost a bunch of music. When I bought my new computer (with a much larger hard drive) I started again. Then I took my old hard drive out of my bad computer and put it in a drive enclosure. I found out I actually didn't lose all that music, it was just inaccessible till I could read the drive.
I went rip crazy. As I ripped a CD, I gave the CD away or just threw it away. I started ripping other people's CDs, went to the library and rented CDs to rip. I bought patch cords and programs that allowed me to rip records and tapes. I got all my music converted to electronic format. The shelves and stacks of media were gone. My entire music collection that once took up huge amounts of space now fit on drives the space of a few novels.
I burned some Cds of my favorite songs and albums for my car stereo, then I saw a stereo at the store that had a USB input. It also carried the ability to use my phone in hands free thru my stereo speakers. I was already uploading music to my phone. For awhile I used my phone as a music source in my car. Then I found miniature thumb drives with higher capacity and started copying my music favorites to the thumb drive for my car. But, much to my surprise, I also realized that I could put audiobooks and podcasts on that thumb drive and listen to stories on long trips just as easily as listening to music.
All this time, thru all these format changes I was losing bits and pieces of my collection. Music that I had already bought, many times. I started searching for songs that I was missing. I found the Yadogg Google Search querry.
Yadogg » Neat Little Google Trick for Free Music
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htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “artist or song”
I started finding my missing music already in electronic format and started downloading to complete my collections again. I really didn't see it as stealing because the artists and music companies already got my money many times over for the same music.
Even using the file indexes I was having problems finding all my music.
I started searching for free mp3s. I was gullible, I believed those promises of 500 free mp3s when you try this or that. I got loaded down with spyware, fought off a few viruses and learned how to protect myself.
I started finding REAL free mp3 sites. I never really went much for torrents, to me torrents are fraught with too many hazards. I stuck with html downloads.
Of the hundreds of free mp3 sites I have used only one remains that I even consider a source, but its not really a very good one.
CLICK ME ▷ Free Music Download 320Kbps (Official)
I now mainly convert the best possible stream of Youtube to mp3. I've found that if I correctly spell and search, YouTube has nearly every possible song available. There are still a few I can't find.
Stores will stop selling CDs. Eventually, they will stop selling DVDs. You can still buy records, reel tapes, 8-track tapes and cassettes plus all the machines that play them or record them. Cds will still be able to be found but not in variety stores, only specialty stores.
Music is music. It is played by the performer. We can't bring the performers to our homes to play for us.
The song remains the same, only how it is played to you changed. I bought the record because I like the song. In essence, I didn't buy the record, I bought the ability to listen to the song I like. The greedy music industry know they can change the method of playing my favorite song and people will rebuy something they already paid for. I've done it too many times.
Enough is enough!
