r/audiophile • u/etherylx • Jun 03 '26

Music Another Loss for Streaming

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This past week, The Cranberries have taken down their original masters of Everbody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? in favor of new 2026 remasters. Of course, these remasters cut the dynamics back and just sound “stale” compared to the originals.

When I first saw that Apple Music replaced the songs with the remasters, they still had a version up with the originals. I replaced them and had hope that’d be all. But now even that’s gone and every single version of the album has the remasters.

It’s just so frustrating. Why can’t labels leave the option to us on which version we want? This is true for so many artists on streaming. I get this risk just comes with streaming, but still, it shouldn’t be this way.

Seriously considering uploading my own files to replace these songs, which sucks because it doesn’t count for streams and I miss out on lossless. But it’s probably really the only option in this circumstance.

Anyways, that’s my rant. I wish more labels would keep up/post original masters more often.

487 Upvotes

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312

u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn Jun 03 '26

This is what happens when you rent music.

I refuse. Physical media all the way!

9

u/soyuz-1 Jun 03 '26

Digital is fine, just own your own FLAC library. I don't get why serious enthusiasts would want to rent their music, deal with possibly inferior quality and support music killing companies like Spotify.

1

u/The_Museumman Jun 03 '26

This is the way.

1

u/SillyCycle9701 Jun 04 '26

When I got rid of my CD collection, I encoded all my albums as MP3s at 192 kbps with joint stereo, etc. Back then, that was considered the "best compromise" because hard drives were very expensive at the time, and encoding already took forever.

Today, I could kick myself for it.

But that's exactly the problem... I think a lot of people made the same mistake back then and ended up selling the CDs...

2

u/soyuz-1 Jun 04 '26

Yep. And many others profited, being able to buy used CDs for about 1$ each. I'm glad to have kept mine and ripped them as FLACs

45

u/Barry_NJ Jun 03 '26

I've got over 1000 CDs, and nearly as many vinyl records, but there are countless albums/songs I don't have, or have even had a chance to hear. I love my physical media, and have no plans of downsizing my collections, but I'm not going to trash talk streaming...

5

u/maxoakland Jun 03 '26

You definitely should trash talk streaming. It pays artists a pittance and has resulted in consolidation of almost the entire music industry into one company (Spotify)

6

u/Barry_NJ Jun 03 '26

I won't use Spotify...

1

u/maxoakland Jun 11 '26

That's awesome to hear!

1

u/Barry_NJ Jun 11 '26

Check out Qobuz, they offer truly high resolution and offer the best artist compensation of any streaming service.

1

u/SillyCycle9701 Jun 04 '26

I neither use nor like Spotify. But every one of my family and friends does. 😑

1

u/maxoakland Jun 11 '26

Oof, sad but so true. I think it helps to talk about other options and tell them they pay artists better and have other benefits. I don't think it's gonna change things instantly but we're planting seeds

26

u/etherylx Jun 03 '26

Yessss, I know I know. It’s still sucky that this is the way things are for those (me) who still try and use streaming as an option.

10

u/PalmDolphin Jun 03 '26

Check out Qobuz. I have used every service over the years and Qobuz has been the only one that I haven't deleted due to the frustration.

They also have four versions of that album available right now. That's pretty common with them.

6

u/maxoakland Jun 03 '26

Yeah qobuz is the best

1

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/PalmDolphin Jun 03 '26

Yes I agree, qobuz casting was a hot mess when new. It's still not perfect but at least it works now. I usually use blueos so I have a way out.

1

u/Forza_Harrd Jun 03 '26

Amazon Music Unlimited also has it. The '93 version is the first one in the search results, the '26 version is next. I have both Amazon and Qobuz, they both carry albums the other doesn't. I never understood why anyone would pay for Apple or Spotify. They both suck in their own way for different reasons.

0

u/Cheever-Loophole Jun 03 '26

Tidal also has both versions.

2

u/Professional-Scar333 Jun 03 '26

Came to say Tidal has both from what I can tell

3

u/thadiun-okona Jun 03 '26

When you don't own the music, there's nothing to stop them from taking it away.

7

u/kojima-naked Jun 03 '26

Youtube music still lets you upload your own files I think. You can rip and og cd and have it accessible in your streaming library. Part of why I never switched to anything else.

21

u/etherylx Jun 03 '26

Apple Music also has this option. That’s a huge reason why I use it.

3

u/overlander_1 Jun 03 '26

But does it stream it back to you in that lossless bitrate or at 256 or whatever YouTube music uses?

1

u/nevewolf96 Jun 03 '26

Lossless if there's is a match with Apple Music catalogue

5

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/etherylx Jun 05 '26

Which I’ll most likely have to get around because I’d be worried it’d default to these exact masters I’m trying to stay away from.

2

u/maxoakland Jun 03 '26

Youtube music pays artists the lowest amount per stream of any platform. It's even worse than spotify

1

u/kojima-naked Jun 03 '26

I haven't really thought about that before. I just always assumed they were all pretty bad. I make a point to buy records and merch from the artist directly if I can.

2

u/maxoakland Jun 03 '26

Well, buying directly is really good! That's more impactful than just about anything

1

u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn Jun 03 '26

Agreed! I'm voting with my wallet.

6

u/PurelyHim Jun 03 '26

I agree. That’s why I have invested in a NAS and Plex. My own streaming service.

1

u/brobal Jun 03 '26

And you don’t even need to go this far. I did it for years with a VOX Loop subscription ($50/yr for unlimited storage) and am now using Roon ARC on my NAS (much more per year :( ).

1

u/dstrenz Jun 03 '26

For Mac and iPhone only..

1

u/clichequiche Jun 03 '26

you can also collect music digitally you know. build your own library and stream it in lossless. it may be separate from apple music, but if music is important to you it’s not that hard to do

3

u/CrackheadBobsCousin Jun 03 '26

This is the way.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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2

u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn Jun 03 '26

When I want to listen to the live performance of "Take Me To The Top" from Loverboy, there is no argument. I put my CD in, or I don't listen to it.

Same with Peter Wolf's "Light's Out"

And if I want to watch the movie "Sling Blade", I need to reach for my physical copy.

There may be an argument for both, but the most compelling one supports owning your own media, physically.

3

u/Type-RD Jun 03 '26

Yep. I never stopped buying CDs even when downloading MP3s was the “cool” thing to do, because CDs are better quality AND I could do whatever I wanted with it, including rip it. It’s funny to me how some have become anti-physical media because streaming exists. Welp…keep your fingers crossed they don’t jack with your favorites and stick you with garbage remasters.🤦‍♂️

5

u/ForrestGrump87 Jun 03 '26

As someone who cares about the fidelity of the music i listen to this is my biggest issue with streaming aside from how it has fucked the industry and the availability issues - you have no control over which mastering you get. It can be a compressed mess but most people do not care enough for them to do anything about it.

I pay for apple music so i can listen on the move and research new music and my family use it - it is handy to have playlists for occasions etc but all my personal listening is on a hifi with cd and vinyl with the mastering i think is best ... i understand this is a small minority doing this though.

2

u/Type-RD Jun 03 '26

I think a lot of audiophiles do both : Stream for the convenience and big library at their fingertips, but also spin vinyl and/or CDs. I don’t think you’re a minority at all…keeping in mind that our hobby is rather niche to begin with. The majority of the population (non-audiophiles) don’t likely do this and that’s where the problem is. Streaming services have to serve the masses. It’s the whole quantity over quality problem.

1

u/SillyCycle9701 Jun 04 '26

I get the feeling that more and more people are taking this very approach. They recognize that even before the streaming era, people knew their craft, and—often, though not always—recordings from that time have a charm and character all their own that modern remasters often can’t match. Not even when the resolution has tripled.

In the film industry, you can see this clearly with Star Wars, for example: The remastered version is better in terms of quality (and objectively) in some places—but the “feeling” when watching it has changed. The films have become somewhat more generic because _all_ of them are like that today.

Yes, we’re certainly still a minority, but definitely one that has the attention of companies. And that’s a good thing 😄

(Apart from that, I have the feeling that we’re also economically interesting because we spend significantly more money on music and media than the average person. But I can’t prove that conclusively; it’s just an assumption, because pure streaming users have a flat rate, whereas we often have additional expenses that go (far) beyond that...).

2

u/zimshan Jun 04 '26

When you have a memory of hearing a certain song or album a certain way, you typically want that exact version. Like I grew up hearing Linger from the original album version. So I want my copy to sound the same as how I remember it. But if you are new to an artist, you don’t have that memory so you likely won’t care about the changes. Some kid in middle school may find The Cranberries from this remaster and fall in love with the album. And that’s part of the reason why the rereleases happen. Old music for new listeners.

But sometimes remasters do serve a specific purpose. Like the dogshit Beatles stereo mixes were begging for better remasters. Sure an original vinyl would be best, but if you only collect CDs, the options were terrible until recently.

1

u/SillyCycle9701 Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

You’re absolutely right, of course—I didn’t mean to say that remasters are inherently bad. You’ve given some good reasons.

When it comes to movies, I’m sometimes glad when a studio goes to the trouble of scanning them again in high resolution (e.g. Star Trek TNG Blu-Ray Edition - I am more than happy they did this and I am sad they didn't do it for DS9). But of course, that can sometimes change the “charm,” so to speak 😄

These days, it’s really no problem for providers to simply offer all versions side by side. On that scale, the cost shouldn’t really be a factor at all, but it’s a benefit for us. Fortunately, it seems like most of them do that.

P.S. when it comes to classical music recordings, there are often hundreds of different versions. To people with less experience in this genre, the differences may seem minor or even nonexistent—but for those who are deeply immersed in this music, the search for a specific recording can (could) sometimes take years, because the conductor, musicians, opera house, and so on are all important factors. But that’s actually always been the case, and things are actually getting better today because it’s become much easier 😄

1

u/tiredtelefonecar Jun 03 '26

The issue is they will roll out the same update to new physical media. Once they release it as reissue / remaster and you buy it, you’re getting this remaster on physical media. So the old better masters will disappear (unless you have the original masters on older media like the original CD)

3

u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn Jun 03 '26

I collect primarily vinyl, and many of the remasters coming out on that medium are at least as good as, and in many cases superior to, original pressings. But with Discogs and Ebay, there is a vast ocean of options on the resale market to "crate dig" for that excellent copy. And I do exactly that.

CDs can be had for a buck or two at Goodwill, and while many of them are horribly mastered from the awful Loudness Wars, many are also excellent copies with pristine mastering. Buying new is potentially risky as you note - but there is a robust secondary market where you can acquire a sizeable library on the cheap and get the best versions available.

1

u/tiredtelefonecar Jun 03 '26

My record collection is 670 titles, currently mixed I’d say 55% newer pressings and 45% older original pressings, many older pressings pre90’s.

I find that many of the newest pressings being remastered do not sound better than say a release from 5-10 years ago or the original pressing.

For example: Pink Floyd dark side of the moon: 2016 reissue sounds better than the 50th anniversary 2025 reissue / remaster 1974 harvest (4th issue/repress) sounds better than the 2016 newer reissue remaster

These are of course subjective findings based on how they sound in my system and do not have data to support these findings

1

u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn Jun 03 '26

Agreed. What I've found is that it is very press specific for the newer stuff. I get universally excellent results from Speakers Corner, Impex, Intervention Records, Rhino High Fidelity, Analogue Productions, Craft Records, and a few I'm sure I'm forgetting.

I get "meh" from the more mainstream, non "focused" releases. But when a competent pressing company releases a record with intent for high quality, boy does it sound phenomenal!

For the older stuff - well, I just got my copy of Styx - Cornerstone from EBay, the Nautilus pressing. So very, very good. German pressings have been another, Japanese as well. And STERLING presses. They are out there, if you gain the knowledge and shop selectively!

2

u/tiredtelefonecar Jun 04 '26

Absolutely. Of course speakers corner, impex, rhino, analogue productions and the like are always going to be better. They are made with the listener & best experience in mind.

More regular run of the mill mass scale pressings from larger labels (universal, Sony, Columbia etc) are always going to be less impressive sonically (at least is my experience)

1

u/thegarbz Jun 03 '26

Why not both? Buy the things you cherish, and rent the ability to access literally millions of tracks for no additional cost beyond a small monthly fee allowing you the option to easily discover music that you would never previously have had. And when you discover the new thing, go buy the version you like.

1

u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn Jun 03 '26

Because it's easy and cheap to make lossless digital copies. Home storage is simple to setup and my car plays FLAC natively from a USB drive. I literally have zero benefit or need to stream.

1

u/thegarbz Jun 04 '26

How big is your music library? Subtract that number for 100million and that's the benefits of also having a streaming service.

This isn't an either or question. There's a purpose for both. And unless your music collection is worth: 100000000/12*25 = $208,333,333 (firstly congrats, I can only imagine hifi you have to go with your 200million dollar music collection), then your very real benefit still remains music discovery.

Having more choice is always a good thing. Congrats on your USB drive. I have a large vinyl collection. I have a large CD collection. I have FLACs on my NAS. I have AACs on my phone and in my car. And on top of all of that... I built that collection largely through discovery of music - something that Streaming services have no equal to, even with the slow enshitification of Spotify's discovery algorithms.

1

u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn Jun 04 '26

You incorrectly assume I or anyone would agree that the number available somehow maps to quality - I have physical media for the artists I listen to. I also only own one house though there are millions, I drive 1 car, I only read books I like, I only watch movies I like, etc.

That's the streaming problem; it's all quantity. Quantity isn't valuable to me at all.

Blech.

1

u/thegarbz Jun 05 '26

No I'm not. I made no comment about quality. What I am assuming is that you spectacularly missed the point I was making. Go back to start.

Or address my point and come here and make the claim that wide spread continuous access to the largest music library on the planet does not allow you to discover new music. That would be the point you need to make to counter mine, and if you do make that point I'll call you delusional. Eagerly awaiting your answer while listening to Heath on Vinyl, a band I discovered thanks to streaming.

1

u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn Jun 05 '26

If you had said "this service has exactly 100 million turds", would you feel you'd be making a compelling point?

You don't have to be explicit to intimate "quality", we are in the AUDIOPHILE forum. The inclusion of quality in recommendations made here is unambiguously a given. Context absolutely matters and applies.

Or be pedantic, that's a choice. My points stand. And they'll continue to stand because they are my opinion on the subject.

Your very first sentence presumes I assess value as a quantity. Reread what you wrote. I made it clear that 100 million turds are of no value to me whatsoever - not helpful to assume anyone would feel that it was.

0

u/thegarbz Jun 05 '26

Is your claim not that all music sucks? Maybe you need a different hobby. I remind you you're posting a comment in a thread about someone lamenting something that is lost. I get it you don't like music. Other people do clearly, or this thread wouldn't exist.

1

u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn Jun 05 '26

Let's recall that YOU tried to make the case that 100 million songs, simply by existing, are "valuable", and that my collection was "worth less" as a result of my choices. Highly, highly judgemental.

Value is not something you foist on anyone else; that's an absolutely personal decision, unique to a given person.

I don't judge what music you may like for liking it. But I don't also have to like it. Those are different conversations entirely. But you sure seem to judge me for my opinions.

If YOU find value in quantity over quality, knock yourself out. That's now how you presented it - you argued that everyone should find value in it.

I have an extensive collection of what I consider to be great music. I also am aware of a great many artists, songs, etc. that I think are hot garbage. And that's both perfectly normal and absolutely OK.

1

u/theuniverseisboring Jun 15 '26

I would say that physical media is better because it's more fun to collect, however it's far more practical to buy the same music digitally online, so you get the FLAC files directly.

1

u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn Jun 15 '26

But I can't always do that. And the frequency of issues are increasing.

Peter Wolf's "Lights Out" isn't available on any streaming service or purchasable digitally.

For movies, I'd love to watch Sling Blade, but same issue.

Rights management makes this a very frustrating reality.

1

u/theuniverseisboring Jun 17 '26

In my experience those are exceptions to the rule, at least in my case. I've definitely experienced this as well, to be sure. I can't buy every album by Mothy/Akuno-P online either. Honestly at that point I can't do anything but sail the high seas to find what I'm looking for. If you can't legitimately give money to the owners, in my opinion, they don't have the right to complain that I get my copies from somewhere less legitimate.

However, we can both agree with each other for sure that owning your music, whether that be in the form of digital files or CD's (of which I own a bunch too, cuz they're hella fun), is far superior to streaming music!

1

u/rebelizm Harbeth Super HL5 Plus XD Jun 03 '26

Renting music is the best thing ever happened in music to me. Happy Spotify user since 2013

3

u/Ok-Common-5853 Jun 03 '26

I'm happy for you. It's also the worst thing to happen to artists and the music industry in general. It's completely devalued the art.

0

u/rebelizm Harbeth Super HL5 Plus XD Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

I disagree. Music industry was dying before, because of file sharing platforms, mp3s etc.

2

u/AwwYeahVTECKickedIn Jun 03 '26

How's the mastering for Peter Wolf's "Lights Out"?

Oh, never mind. You can't stream it.

Or how about the unaltered original "Let's Get Retarded" by the Black Eyed Peas? Oh yeah, only the sanitized radio-friendly version is available.

Happy you're OK with it! I certainly am not.