I am not a fan of Streaming or "The Cloud" and last week was reminded why: https://mixmag.net/read/myspace-lost-music-data-news https://variety.com/2019/music/news/myspace-music-data-loss-50-million-songs-1203165649/ Meanwhile i have been checking out my Technics Sl-5 record deck using a Ktel Album from 1972, and I am sure many of you have tapes from the 1980s that still play perfectly.
Interesting, more scary is the mention it was bought to "mine the data" of it's millions of users, mostly ex-users. It's sad to see some of these historical looks into the past internet get erased. I don't think the Wayback Machine does dynamic forums very well so there's probably no way to recover old posts. Nice to hear your SL-5 is doing good, K-Tel was located here years ago, I think the guys that invented RollerBlades in the 70's bought the building but later sold out to K2 and they moved out of town. Most of the old K-Tel Albums used a cover band but it was the only way to get all of he hit singles at the time.
In the UK K-Tel and Ronco were the only compilations that actually used "Original Hits - Original Stars". We also got lots of covers under the "Top of the Pops" and similar series. What K-Tel did used to do is somehow manage to cram 11 tracks onto one side of an LP. I guess they had the limiter turned up to max when cutting the master. I don't know if you get the Now series in the USA but in the UK it is up to Now 102 and regularly Tops the Charts. There was an interesting program a couple of years ago in which Richard Branson said he started the series because he was fed up with K-Tel continuously asking to use Virgin's tracks.
How interesting and also how confusing... Now that all my cassettes, LPs, and dozens of promo-boxes of Japanese mini-LP CDs are scattered as ash all over Malibu, the only tunes I am left with are a few hundred album rips onto my laptop HDD, and my Tidal subscription... My point being: no matter how "dark side" they are, when you are outside of your "sweet spot" and you just Have to have a "fix" of Tchaiovsky's Manfred Symphony to survive, you can have it! Do not get me wrong, digital does not FEEL the same as analog, but this is when MemoryMagic kicks-in: I "know" how Manfred should sound under Mravinsky, and that is what i am hearing now What else? Now that I started using Tidal, not just paying for it, I have discovered quite a few tunes from my fav artists they produced under different monikers. I am listening to Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) now" Metallic taste of Blood" Unfortunately, the "real treasures" that only me and @autoreverser know about, are scarce at Tidal... How am I going to restore my collection of all DerSpyra and Klaus Schulze albums? By hunting them down, Again!!!
Jorge, If you need any help filling in the Journey, Foreigner, Loverboy let me know, I think I have dups around here somewhere, I just have to go out to the stacks and look them up. Some K-Tel History https://hercsktelalbums.blogspot.com/ Maybe it was someone else that used cover bands, some of these K-Tel Albums are outstanding, I think the name was too close to K-Mart, a low-end department store, home of the Blue Light Special so it was kind of embarassing to own the albums. We had some pop compulations, something like Now This is Music #XXX, you'd find it at gas stations, first cassettes then CD's but I haven't seen one in a while. They were pretty inexpensive around $3.00-6.00 USD.
@Mister X Thank You! But no bother: since the response I got from Amazon about maybe getting a discount for Kindle editions for the HUNDREDS of books I bought from Amazon. $25.00 was their answer!!! I am using Malibu Library to get and rip CDs from ECM label (I had them all!) and now paying #2-5 a pop for Klaus Schulze/Dead Can Dance downloads off some shady sites... Boy, all my life I paid all my extra cash to get more Music that i like, now I have to learn to live without "Shamal" LP by Gong for when I have a hangover!...
Nice to see that your back to listening to music and enjoying books again. I'm curiously waiting to hear what you do for a stereo, somehow I feel like Pioneer Spec and Nakamichi Dragon or something like that.....
right... as if I can exist without music!!! My "stereo" is what I found in @Boodokhan basement: restored Technics cassette deck, digital Pioneer Elite amp, and some floorstanders I bought from a dude in downtown LA. Sounds like SHIT... but compared to boomboxes or my childhhood stereo this is HEAVEN... As it was said yesterday: if it sounds good to you it should be Fine. In my case, since I know what it should sound like, I just cry... To make it sound half-right, you need some serious $$$... hopefully I can make it happen once again, but have to build a house first
This is a known problem , Sony with IBM and probably others are working on a high capacity magnetic tape digital storage format , an excerpt from here : "In recent years, developments in the Internet of Things, the popularization of cloud services, and the leveraging of big data have helped to create new markets, resulting in increased demand for high-capacity data storage media. Moreover, the importance of data storage is being reaffirmed in terms of ensuring reliable recovery of data in information systems such as databases and servers, as well as safe management of information. It is against this background that magnetic tape shows great potential as a storage media thanks to its various strengths, including its capacity for storing data over long periods of time, low power consumption, low cost, and space saving capabilities." Like good old tapes , if the tape brakes you lose something but not everything.
8MM tape back-up was very common until around 2002, they could hold a few Gigs of data and they were pretty inexpensive. I think hard drives started nose-diving in price around then and companies moved to them. I think the big question is why didn't MySpace have back-up. I have a feeling the new owners didn't really care and deleted the files.
The problem has two different levels. One is the obvious one of making sure that data is properly backed up and kept safely. The second is the integrity of any companies you are trusting to do this. If you read the articles there are suspicions that Myspace actually could be bothered to migrate the data or decided it was too difficult, rather than exhausting all possibilities for restoring it. Immediately after checking this thread I started looking at one which included Walkgirl complaining about her pictures on Photobucket. Having used Photobucket myself I have confirmed that although the data is visible you now can't see anything other than thumbnails without taking out a subscription. My photos are also on several hard drives, one in a different location, so it doesn't affect me, but I understand Walkgirl was relying on Photoobucket to store hers.
