Downloading music?

[Silverclaw]

Which do you do? Personally, I just buy cd's. I like to have a physical object in my hand when buying something. That, and I'm usually about 10 years behind technology lol

[Irish Wolf]

I buy cds and use lime-wire

[Xiroteus]

I like to have a physical object with movies, since music is much shorter and easier to store in less space, I prefer that in a digital form, there is the issue where I watch an entire film for an hour an a half plus yet have favorite songs when it comes to music.

[Berserker]

I never buy CDs. But the bands I listen to probably wouldn't care that I downloaded their music.

[Midnight]

If it's in print I'll buy the CD. If it isn't I'll download it if it's really worth getting (on my internet it takes a couple of hours to download one song). If any record company has trouble with me downloading their out-of-print stuff I'll happily buy a legit copy once they re-release it.

[Moonwatcher]

I prefer to download the song but i wouldn't mind to buy it either

[RedEye]

If its a band I like, I buy the CD; somebody has to pay their wages. If its something I may just listen to once or twice, I download.

Having the CD means that if my portable eats the data or dies, I have a backup without using up disk space.

Problem is; nowdays wearing a set of earbuds is an invitation to get mugged for the unit you're listening to. Thieves watch for spaced out people with wires hanging down their neck... so I buy cheap units that if stolen aren't worth anything.

Meh...that's just me.

[Scott Gardener]

The problem with polls is that they're one-choice-only, whereas most of us probably do more than one.

I tend to buy from iTunes and download purchases. (I'm also finding iTunes a convenient way to follow some TV shows.) But, sometimes I will get the CD instead. If the music is particularly important, CDs offer not only higher quality (being uncompressed versus compressed), but also more content. iTunes purchases do include front album cover art, but they don't include inner artwork or credits.

I'm trying to get everything copied over to mp3 format for archival and backup purposes; all my mp3s are saved on several hard drives in the same folder heirarchy, so that if one drive fails, I can replace and re-copy everything with minimal work. But, periodically going through and organizing new music into the archives is a bit time consuming, and I'm more a bit rate stickler than I used to be, so I plan on going back through my previous CD rips at 128 kps and re-doing them at 256.

I reserve dubious "free" peer-to-peer methods to last resort, when there is absolutely no other way to acquire the music. And, I commit to buy anything obtained that way once it becomes available. For example, there is an obscure but extremely talented band called The Moors. You can find them at: http://www.myspace.com/80965155 I consider their one album to be up there alongside Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album or The Cure's Disintegration; it's that good. I first discovered them back when mp3.com was an independent musician site, and I found two of their songs there. But, the site went down in the dotcom crash before I could get their album, which has been out of print for about seven years. I found a few songs of theirs off Limewire. No signs of the out-of-print album on eBay. Finally, late last year, it became available again, and I bought the CD immediately. Hearing the whole CD from beginning to end helped to reinforce how good they were, and hearing the music uncompressed made it that much better. But, I will admit, when that album was unavailable anywhere, I did find three and a half songs off of it on Limewire. It's not something I do often or condone readily, and I consider peer-to-peer an archivalist's temporary stop-gap when something is otherwise out-of-print and not available aftermarket on sites like eBay or Amazon Marketplace.

[Alias]

I generally listen to only a few songs from lots of bands. So with that said:

iTunes is my best friend.

[wolfward]

If I ever really want a certain song, or music from a certain band, then I download via Limwire. But if I happen to see a cd I want, then I'll buy it. But then, I don't like mainstream music that much....so I don't buy a lot of cds.

[AladasianTheMeerkat]

I'm mostly downloading my stuff via p2p nowadays... that is, if i can find stuff that piques my interest.

*still can't find a couple of things that he's looking for tho...

[outwarddoodles]

Mixture.

Primarily Limewire, but I tend to purchase the CD's of bands of who just so happen to capture my heart for three primary reaons:
1. As a personal 'thankyou' to the band.
2. It gives me 'tr00 fan' status.
3. CD quality > pirated quality.

[Morkulv]

Torrentz are your friends.

But seriously, I usually downloaded music (I had a whole portable HD full with metal albums). Recently I download music a lot less, but when I hear something good over the internet or whatever I might pick up the album if I can get my hands on it. That only happens sometimes though since I listen mostly to obscure music.

According to the law, its not illegal unless you share it with other people.

[Vagrant]

It has to be said that when it comes to downloading community shared things, it pretty much comes down to knowing what you're doing and what to look for. It's like with shopping, you have to be able to recognise a rip-off from a good product, and if you can do that then you're guaranteed to have a long-lasting item and probably save money too.

There are those who haven't built up the ability to recognise this as far as community-sharing is concerned, so they'll always end up with fakes or malware. In all of my time on the Internet, I've never had a single virus, only very few pieces of malware (stuff that supposedly trustworthy commercial products have installed, and there's always StarForce, of course), and only two fakes.

I've been with the Internet since the days of the humble BBS, and one picks up a few things along the way. It isn't that there's anything intrinsically bad in freely shared things, it's just that people will take something free as readily off bad sorts who're out to hurt them as any other, as they're not able to tell the difference. There are good people out there though, you just have to know how to recognise them.

Now what do I do?

With movies, I usually download when they're at cinemas, because of a particular hearing condition i suffer from, the noise of a cinema would either have me passing out or feeling very sick. So I download films then, as opposed to going to cinemas. If I really like the movie, I'll buy it when it comes out on DVD, because I like having boxed movies.

My approach with music is a bit different, I download, sometimes I buy download, and sometimes I'll buy CDs, it depends on how much money is going to the artists, sometimes I'll download and donate to the artists (when they have that option), or I'll download and buy some stuff from an artist's store. I prefer, with music, that money goes directly to the artists responsible for creating it.

Indie stuff I pretty much pay for off the bat (and that's usually digitally distributed too), because those guys need my support especially, and I've never really bought anything indie that I didn't like.

As for games, games are bloody expensive these days, so with mainstream games I'll download them and then use my money to buy the games I liked best, thus making sure that the people who made the games I like get the funds to make more games, and the people who make crappier games... don't.

[Morkulv]

Yeah, the prices on games are rediculous. I don't care how much time there is spent on a game, its rediculous to ask 60 Euro's for a game (sometimes even more expensive) that is usually just one disk.

I'm glad that there a torrents for games available.

[Baphnedia]

Hmm..

Vagrant, you've never bought anything indie you didn't like? Time to challenge you then... cause there's no way you'll like this.

[AladasianTheMeerkat]

@Morkluv: Not really - spending three days waiting for an Axxo isn't my idea of a good time. And yup, unless you're looking to be nabbed on piracy charges, it's best you keep your SLSK usage to a minimum.

@Baph: NGHHWHYYY MUUSSST I CRRRRWYYYYYY?</RehDogg>

[Gevaudan]

Hmm..

Vagrant, you've never bought anything indie you didn't like? Time to challenge you then... cause there's no way you'll like this.

Is this your CD? It's phenomenal, to say the least.

[Baphnedia]

I suck at saying 'thank you', but thank you. If I came out and said my real name, the whole secret-identity thing would be gone!

[John Wolf]

I know site that lets you listen to the first thirty seconds of the CD song, then if I like it I buy the CD in store.

[FoxKnight]

I try to always get the CD because I might be interested in the other songs on it but if it's just an artist by whom I only like one or two songs I just download it from iTunes. I try to get CDs if I can also because I would rather pay a couple dollars more for the rest of the CD instead of the just songs I already know. That is why I glad I got myself a CCR instead of the 3 songs I already liked because I found like 5 more I wasn't familiar with. And also iTunes often doesn't have the ones I want because they don't have a certain CD and sometimes they have songs I like that are album only. So even if it is more cost effective to buy songs separately it is also a risk if my computer crashed and I couldn't redownload it. That is why I prefer CDs to downloading.

[Morkulv]

@Morkluv: Not really - spending three days waiting for an Axxo isn't my idea of a good time. And yup, unless you're looking to be nabbed on piracy charges, it's best you keep your SLSK usage to a minimum.

@Baph: NGHHWHYYY MUUSSST I CRRRRWYYYYYY?</RehDogg>

Why would anyone nab me with piracy-charges? They could try and charge me for spreading music, but since I don't spread it they can't do anything about it.