How do you buy your music?

I buy the CD from the shops or online at the usual places.

I don't use iTunes because I want a physical copy of what I own, and because I want it at CD-quality. I'm not paying Apple money for some 320Kbit MP3, thanks.
 
CDs, mostly from ebay. I don't listen to a lot of new music, and if I do there is spotify for most of the popular stuff.
 
shoot1st said:
Never once used iTunes, prefer to have the CD every time. I don't use my pc for music or use an mp3 player so that probably has a bearing on it.

Most of the CDs I buy can be had online, new for a fiver at most, which is a great price compared to how much we used to have to pay on the high street.
Click to expand...

Indeed, there is no better way to listen to music than driving on a country lane.
 
Older music - Cheaper to buy the physical CD's.
New music - Usually iTunes+ so no DRM getting in the way.
 
CDs so that I have the physical media (unless things have changed recently insurance companies don't cover downloads stored on HDDs) in the highest possible quality. This is then ripped to FLAC for the Sonos and 256kbit AAC for the iPod.

I also still get vinyl (generally 2nd hand) but that is only ever played and not ripped to the PC.
 
itunes 100% now. I used to buy CD's but I hate having to store them and when I move around I have 2 boxes just of cds so I gave up buying physical media apart from continuing a select few collections.
I don't care about ripping losless and using a custom tweaked foobar anymore :) I can't tell the difference between FLAC and 128/192kbps anyway itunes is just too easy for my own good. :)
 
mp3. The vast majority of music I listen to doesn't get released on cd.
I used to buy lots of vinyl until I realised that my student loan didn't cover my £50 a week vice.
 
used to buy cds but then just taking up space after importing to itunes
so now i just buy from itunes but i dont i dont like the low bit rate compared to my cds :/
 
VaderDSL said:
I can't tell the difference between FLAC and 128/192kbps anyway
Click to expand...

I used to think I probably couldn't either, but then I decided to try ripping a few of my CDs to FLAC and put them on my mp3 player (Cowon S9) and the sound quality is so much better. So now everything has to be FLAC! :)
 
Thing is I'd be happy to try but I used to have lossless but I honestly can't tell the difference on my poor/average speakers or my poor/average mp3 player on my poor/average earphones :p If I had anywhere near a decent set of audio equipment I might be more critical of the format of my music hehe :p
 
VaderDSL said:
Thing is I'd be happy to try but I used to have lossless but I honestly can't tell the difference on my poor/average speakers or my poor/average mp3 player on my poor/average earphones :p If I had anywhere near a decent set of audio equipment I might be more critical of the format of my music hehe :p
Click to expand...

Don't worry, most people that reckon they can tell the difference can't, it's like the X-Files, they want to believe ;) Do some ABX testing yourself to find a bitrate that's acceptable for you :) I'm on -V 2 with LAME and for most stuff I can't tell the difference and that's with very good IEMs and a headphone amp!

Use FLAC for archiving as it means you can encode to whatever lossy format you choose in future without the need to rerip.
 
Yeah, the difference is pretty noticeable on my mp3 player, but on my PC you have to really listen carefully to hear much of a difference between mid-high bitrate mp3 and flac. I only have relatively average quality speakers on my PC.
 
Last edited:
I buy all my music on cd now. CD prices have come down a lot over the last few years, you used to walk in HMV/Virgin/Our Price/MVC etc and be confronted by £12, £13, £14 for a new album whereas nowadays you rarely need to pay more than £8 online. For less recent stuff, more like £5.

Also plenty of clearance bargains to be had, recently I bought about 10 old NOW albums from Asda, all £1.97/£2.97 each. Loads of filler / trashy pop of course but when you're getting ~40 tracks even if only a third is worth listening to it's still good value.

I think I'm probably the only person in the country (of MP3 listeners) who has never installed iTunes, my wife has it on her laptop and it just seems mind-bogglingly bloated to me.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom