Your music acquisition habits

[Boyo Jim]

I may be duplicating some earlier poll, but a search didn't come up with one.

So, I'd like to know more about how you get your music. One choice is that you get your music through "other means" -- I meant that as a tongue in cheek reference to piracy, but you can also take that to mean "Boyo Jim you idiot, you forgot about ___", and let me know what you're filling in the blank with, if you can do so without incriminating yourself. :p

[DCnDC]

Pre-digital music age I had an extensive and mountainous collection of CDs (many of which were replacements for cassettes), and the bulk of my digital music collection is comprised of those ripped CDs.

Once I had a Mac, an iPod, and iTunes the purchasing of CDs, after a bit of resistance, stopped altogether fairly quickly and I at first bought a lot of whole albums online but once I had filled out my collection with music I had wanted but for whatever reason could not previously acquire on CD or cassette (either it was unavailable or I didn't have the money), I've cherry-picked songs individually for the last section of my music-buying period, which has for the most part ended.

[Steophan]

If you're asking about "other means", you probably shouldn't have made this a public poll.

[Boyo Jim]

You can answer that 'yes' to the question without incriminating yourself. If you explain in your post that you pirate music, making it a private poll won't make any difference.

[dalej42]

Well, I buy all of my music online, but some of it is on CDs bought from Amazon. For a lot of classical music, the CD is often the same price or even less expensive that the digital download. For pop music, I always buy the digital download, usually during Amazon's $5 downloads or their daily specials.

[Boyo Jim]

... Amazon's $5 downloads...

Sounds interesting... what are these?

[dalej42]

$5 downloads (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=s9_hps_bw_feat?ie=UTF8&docId=1000371251&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-4&pf_rd_r=1YEFEVW33R6DMM6YGF9C&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1327552242&pf_rd_i=163856011)

[Thudlow Boink]

Well, I buy all of my music onlineYeah, I interpreted "buying online" to refer to how I receive the music (digitally through the internet vs. physically through the mail) rather than how I place the order.

[Tim R. Mortiss]

I almost always buy used CDs, then rip them to my computer. On those rare occasions when I download an album on-line, I always burn it to CD and stick it in my collection. It just feels "safer" somehow. I don't feel like I own it unless I have a physical copy.

I should add that Amazon sometimes has "Free mp3 song of the day" in their mp3 store. I frequently download those, if I have any interest in the song or artist, but this is hardly the bulk of my collection.

[Athena]

Since Pandora came out, I rarely buy music anymore. I much prefer having it choose what I listen to than having to laboriously go through my collection and choose which exact artist/song to play. I'm not much of a music person; I pretty much just want something in the background to listen to while socializing, and Pandora is great for that.

[Snowboarder Bo]

The option "I but most or all of my music online" is poorly worded.

I buy a lot of music, in the form of CDs, from amazon.com, so I'm buying my music online. I suspect that what you meant with this option tho is "I buy my music in download form rather than any hardcopy".

To clarify: I only buy CDs. I do not buy downloads of music.

[not what you'd expect]

I buy most of my music by the song on I-tunes. But, I will also buy the CD if I like all or even most of the songs on it. It's nice when I figure out that I like the whole CD before I've spent too much on individual purchases, but it doesn't always work out that way.

[Thudlow Boink]

If you're interested in why people buy by the song or by the album, for me, the biggest (though not the only) reason is this:

Throughout my life, I have found many, many songs that I love, or at least like quite a bit, that I never would have heard if I had not bought the album they appear on.

If I like a song well enough to purchase it, I'm going to want to see if there's "more where that came from."

[Trick Rider]

I buy a majority of my music on physical formats, but I also (legally) download a fairly significant amount. I also chose "other means" because you forgot cassettes. :D