Six reasons why I don’t buy CDs at the store anymore…
 

1. easier to preview tracks online rather than drive to the store and wait for an open listening station
2. running out of storage space for all the CDs I bought just for 1 or 2 tracks each
3. I never know what the store has in stock and what they don't and it's a pain to try and find specific CDs in some of these places where their alphabetical tabs have all been moved around out of order
4. expensive ~ I pay less $ for each track online, and don't have to pay for the tracks I don't want. I'm tired of spending over $20 bucks for a 10-12 song disc with maybe 2 or 3 tracks that I actually like.
5. It just saves time and it's so much easier. Plain and simple.
6. Car listening. Whether you're using a 1 disc player or a 10-disc CD changer in the car, you know what I mean when I say that it's far better to have compilation discs loaded in with songs you like on them. Having a car filled with CDs that you have to change over frequently is a hassle (and sometimes a hazard)

So, I’ve finally come to the point of concluding that I’d rather do my music shopping online than to physically go to the store. I'm curious to know how many other people are following this trend now, and what service has been the best for you. I don't have any interest in the file-sharing services, primarily because they're illegal and artists get cheated out of their rightful share. Just subscription-based ones.

I think there is a time and place for both. I personally am enamored with having the physical disc, the liner notes, the jewel case. Its kind of like a trophy to me. There are artists whose albums I will run out and buy the day they are released. There are artists of the past with albums of such pure perfection and cohesiveness that it would be almost a sin to not listen to the whole thing as it was originally mastered.

But say I'm listening to the radio and hear a song by some new band. I might like it. In that case, yeah, I'll open iTunes or whatever and download the song I like, and maybe a couple more that catch my interest. Maybe I will like them enough to elevate them to "CD purchase" status. If not, well, I have the songs i like and can forget about the rest. Everybody wins.

File sharing services are not illegal.

iTunes + iPod == Music heaven.

I have Rhapsody, and they tend to make new music available pretty quickly...I listen to it at work, at home, whenever. Now that doesn't help me when I want to listen to tunes in the car, so eventually, if I really like something, I'll have to buy it. If I only want a couple of tunes, I'll go buy them at buymusic.com (and maybe iTunes now).

But if I want the full CD, I'll go buy it at the store--usually Best Buy or Tower (if they have a good sale). I enjoy the liner notes and free goodies that come with 'em these days.

BTW, you can go here to find out what that song is you're hearing on the radio.

Very handy Bruce, thanks

Min hit it right on the head. Having a better CD collection than anyone else is a badge of honour.

Doesn't matter though, because usually the collection is so dizzying that the host ends up picking out all the music for an evening. Or if you're like my friend, you just do it anyway because hey, it's your place, might as well listen to what you want.

So Hoboken, eh? Like, totally So-broken offf from NYC. I do, however, LOVE arthur's. WHat a great steak place. :)

That's cool, but it worked better with albums.
BTW, welcome to the Cellar, to you the 1100th member and your chicken.:D

*excited face* You've been to Hoboken???? I thought no one ever visited here unless they are forced to by thier relitives!!! That's great! Do you live there???
Yeah, and you're right about the music thing, but that's how it is huh :)

Haha ... yeah, I was dragged there by relatives, but not in that ear-tugging kind of way. My cousin lives there now, and my brother and other relatives live in NYC, Staten Island, etc. I'm from Princeton, so I'm up in Hoboken and Manhatten all the time. I do, howver, work near Philly, so I've had to divide my allegiances. :(

My daddy grew up in Manhatten. It's a pretty awesome place, no? All of my relitives live in Manhatten. They don't understand why we live in Hoboken. When they ask my mom smirks and says -Because Manhatten is expensive. - For whatever reason they never really catch the hint and continue to ask. It's thier waste of breath, not mine :) My mom grew up in Phili, so I've been thier a couple of times. What I observed in Phili: There are lots of Jews. There are no decent bagels. They never made a movie there about a giant chicken. It is not that much bigger than Hoboken. My friends all loved my dinky $2.00 key chains I got them of the Liberty Bell. Go figure :) But seriously, it was pretty cool even though Pink (the 'artist') dislikes it throughly for whatever reason.

NYC and Philly rock for their respective reasons. I want to do the city thing for a few years - but I'm a suburban warrior at heart.

Manhatten is expensive, but Hoboken is just as costly (depends what part of town in which you're living, I guess). True - there are no jews in philly, but there are plenty in the suburbs. I've never had a bagel in philly, but that's because I'd much rather eat a cheesesteak.

Lawng Island just happens to be overrun by Jews ... and I went to college with all of them. Skewed perspective, in my opinion.

For all of its coolness, does anyone else find it depressing that all these stations all over the country are so completely tied to their playlists, that they can put the info online?

What the fuck ever happened to spontaneity, creativity and freedom in radio?

Radio sucks. Loudly.

And...just because I'm feeling a bit cranky, I have another point to make...

Why don't they just project the frigging playlists on into next week? After all, they pretty much know what it is. Why shouldn't they disseminate that info, too? Then, I could look up and see what songs were coming up next Thursday on my way home from recording, and tune to the appropriate station to hear them.

The more I think about this, the more disgusted I get.

Ah, El, my dear ...

Check this.

You will either love her or hate her ... but conservative/"little l" libertarian talk radio plus obscure oldies.

There are occasional oases in the desert of commericial radio.

We're using Rhapsody at work now too! We take turns playing "DJ" and it's been so much fun. The new Travis CD came out and it's on Rhapsody. I never used to be so hooked on the online music streaming, but it's become an addiction. We've discovered so much music this way. We share an account too, so we've saved a ton of $$ that we used to spend going out and getting new CDs every once in awhile ~ and the new CD would get old fast anyway and someone would have to go out and buy a new CD, which, as you know, can sometimes be a "crap-shoot" as to if the whole CD will be any good or not.
One thing I don't understand though: if you've already got Rhapsody, then why would you burn your CDs from buymusic or iTunes? Those ones charge 99 cents per track when Rhapsody charges only 79 cents per track. It makes more sense just to do it through Rhapsody, don't you think?

Let's say there's a song I really like, and I want to take that song and put it into a mix CD. Well, if I use Rhapsody, I have to burn that song onto a CD. Unless you get a CD-RW, you've wasted a CD for one song. And CD-RW's are expensive compared to CD-R's. For 20 cents more, I can have it on my computer and (in most cases) burn it to as many CD's as I want. Now I don't know if once you burn from Rhapsody, the music is copyright-protected or not...but as I see it, burning from Rhapsody only makes sense if you have a set of songs that you want to put on one particular CD. I guess you could always burn them, then rip them from the burned CD, but again, I don't know if that's feasible or not.

The one thing I don't like about Rhapsody is that it can only run on one computer at a time. So, if I'm at work listening to it, then Rho decides to use it at home, I get booted off. Of course, if Rho would just get a goddamned job, that wouldn't be a problem. :)

With the exception of free-file sharing sites, I would think that any subscription-based service wouldn't allow you to login from more than one computer. Otherwise any number of people could use the same account from anywhere, which obviously would have a negative impact on the provider. It can be a hassle though if you have the jobless roomie competing with you for listening time!

As for burning the tracks, I'm still not quite sure why it wouldn't work for you on Rhapsody the way it would work anywhere else. If you have all the tracks you want in your playlist, you can select any number of them in any order and burn them to CD. The only problem you might have is if there happens to be a track or two you wanted in the same compilation that isn't available on Rhapsody. But then, like you said, you just put all the ones you can get onto CD and then get the other tracks somewhere else and rearrange your compilations later if absolutely necessary.

In a perfect world, they would have every single track ever recorded, but 350,000+ isn't a bad start if you ask me. Sometimes they don't have something that I really want to listen to, but it's the exception rather than the rule. I still highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't tried one of these before. In fact, I'm sure there are people here who have no idea what we're talking about, so for their edification... -->http://www.bestbuy.com/rhapsody

Rhapsody lovers, I ask you this: what happens when you can stream 128k to your wireless phone, and thus get Rhapsody on your headphones, and in your car?

What happens to radio?

What happens to CDs?

What happens to the iPod?

UT, I will never buy another CD again when that happens...or almost never.

http://www.kexp.org/ - KEXP, the little radio station that Paul Allen bought. It used to be KUOW over on the UW campus. It's pretty much listener supported. I got the mug for my $90.3 contribution.

I usually go to Cellophane square here in Seattle to find used CD's, but the stores have been dropping like flies. There's one left in the U district, and I think one up in Bellingham.

I check out the tracks on Amazon, if I can, and then try to find it at Cellophane or http://www.djangos.com/.

Goddamn...what hasn't Paul Allen bought out there?

Oh that's right...the Mariners. I'm surprised Nintendo hasn't tried to unload them yet.

He's got the Seahawks, God knows why. They're doing fine from what little I know. Now the Mariners, I could see him buying them. I have no problem with paying for Safeco field, but we're still paying for he Kingdome, will be until 2012, and the Hawks didn't deserve a new damn stadium. :mad:

It's an aberration...the Seahawks are synonymous with futility.

Perhaps they will become extinct. Such is the process of natural selection.