Download, or buy

[Khuli]

For me CDs have one killer advantage that hasnt been mentioned in this thread so far: resale value.

Actually I did mention it, but you can take the credit

[Phoenix]

Everyone is free to buy as they please. The one added aspect that may help me stay committed to online purchasing is the green factor.

Buying a physical cd involves:
manufacturing costs
shipping
plastic packaging
paper
driving to/from cd store (optionally)

Great point, assuming I can get a perfect Flac rip, DRM Free, so I can make a back up copy for safety's sake, I am at a loss as to why I would want a physical copy of anything, including a book, a movie, or a record album.
Personally, I own a wall full of books, a wall full of DVD's and a wall full of CD's and Vinyl record albums. They not only have a sizable environmental impact, but they have a huge footprint on my living space. Currently, I live in a 2000 square foot house, so the there is room enough for all of us to coexist currently. But I am in the process of ripping all the DVD's to a hard drive, and have already ripped the CD's to a hard drive. I have also bought a kindle and found a number of purveyors who sell digital reading material, so I have every confidence, I will have all the books, movies and CD;s I could ever want, reproducable in a pluperfect fashion, taking up no more room than a shoe box. It makes me think I wanna sell my current property, move into a 1000 square foot luxury high rise with a killer view and enjoy all the stuff I've collected without having to pay the price of warehousing it as physical media. Something to think about.

[Dogberry2]

If only I could hire one of you to complete ripping my collection for me...because I would rather be listening to the music.

Hey, you can hire me, and I'll do a great job. But I doubt very much that you would be willing to pay the price I'd ask, because I would want a lot of money. ;-)

[david_f1976]

If I could have things my way, I'd probably like to continue buying the physical media (until backup tools and facilities/ hardware become more plug and play and affordable) but would happily box them after ripping, in exchange for an easy to use touchscreen electronic device about the size of a CD or DVD case that integrates with SC and displays everything about the album/ artist I'm listening to or whomever else I care to be enquiring about - basically allmusic.com's content in the palm of my hand - hell I'd even pay for the content. Throw in easy control of your network music players and perhaps even the ability to buy an album with the click of a button [no advertising please] and Bob's your uncle...

I was thinking of a very similar device last year and did some crude experimenting with my Nokia 770. I was talking with a friend who is better with electronics than me and we came to the conclusion that it could be done as a prototype for a price that could only be sold in high enough numbers that the markup would have to be very high. I have an iPod Touch and an iPeng for now, which is close enough, but it's something that if I ever have enough time/expertise I may revisit one day.

Great point, assuming I can get a perfect Flac rip, DRM Free, so I can make a back up copy for safety's sake, I am at a loss as to why I would want a physical copy of anything, including a book, a movie, or a record album.
Personally, I own a wall full of books, a wall full of DVD's and a wall full of CD's and Vinyl record albums. They not only have a sizable environmental impact, but they have a huge footprint on my living space. Currently, I live in a 2000 square foot house, so the there is room enough for all of us to coexist currently. But I am in the process of ripping all the DVD's to a hard drive, and have already ripped the CD's to a hard drive. I have also bought a kindle and found a number of purveyors who sell digital reading material, so I have every confidence, I will have all the books, movies and CD;s I could ever want, reproducable in a pluperfect fashion, taking up no more room than a shoe box. It makes me think I wanna sell my current property, move into a 1000 square foot luxury high rise with a killer view and enjoy all the stuff I've collected without having to pay the price of warehousing it as physical media. Something to think about.

Having just moved house, it's something I can definitely relate to. Fortunately all my CDs are already ripped and boxed away and DVDs are pretty much there as well, so it was my books which took up the most space. But digitising them or re-purchasing them would be too time/cash-rich for me, considering I don't read very often any more. Still waiting for the format wars to settle down on this as well. Continuing with the downsizing theme, active speakers are currently on my thinklist, and maybe we'll see enough advances in pico projectors and the like in the future as well that your whole digital world will be shoe-box size (plus speakers).

Back on topic. Has to be CDs until lossless is widely available. I may, or may not be able to hear the difference, but I'm not paying more for less - as a matter of principle - as seems to be the current case. The only exception is emusic whose rates are cheap enough that it allows me to experiment with a lot more music than I otherwise would - and legally as well.

[Kyle]

I only buy CD's. I'd be happy to download if the price were right, and I could do so in a lossless format. No way am I buying anything but lossless, so for now, CD's are it.

[KMorgan]

I simply won't buy a lossy mp3 when I can buy a lossless version. This is not because I can hear any difference, but just on principle. I would feel diddled paying the same for a lossy format. My attitude would change if the download was *significantly* cheaper.

However, since March I have had a Napster subscription and this has really changed my whole view of music purchase. I have never listened to so much or varied music and can't imagine buying another CD as long as this type of service is available. I dare say that occasionally an album will come along that I would like to own the CD of. Since March this has not been the case. Maybe two have come close.

So to add a third choice, CD/download/stream?

Keith

[RonM]

Value, especially "resale value" is an odd concept to be addressed here. If I buy a CD (or borrow one) and rip it, I have a digital file that is in principle no different than what I could have downloaded. I can pass it around the same way. Sure I have the physical CD taking up space, but that functions solely as a kind of backup. If I need that kind of backup, I can always burn a CD from my downloaded files. I prefer to make a backup of my digital files (ripped and downloaded) all at one time to a small external hard drive, and then put it in a bank safety-deposit box, refreshed every month or two. It's hard to imagine much resale value in an ordinary CD, rarities aside, for very much longer.

As to bit rate, I mean, really, are we just being snobs here? How many of us can actually hear the difference between a 256k bit rate and a CD through most consumer-level CD players? Or for that matter with a flac file played through a SB device? I can sometimes hear a difference through my decent (although not high-end) system, but not often, and not to the extent that it interferes with my listening pleasure.

I'm shortly going to be boxing up all my CDs, and putting them someplace out of sight. I'll continue to buy new ones from time to time, because I want out of principle the full monty. However, I will undoubtedly be doing way more downloading of files ripped at decent bit rates, which includes eMusic and the current situation on iTunes (although I hate supporting the evil empire if I can avoid it). My preferred dl sites are small independent-artist-friendly places, which includes the biggish CDBaby, and my favorite for Canadian music, zunior.com (which offers flac files as an option for $2 extra, along with free PDFs of all the album art). I mostly won't be buying flacs, because the file size is too big and my current bandwidth just makes the download too painful.

And I'm happy with my music, and really do understand that I have way way more tunes than I'll ever listen to.

R.

[dhallag]

so just some background so you can know where i'm coming from.
- i play classical and jazz piano and own a steinway
- i listen to classical, jazz, indie/folk, and deep/garage house
- when i really want to listen to music, i listen to it in my bedroom where i have a marantz 2270 paired with boston acoustics vr940's
- music ripped from CD's is at 320 bitrate
- music i download from amazon is at 256 bitrate (and i only download from amazon as they have the higest bitrate)
- i love music: i live in chicago, work out of the home, and always have music on

i've spent a lot of time comparing jazz, classical, vocals in lossless format to the 256 bitrate from amazon and the 320 i rip from CD. basically, i can't tell a difference. maybe it's because i don't have a more expensive audio system, but i still think my setup sounds fantastic and i'm very happy with it. i will say that sometimes there are some classical and jazz songs that i could tell a difference, no difference in indie/alternative, no difference in electronica.

so now it just comes down to basic economics
- you can purchase a mp3 album from amazon for about 1/2 the cost of a CD
- for the rare difference i hear, it's not worth the additional cost of harddrive space
- i don't have to spend time ripping
- the record labels are not adding any additional content with a CD that i don't already have access to on my PC
- i'm not really worried about resale; in these days you can pretty much listen to every song before you purchase (playlist.com) and i always purchase entire albums
- i love album art and have all that on my pc and thanks to the squeeze controller, i always see it when i play music

so what would make me purchase a CD? ok listen up record labels. in the CD covers and booklets, tell us about the artist. tell us the lyrics. tell us a cool story of the artist. tell us something cool i don't know. give me something to read while i'm listening. i very much appreciate having something in my hands and why i print and read from paper... then i could spend a day reading about artists that i love from the booklets that come with the CD's, playing with a girlie or two, while kicking back a beer or five, while cooking up some great swine or cow... all without looking at a damn computer screen.

so that's my two cents for what it's worth.

[dhallag]

sorry for the double post but let me add that i've read this entire post a couple of times and love the debate. to be lossless or not.

so as i'm ripping my favorite jazz and classical CD's in FLAC and will re-listen to them over the next few days and compare to the 320 in mp3.

[Nonreality]

I used to be very concerned about having the hard copy of everything. Now I really don't care since getting my SB3. All my CD's are in boxes just taking up room. I still buy them but I also download probably more. As long as I backup what's the difference? My eyes aren't that good for the small artwork and liner notes that CD's allow you. So no big deal there anymore. It's taken me a while to come to this point but I really don't see any advantage in the CD purchase anymore. Plus I can have a new album within 2-5 minutes now and not have to wait for the cd to show up in a local store or have to drive there to find out.