So, in the light of how cheap it is to get music online, from P2P (free) to Russian MP3 sites (ultra-cheap) to iTunes, et al. (the One True Endorsed And Accepted Price For Songs) — why buy CDs?
I just ordered one, and I think there’s still a lot of reasons.
For one thing, hard drive storage still feels more volatile. You can back it up, copy files to CD or DVD, but it still feels… temporary. Everything I put on a computer, I feel like I need to potentially be able to live without it. If I need to have it forever, I’ll burn it to a disk and put it in a box.
So, why not just do that with downloaded (cheap) music?
It takes a long time, especially if you have a lot of digital music, to burn it all. Also, you may just like to have it in the “real” format (cd/album artwork, liner notes, etc.).
In the case of the last two CDs I bought (both Tom Feldmann), his music was simply not available on the Russian MP3 sites — he’s just not well-known enough to be on there — and I really wanted to hear more of it. Hence, I ordered them. They have pretty cool album covers, also.
The CD I just bought, on the other hand is one of my favorite records of all time — Traffic’s John Barleycorn Must Die — and was also not available on the Russian MP3 sites, not the one’s I was using (it is on some others).
However, while debating where to buy it, I realized that there are some albums I just want to own. Whatever format music is published in, I don’t expect that to change in the near future. It’s probably true that less music will be sold in “hard copy” format than in previous decades; but I don’t think it’s going away yet.
By the way, if you don’t know who Traffic is, they are possibly (IMHO) the most overlooked band of the late 60s early 70s that I know of; simply fantastic. Check them out.
“the One True Endorsed And Accepted Price For Songs” - i liiikke.