I’ve just been archiving about 75 of my deceased uncle’s CD-Rs which, I’m assuming, he had archived from his EMusic account. The labeling of the CDs (ex., 13/08/23) and the order of tracks is completely wacked but I really appreciate that I have “hard copies”.

Last year, I gave my 16 year old nephew a classic (refurbed) iPod full of about 10,000 songs. Don’t think he really appreciated it (and the months it took me to curate it). Kid was touching the screen and had no idea what a click wheel was.

I’m an avid record (500) and CD (100) collector but I have close to 100,000 tracks in my digital library. This music was acquired in a number of ways but only about a quarter of it was ever paid for by me. I know how to get music for free. I’m sure most of this sub knows too.

I’ve mostly resorted to buying physical media for the albums I really like and sourcing digital music with abandon for background music, playlists, and iPod playback.

For a wide variety of reasons, I do not use streaming music services. For one, with such a large music collection of my own, I was never listening to it. Two, and more importantly for this post, you can’t pass down a subscription service.

I’m just curious, is anyone buying digital music anymore?

Bandcamp is an easy place to pay for music but it’s not really mainstream. If you wanted to buy the new Teddy Swims album, where would you buy that? I just pulled this album out as an example because it’s in the iTunes Store. Apple has it for $8 but the artist has a 24/44 MP3 for $5.

Where are you buying digital music from and why?

Ooh - and is anyone either buying digital and burning to CD for backup or buying CDs and ripping them for playback? Or are you all too young for CDs over here?