Poll: Buying CD's or Downloading.

[KarmaTheAlligator]

I prefer getting a physical copy, since downloaded media are easy enough to lose to viruses and the like.

 

[applesandoranges]

edit

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I stopped buying music a while ago, now I pay for unlimited access to nearly every song in existence. (Spotify if anyone is curious).

What's annoying is I can't listen to The Beatles or Led Zeppelin or up until recently Red Hot Chili Peppers, but buying a couple more CD's on top of paying for Spotify is no big deal for me.

If I had to choose I would choose download, because I don't have a very big room at all, my HDD is more than capable of having thousands of songs on there.

 

[Aris Khandr]

I prefer digital, just for the ease of listening to my music. I'm in the process of dumping my CD collection onto iTunes and never looking back.

Sorry to be picking nits here, but CDs are digital. To get analogue sound, you have to go back to the old record players; cassette tapes on forward are all digital media. As music is digitized, it suffers a loss in quality, as some of the more nuanced notes are converted to discrete values; also, using a compressed sound format like .mp3 will give you lower quality than a recorded format like .wav, so CDs are *usually* of higher quality than the files you get from a download service.

I'm seriously not enough of an audiophile to care about sound quality. I just want my music in an easy to access location. I got my first CD player nearly 20 years ago. In that time, I've moved ten times, been homeless for a while, lost CDs to friends/roommates borrowing them and forgetting about it, et cetera. I'm going to move again in the near future.

Much like with Steam for games, I'm rather over physical media. It's just another thing to try to put in a box and move. iTunes keeps all of my music in an account for me, in a way that I can't lose it. If I found myself homeless tomorrow, my iTunes library would be there intact and ready to be used again when I get on my feet. How long are you going to haul your CDs around when you've got nowhere to go?

I'm not 100% against physical media. In fact, I'm currently backing a CD on Kickstarter [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pandoraceltica/help-pandora-celtica-create-their-5th-cd-faerie-re]. But I freely admit that the digital copy of the CD was a huge selling point.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I prefer CD as I just like having the phyiscal form should anything bad happen to my PC or my storage device.

And if something bad were to happen to the CD?

 

[ThatLankyBastard]

I like digital copies of my CDs simply because I find physical copies hard to store and generally keep track of...

However, I prefer physical copies of movies and shows rather then Digital Copies (although if I have one, chances are I have the other)...

Why, you ask?

No fuckin clue, It's more expensive and more space wasting then CDs...

 

[Riki Darnell]

I only buy the CD if I really love the band because I know I will more than likely love most of the songs. I usually download if it's just a few songs I like.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Call me old fashioned but I prefer getting something physical in return for my cash. Be that CDs, DVDs or games. Paying full price for something that isn't tangibly mine just seems wrong somehow.

I will now open myself up to all of your 'outmoded dinosaur' comments...

 

[OctoH]

I honestly prefer CDs, but sometimes mp3s are easier. So I have a combination of both.

 

[OmniscientOstrich]

I prefer CD's, I like having a physical copy on hand, the purrty artwork and not getting fucked over by DRM. Plus, I'm somewhat pretentious in that I like to build up a collection. :3

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Let me put it this way: I have never once in my life paid for a digitally distributed music file, but I have an extensive legal music collection. I'm not gonna pay $1 a track for crappy compressed audio that at worst can be taken from me at any point the publisher decides to, and at best is mine until my hard drive crashes.

and has better quality than CDs.

What media files are you listening to? I know there's some lossless files out there that are taken from a better-than-CD master, but for the most part even "high quality" files are a lossy format, usually 320 KbPS MP3, which may or may not be indistinguishable from a CD (speaking perceptually; fidelity is definitely lost, the question is whether a human being is capable of noticing), but will most definitely not be better than said CD.

 

[BlackStar42]

If I like the band a lot, I'll buy the CD because I like having it around. Some of the artwork can be really good as well. If it's just a few songs I like, I'll download them- I'm not buying a whole CD just to listen to three songs.

 

[smithy_2045]

I prefer buying a CD.

 

[BathorysGraveland]

CD's by a long shot. I will never, ever, ever spend money on a digital file. Ever. Besides, I like the whole package you know? Art work, lyrics, liner notes if any. That kind of thing.

 

[lunavixen]

I prefer having a hard copy to be honest, if i have to download a digital album, i make up a hard copy on disc so i can use my walkman (yes i still have one, and i do love it), and in case my hard drive crashes or gets f'ed up, i still have a copy of the music

 

[mysecondlife]

My mom has horrible habit of mistreating my CD's whenever she moves them without my consent.

My cd and its cases end up breaking.

So now I buy from Amazon and take advantage of their free cloud drive.

 

[ICantBelieveItGoesBoom]

I tend to buy CDs then put them on my iTunes digitally, it's actually cheaper to buy CDs a lot of the time and I like looking through the artwork and everything so it's a Win-win situation.

 

[Nouw]

CDs because I like having a physical copy of something I'm buying. It's just nice to look at and keep on my shelf. Plus you sometimes get a nice booklet c:.

 

[Nickolai77]

Downloaded songs are usually cheaper so i get those even if i would prefer a physical copy. A lot of the CD's in the UK i like are priced between £12-15, which is way more than i am willing to pay for a CD.

 

[Elamdri]

Wich woulld you prefer downloading a song or just buying the whole CD. For me I like just buying CD's because it's less of a hassel and I don't need to worry about viruses or my computer crashing. Although CD's could be used and scratched it is safer and you could get your money back. Which you can't do online. Also CD's don't take as much space on your computer depending on how long and how many tracks there are.

I haven't purchased a CD for years. I get all my music from Amazon. For starters, I don't have to buy a whole damn CD for the one good song on it. (And by some strange chance of fate, it's one of those rare good CD's where there are a number of good songs, Amazon had many CD's on sale for 5 bucks).

Having CD's isn't convenient. They get lost, they get scratched, they take up TONS of space and they are a pain to micromanage. I have a External that I keep my music on, and I have a MP3 player with all my music on it. Much more convenient.

What I will say, and this is something I'm seeing more often, is the practice of locking certain songs on digital albums. So if Generic Band #98723 releases a new CD with a really good song on it, I can't just go purchase THAT song. I have to purchase the whole album. I could get any other crappy song on that album, but the GOOD one requires me to purchase the whole thing. And that is the most hateful, vile business practice I have ever seen.