Making the Leap
August 12th, 2006With great hesitation, I’m going to try to constrain my new music purchases to digital downloads instead of CDs. I have a number of concerns about this, but I’m going to give it a shot. I’ve purchased plenty of music from bleep, emusic, and the iTunes Music Store – but always as a last resort. I’ve always preferred to purchase the CD over downloading the music online. I like having a tangible product in my hands, having the liner notes to read through, and having the ability to rip the tracks at 320k mp3s. But having the tangible product is becoming a problem now. With well over 2,000 CDs, the two racks I have are both full and I’ve resorted to creating stacks of CDs on top of the racks.
And here’s the thing: I don’t really know which music I’ve purchased on CD or as an online download. The other day I was looking at CDs at the store and I suspected I owned the album in my hands, but I couldn’t remember if it lived in one in my CD racks or on my hard drive. So I guess that’s how much it matters that I own the CD now.
And I rarely listen to the actual CDs I purchase. I buy them, I rip them immediately, and then I listen to them on my computer, on my iPod, and on my stereo via an iPod universal dock. In the car, I connect through the aux input on the front of my car stereo. And when I do listen to a CD in the car, it’s an mp3 CD with about 100 songs on it. That allows me to keep one or two CDs in the car for long trips, and when they’re damaged (not if, but when) I toss them out and burn another.
So here I go: buying fewer CDs. It breaks my heart in a few ways, because I really enjoy hanging out at CD stores and I like having a collection. Collecting music on the computer really isn’t rewarding in any way. While I love the flexibility of having an all-digital music collection, there just isn’t the same kind of pleasure in browsing bleep.com, or viewing what other people have listened to on emusic or iTunes. Even mingling with other music lovers on Last.fm misses the mark of chatting up new releases with the folks at Hard Boiled Records or Evil Clown.
So let’s call this going all-digital thing an experiment for a few months. If it sticks, then I’ll need to find new ways to infuse my digital music collection with the same level of enjoyment that my CD collection has given me all these years. And if it doesn’t, then I can see myself going on a serious CD shopping binge with a freelance check this winter.
August 12th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
I recommend purchasing records. Using a record player and records is more enjoyable than listening to CDs/Mp3s when at home. I personally enjoy their quality. Despite the fact that most album aren’t on record, many great ones are. The Mp3s can be a thing for travel or continuous music at home (when you’re too lazy to flip or don’t have it on record).
Plus you get that cool ‘High Fidelity’ touch.
August 12th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
I do have a pretty nice turntable that my father helped me purchase, but I only have a few albums. It would be great if when you purchased an album you also received a link to download the album on Mp3. Then you’d get the hi-fi fun of listening to vinyl and the convenience of having the album digitally. I’ve ripped a few albums to Mp3, but never thought the end result sounded as noise-free as a ripped CD.