How I Find and Purchase Music
September 30th, 2006I’m writing this post because it’s something I talk a lot about with people. Folks frequently ask me where I found this band or that band, and I thought I’d take the time to explain how I go about finding and purchasing new music these days. First thing: I don’t listen to the radio (except NPR) and I don’t read music magazines.
Without a doubt, the Internet and the iPod have changed nearly everything about how I consume music. In high school I used to go to a place called Co-op Records in the Quad-Cities every week and hear new music from the guys who worked there – Reid and Jason. If they said it was good, I’d buy it. If I hated it (and I usually didn’t) they would let me bring it back and swap it for something else. It was through them I heard Wire, Einsturzende Neubauten, Nick Cave and a whole host of other artists. I spent enough time at Co-op that Jason and I became friends and even drove to Chicago a few times to see a few shows. But my point is: how I found and purchased music was entirely dependent on a local CD store – they were my window to music.
These days, I have a variety of sources for finding music. Each week I’ll read Pitchfork, Stylus and a few other online music magazines to find out about new music. I’ll also visit eMusic, Boomkat, Dotshop, Bleep, iTunes and other online music stores to listen to samples. When I read or hear something interesting, I’ll check the following sources:
First: eMusic
When it comes time to actually purchase music that I really enjoy, I’ll check eMusic first. I subscribe to their top tier plan, which is 90 downloads for $20 a month. They have an excellent selection of labels I like including Leaf, Ninja Tune, Morr Music, City Centre Offices, CarPark and a whole lot more. They also have a lot of my favorite artists including Cat Power, Yo La Tengo, Joseph Arthur and more. They also have a lot of jazz and blues that I enjoy, including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, John Zorn and John Lee Hooker.
Second: Bleep.com
Next I’ll check Bleep.com, the online download store run by Warp Records. They specialize in electronica and indie music, and their albums are typically $9.99. In many ways they have a better selection of labels I like than iTunes, and they sell regular mp3s without any kind of DRM. This means I can burn mp3 CDs to use in my car stereo that will play them. Plus, they encode their downloads at 320k.
Third: iTunes
If I can’t find it anywhere else, I’ll see if they have it on iTunes. iTunes has a pretty decent selection across genres and labels, but I’m not wild about their compression scheme or their DRM. iTunes is pretty much a last resort for me. If I can’t download it anywhere else, and I can’t (or don’t want to bother to) find the physical CD, I’ll bite the bullet and buy from iTunes.
Buying CDs vs. Digital Downloads
The thing is that I have a really hard time paying $9.99 for a digital download of music. If I’m going to pay that much for an album, I’d typically rather shell out another $3-$6 and get the physical CD. That way, I’d get the cover art and liner notes, I’d be able to set what bitrate I rip the album at, and I wouldn’t have to jump through hoops to burn mp3 CDs for the car. It used to be that I’d look for the CD firstm, and if I couldn’t find it I’d look for the album to buy online. Now because of eMusic and Bleep, it’s mostly the reverse.
However, if I really enjoy something I downloaded from eMusic I might still buy the CD anyway. I’ve done this with a handful of albums. With eMusic I’m paying something like $3 an album. At that price, I can afford to buy the physical CD in addition to the eMusic download. Most often, this will be because I see the band live and want to purchase their CD directly from them at the show (so they get more of the money from it). But if I purchase the album for $9.99 from Bleep or iTunes, there’s no way I’m buying the CD too. I just don’t feel like owning the CD for another $15, and there are few albums these days that are worth $25 to me.
As a result, I buy a lot of music from eMusic, quite a few CDs from small Chicago stores and not very much at all from Bleep or iTunes.