I want a better way to buy music

[jl8e]

I just picked up Tom Waits' Orphans, and it struck me how silly the music-buying process has become. I buy these CDs, rip the music onto my computer, load it onto my iPod, and never, ever, look at the shiny plastic things again.

OK, that's not quite true. They occasionally get played in a car, and they're a handy format for lending to friends.

My CD collection has deteriorated into a completely disorganized mess, and it's not worth the time to organize it.

I want to like the iTunes music store, but I don't. It's not just the DRM thing, though that's a lot of it. (If Borders goes under, I can still play Orphans. If Apple goes under, I can't play anything I bought off them.)

Blah.

Comments

Options

[k8to.livejournal.com]

If you don't mind lossy, there's the extremely reasonable E-Music. No DRM, reasonable fee structure that encourages sampling. etc.

If you want major labels without DRM, then stick with CDs. Personally I view buying major labels at this point as financing the war on copyright balance, so no-major-labels is a feature to me.

If you want lossless (as I do, for purchase) well... there WAS allofmp3, although definitely grey market.

I think the lossless unencumbered format for purchase is a good decade off.

CD Ripping

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I still buy CD's exclusively. I'd rather spend the time ripping into a non-DRM'ed format of my choice (320kbps mp3 - plays on anything, sounds fantastic) and have the CD as my archival backup in case the hard drive goes tits up. I've been buying music for a long time, and the digital-only stuff still hasn't settled down to where I feel comfortable "owning" music in that format.

By the way, head on over to RGRA - there's a lively discussion on the future of V happening right now - they could use your input!