Where do you buy your Music CD's from?

I have been forced to rebuy all my DRM MP3's and albums due to running out of activations. Basically I'm fed up with DRM Music and not being able to listen to my music where I want whenever I want.

So, I have to rebuy all my songs and albums but I would prefer not to use scambay and it's genuine Asia imports.

I am prepared to pay full price for the Albums and singles so price is not relevent here.

I want to know of any legal Music Suppliers like HMV and Play.com where I can get my music from but that also stocks a huge range of 80's music.

Can anyone recommend a place? Where do you buy your Albums and Singles from?

[edit] And for the love of all Gods and religions and faiths, for the love of Atheists and Cern Hadron Colliders, please steer clear of DRM Music services for they are the real evil of this earth.

I got my last CD (The Dickies) cheap from play.com.

Funny you should say that as last night I used Wikipedia to research some classic heavy metal albums that I've missed and ordered them all of ebay (buy now), about 17 in all! :-) Got loads for just £4.99 (made sure sellers had high feedback and were selling genuine CDs). I'll rip them all onto my computer when I get them, can't wait!

Sad but it's more and more getting Amazon, simply because all the music stores in the area either vanished one after each other or don't offer the music which i'm interested in. I miss the times were you walked into a music store with some weird looking heavy guys and were you could listen to a record (vinyl), talking with others and maybe having a drink.

Heh, If I was in your position I'd be hitting the torrents pretty quickly. I've always steered clear of DRM though, stuck with straight MP3s ripped from CDs bought in-store.

I could hit the torrents but I just can't enjoy Music I haven't purchased. Technically I have purchased it but I don't have any credits left to play it.

From now on I want an original physical disc.

I guess I'll try Amazon, that seems to always have any DVD I'm looking for.

I may give ebay a go also but will be a bit cautious.

amazon and play.com get my vote. and sometimes here: http://www.find-dvd.co.uk/

Don't like paying for music downloads, just buy CDs - normally from play.com.

I've had non-UK stuff imported by local record dealers though in the past but thats only on rare occasions when I can't get stuff through the regular channels.

I get almost all of my music from my emusic subscription, but they don't have a great deal of mainstream music, so I go to amazon normally if there's something I can't get on emusic.

Amazon and Play.com

I use play.com as well. They rock.

btw Amon, I think it's commendable that you are not pirating music.

play.com

i dont like getting my music 'free' unless released that way by the artist

99% of my mp3 collection i ripped from CD's i paid for i get the odd song or album off my brother when im round his and then track down the good and listened to albums when i find em in the shops at a price im willing to pay (ive seen some 20 year old albums selling for more than a new release album WTF?)
but if i dont like the album there is always the recycle bin or i just deselect it from syncing to my ipod

i havnt tried iTunes yet all legal downloads ive had ive got from my mobile where i pay once for the phone version and can get the mp3 free, but now ive changed handsets all my music refuses to play, i thought if there was going to be any phone linking DRM it would be with the sim/phone number not the handset

i just use that to grab the odd song im too embarrased to buy in a shop (dont use online cd shops yet) i kinda like this song and want to buy it but id rather buy gay porn from my nans newsagents than queue up in hmv with it (not that my nan runs or works in a news agents)

You know... you've got problems.

but it sounded funnier when it was in the convo i had at work

but i do refuse outright to buy some songs due to the embarassment factor

That'll teach you to buy the cheekygirls CD.

god id forgotten about them ...

someone @ work filmed me semi dancing to the ketchup song thank god id been drinking and was too pissed to stand so just sat dancing it would be better if they didnt film it or id never know it ever happened

People still use CD's?

People who give a toss about sound quality do, I don't understand people who would pay money for compressed lossy formats, that's just insane.
The only way this could be worse is that we find out you're self employed, work from home and infact filmed yourself.

Can anyone recommend at all how I can deal with MSN Music with regards to getting my money back?

I have repeatedly emailed them asking for a refund but to this day I have had no reply.

I have purchased hundreds of pounds of Music from them. Some Music is no longer available as the artist doesnt want their Music Downloadable anymore even if it's DRM'd so I can't even listen to that Music because it's no longer available in the catalogue and the license for it is now gone.

I just need to get my money back. Something tells me though that I may as well just kiss my cash goodbye and leave it as a lesson learned.

I may be a bit 1970s, but what's all this DRM stuff?

Is it like you pay for songs and a number of listens and after that you have to pay more?

Give me the CDs any time!!

Basil

I havent bought a CD in years...and really haven't paid much for music either...But i think the last time I bought an actual music CD was in 2003 to replace the one I accidently destroyed, for my cousin from CDNow.com. But that was a looong time ago.

Perfect sound quality apparently doesn't bother me as I thought it would as I found ways to tweak sounds to what I can consider reasonable for listening. And perhaps my ears aren't as sensitive, but when blasting a song on your speakers all sounds exactly the same wether from a CD or downloaded music file.


It also limits you to playing that music file in only one particular machine or MP3 player. Theres always ways around it though..

I'm fussy about sound quality, and on metal tracks the guitar may not sound quite correct with MP3s. So I rip all my CDs to the PC as Wav files (yes I know they are huge) because I figure that soon we'll have portable devices with enough memory to handle my collection and it won't be at lower MP3 quality :-)

I would never purchase music than contains DRM, I buy very few CD's these days; I just don't see the point. The only music I buy on CD is those bands I really like and want to support (not many). I buy most of my music from the cheaper websites like gomusic or mp3sale. Typically the quality is excellent with high bit rates and their selections are MUCH better than their DRM encumbered bretheren.

What peoeple want is simple: Affordable (1p-20p a track), No DRM, High Quality Audio, Widest possible selection. Do that and people will buy more music than ever before.

This is why sites like mp3sale etc are doing huge business while the regular shops are facing obilivion.

Darkheart

I pay over £1 for good trance mp3s (no DRM) and I'm fine with that.

That's the epitome of oxymoron.

1p-20p well if i was paid via royalties id like to get MORE than that per sale (not that i know what they get per sale from CD's anyhows)
i know downloads cut out alot of middle men between your wallet and the musicians but id still like to think that the band are actually getting PAID for their work

you might say "but they signed a $20mil deal theyre minted"
but its an advance in future sales and theyd have to sell alot of songs to get any more money after that especially at 1p per f'in track

people still buy CD's?
yes we do DRM forces alot of us to stay in the 'dark ages' just imagine having to pay to listen to the radio or you had a credit card in your mp3 player just to get the damn thing to work

i cant tell the difference between bitrates and used to rip at 320 for 'mix tape' CD's but also at 96kbps for limited memory mp3 players
i thought it would be better going back to wavs from 320 than lower but far better having the wavs aroudn but that wasnt practicle on my old hard drive (it is now the size and price of externals nowadays)

I don't understand people who pay for music.. www.pandora.com

yeah jagger and richards made their money stacking shelves at sainsburys the stones was just a hobby

Ive not bought a CD for years. I use the internet.

I think "The Wall - Live" limited edition box set was my last purchase.

if they took out DRM and bands sold direct via their websites (cutting out the now redundant record lables) at a good bit rate like 320kbps and had secure payments then id be more open to it
there have been some albums where i only listen to 2 or 3 tracks so instead of dividing the price of the CD by total tracks and getting a nice price if i were to divide by tracks i actually like and listen to then im paying ALOT, but free streaming to sort the wheat from the chaff and id find myself with just 2 or 3 songs from the album paid for and a better off wallet

but then without DRM whats to stop me giving my collection away wholesale and denying the bands i like so much money

stiffing the lable and the shop i dont mind
stiffing the band i dont like

I always just go to my local music store. Support the little guys and the band I like.

I have every single Beatles album on CD. I'm very proud of that.

^Next for my collection will be the movies.

Pretty much every genre has good examples and bad examples.

I rarely buy CDs as the difference between CD quality and a lossless format is negligible at best. However, I have been going even further back in time and buying more and more vinyl. Now THAT is where the best audio quality is - and yes, they even warm up digital masters (usually.) The best part about them is the way they're mastered - they can't be compressed to oblivion simply because of the limitations of the vinyl format.

I've noticed though that a lot of new vinyl is coming out of the package with a warp noticeable enough to leave audio artifacts on playback. Now THAT is annoying - dropping $25 on a new album and getting a nice 'whoosh' as the tonearm rides up and down a vertical warp. Anyone else notice this? I wonder if they've tried to - obviously rather poorly - speed up the cooling process of the vinyl.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand, I tend to buy most of my music on Amazon as it's in mp3 format and DRM free. Tend to order most CDs there too when I just need to own a copy for the booklet or whatever. I'd recommend moving over to DVD-A or SACD though if sound quality is important to you and if vinyl is too troublesome or cumbersome. There's just something.. ritualistically enjoyable about taking vinyl out of the sleeve, and placing it just so, setting the tone arm down, even flipping sides - it forces you to really commit to the music. And this isn't me just waxing nostalgic, I'm too young to have grown up with vinyl.

Enough rambling.

hopscotching across an album to get the song you want in a different order was something i did but found irksome ... CD's with their random and program button joy

i remember reading in some 'liberal/litteral' broadsheet lying around a few years back the columnist bemoaning the act of radom playing

really
i was under the impression that unless listening to a story evolving via the tracks (opera / musicals, the wall, war of the world etc) everything was just in that order cos it ended up that way and in the days of LP's you had a set length to work with so some songs had to be on the B side cos they were just a tad too long, but other than that they could have been on the A side

I did develop semi anti LP bias when you cant take em in the car (for example) but Mix tapes over came this issue and the eventual CD mix tape when i got enough drive space to have wavs copied over before the logical progression to mp3 players
my music when and where i like

if i was to be transported back to the time where LP's were the only thing (well 8 tracks too i guess) i dont think i could handle it, i might ever only want one song from an album and dont want to spend forever swapping and skipping LP's, thats what jukeboxes are for

I am into high quality audio myself. There are several stores around that sell used CD's. You can often find CD's for $4 or $5 and then I rip them myself at 320K. If you are looking for a lot of 80's stuff, many times those CD's are very cheap. I sold my 30Gb ipod and upgraded to an 80gb. I now have a stereo in my car that is ipod only. It was very liberating to pull all the CD's out of my car!

@ ginger thats why you take the ipod and laptop with you :) then patent them.

I get all my music from youtube. No DRM!!!

mtn id thought about that
but whos to say my clothes and everything else would be left behind in a crumpled pile and id arrive where ever in time in my birthday suit

id write alot of sci fi though (ye gads it would have to be on a type writer) and would in later life be hailed as the technological nostrodamus

eMusic is great for non-DRM music, but they tend to stock independent artists/labels. Good because there's tons of stuff that's new to me on there, but if you're looking for stuff you've already got/heard of, it's not much use.

I avoid DRM music like the plague. I recently bought an iPod, but I won't buy anything off iTunes in case I decide not to be tied to an iPod forever. Even iTunes non-DRM stuff is still in AAC format. I'd rather just get the CD from Amazon and rip it if I can't get it on eMusic.


That's the epitome of subjectivity. Err, or something.