So, here's an interesting subject that I'd love to see LPA member's opinions on. Do you prefer owning a physical copy of your music (be it CD, cassette, vinyl) or would you just rather download all of your music and not bother with physical items? I know that I personally love owning physical copies of my favorite albums and am building up quite the collection. I do use my iPod to listen to music on a regular basis due to convenience but I find there to be something really cool about being able to say that I have a physical copy of an album and also being able to look through the artwork and lyrics when I first listen to an album.
If I had a lot of money I would probably be a vinyl collector of sorts. But I don't, and I don't think that affects my listening of music at all.
Let's get digital, digital.. I don't ever play physical CDs so I don't even bother buying them anymore, waste of both space and time. It's still the same music however you play it.
Most of my music I own physical copies of, and I have a pretty extensive collection of dvds, blu-rays and games as well. When it comes to the music I barely ever actually use the physical copies once they're ripped though, besides just getting them out out of boredom and looking at the liner notes and thinking "hmm, that's nice". That's it.
While it is the same music regardless of how it's played, you miss out on being able to appreciate the packaging that CD came with. I personally like being able to look at the booklets that CDs often come with, but each to their own I'm somewhat similar. While I love owning the physical copies of my albums, when I listen to the album for the first time I'll look through the casing and the booklet while listening. However, after that, the music will usually go on my computer and iPod and the physical copy will get set aside with the rest of my collection.
If I spend money on something I better get something I can hold in my hand in return. The packaging is part of the experience IMO, I love looking through the booklet, case insert, and the CD. I design packaging as my job as well so I like to see what other designers are doing. That said the only CDs I actually use are the mixtapes / album copies I burn to listen to in my car. The CD pretty much only gets used to rip it or copy it, rarely will I throw into into a stereo.
I like my music like i like my women, physical! /cheese I had quite a few CDs and Vinyls before the tornado. Now I'm kind of reluctant to buy anything physical, because I still have all my stuff that was saved on my computers hard drive but no CDs, vinyls, tapes, etc.
Both really, though I strive for physical mainly. I frequently download new stuff buy new bands I'm keen on hearing and if I really like it what I hear I'll end up buying the CD anyway. I take great pride with my CD collection, so I'm constantly adding to it. And though I've ripped them all, I still listen to the CD's in my stereo & CD player on occasion usually to listen to the album in the best quality possible without any skips or jumps. Though I am guilty of ripping most of my CD's at 128kbs though only cause of the limited amount of space I have on my Phone/mp3 player. If they brought out Terra byte MicroSD cards then 380kbs/FLAC all the way
I finding that more and more my physical copies of music just end up collecting dust. Ten years ago my CD case was my pride and joy. Now it just sits in a closet because now that the CDs' are ripped onto the computer I have no real use for them. Unless my computer were to crash.
I have to disagree with you...sort of. I can see your argument for bands that are signed to labels. Signed artists, at least from what I know, make the majority of their money off of touring and not CD sales. So, if you really don't want record labels to see money (this really is a debatable topic. I'd like to see independent labels survive and the 4 big labels die), download all you want. Independent bands, on the other hand, do make a profit off music sales. I personally find it immoral to download something for free from an independent artist (unless they personally are offering it for free) because that is a source of income for them. I don't really know that this worded right but I hope my point gets across.
I'm way too big of a pack rat/"collector" type of guy to ever NOT want to buy CDs. I hate not having a tangible piece of memorabilia when I know I could. When it actually comes to listening to music though, I tend to go the digital route just because it's more convenient. Neither my car stereo nor my living room stereo work anymore, so that has a big impact as well.
Aw, come on man! Give them their money! Haha, nah, each to their own. I'm just happy to pay for something somebody (assumably) worked hard on. Even if I had a CD player in my car (my car has a cassette player, I use a cassette adapter deal to play my iPod in my car), I still wouldn't use my CDs in my car out of fear of them potentially becoming damaged.
In regard to illegal downloading, I'll always try to pay for it as long as it's in the 10 dollar range. But, for example, the new RHCP album costing 13 bucks (for a DIGITAL download) is laughable. I mean, come on. In general I think digital music is too expensive though. It should be 7 dollars for a new release or something.
For me, it depends on what it is. LP album, tangible items please. pretty much anything else I do not care. Games/music/whatever.