1990's: I don't know if I really bought any music on my own. I either listened to the CD's my mom and dad owned, listened to the radio, or was given music as a birthday or Christmas present.
2000: I'm pretty certain it was winter 2000 when my mum downloaded Napster and showed me how it worked, and I know I used it until it was shut down by the villainous Lars Ulrich.
2001-2005: With the collapse of Napster and accidentally infecting my PC with malware through other P2P programs like Morpheus and Kazaa, I pretty much stuck to buying CD's. My mum gifted me most of her CD's, which I would rip onto my computer, and then trade at a local used CD shop. Two CD's would net me 1 brand new one, and it was pretty common for me to go every Saturday. This was how I was introduced to bands like Killing Joke, Death, and Metallica. Sometimes I would skip lunch for the week and use the money my parents gave me to buy a new CD from some of the major electronic outlets like Circuit City, A&B Sound, and Future Shop (Pedantic Basterd is probably the only one who knows about the second one). I would also go to used CD shops that weren't really run by music nerds, but still had prices I could afford. I remember sometime around 2003/2004 using iTunes because I had won a bunch of free downloads from a contest Pepsi was doing where you could get free codes under soda bottle lids. If you held the bottle at the right angle you could see if you had a winner or not, and I just so happened to work in a small shop in my school that sold soda, so I would examine all the stock and hold back the winners so I could buy them myself.
2007: It was around this time that I learned what torrenting was, and started using that. I still sometimes use it, but as I don't really know what the good torrent sites are anymore I very rarely use it.
2014 to present day: Soulseek. It's basically the by-product of a mutual masturbation session between torrents and P2P programs.
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