Listening habits (bootlegs, hardcore, rock, cds, vinyl)

[Molecules]

How often and in what form do you listen to your music?

I'm asking because my listening habits have gotten ridiculous ever since I worked out file sharing; even back when all I had was a portable CD player I would really scrape the bottom of the barrel to get my musical fix.

Not only has file sharing, IMO, made everything so ****ing easy (albums I have been unable to find for years available at a click, FREE), it has cheapened music - to the point where I have a reasonable backlog of great albums that have not been given the attention they deserve. I'm always thinking of the next thing to look for.
Sound quality is also often cited as a downfall of mp3 and file-sharing culture, but my hunger is sufficient that I will merely compensate with volume. I hate myself for it sometimes, and still occasionally buy CD's out of shame, the hard-copy record industry is dying on it's knees after all.

The days of eagerly unwrapping a brand new album and listening to it the way the artists meant you to hear it seem so far gone now.
It's like that frankly bewildering trip to the 50-aisle grocery/utility beast that is your local MonsterMart - we live in a time of endless choice that keeps us nice and docile...
All I'm saying is that if we destroy the internet with fire and rocks I won't have the option anymore, and everything will be fine. Who's with me?

[sweet_nothing]

screw the record companies and wal-mart

[RoemerMW]

[swim]

How am I suppose to feel like a spoiled rich kid with out my oop record mp3's? There are pros and cons and seeing how I'm in the generation that is a product of it's effects its much easier for me to see the pros. I wouldn't like what I do if it wasn't so easy to get my hands on so much stuff that would've cost thousands of dollars to have done physically and maybe even impossible for some of it like 50 presses and albums that bands never released but decided to share over the web. Downloading doesn't even come close to buying LP with all the filling strewn out across your while you lie on your back listening holding the art inbetween your face and the ceiling light.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

I'd say about 95% of the stuff I download is either bootlegs , outtakes , sessions , vinyl rips of long since deleted albums that have not been re-issued in decades or stuff I wouldn't normally buy anyway so i feel no guilt in downloading any of it.

I don't really have this romantic notion of buying hard copies either because my record collection takes up 3 rooms and i'm now extremely limited for space.

I think I bought about 20/30 CDs last year , before I downloaded stuff it was over 100.
Now you might think that this is only because I downloaded all the others I would normally buy but you'd be wrong. I went through my rate your music page with all the 2007 releases and there was 37 albums there I would have gone out & bought.
So that means even with all the downloading I do only about 7 or 8 bands lost out on my money.

Having access to so much music has made me more picky about what I do buy. I wouldn't say that cheapens it I think the opposite. A band really has to impress me if they want to make money.

[Molecules]

It's probably just my scattiness, I guess at the end of the day good music is good music, mp3's can't really cloud that. Still it's chilling to think that there are probably kids out there who've never bought an album, it's such an odd way to get into music. What did we do before Wikipedia?

I hear what you're saying about storage space, large collections are a real bugger (especially when moving); but even external hard drives are prone to crashing - if my computer got wiped at this stage I would actually have a stroke. I've heard DVD-R's can hold tons of music, is this true?

[RoemerMW]

DVD-R's can hold about 5 gigs. You could buy a box of 50 DVD's for about 20 bucks if you get a good sale. But DVD's get can get scratched pretty easily. I'd reccomend just getting a backup harddrive.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

I've got 2 external HDs and just bought a duel disc 750 gig per disc one. I don't think i'll be losing my collection in a hurry.

[sleepy jack]

Most bands only get so much attention through downloading. Do you think Vampire Weekend would be so hyped right now if it wasn't for the internet? I don't feel guilty for downloading and I don't buy music much either. My opinion on this is pretty similar to Urbans, I only buy stuff that really impresses me. I'm 16, don't make very good money and my room is already cramped full of books, CDs I already have and instruments. I not only can't afford to buy all the albums I download but I don't have the space for it.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

I think it's gone from being a sellers market to a buyers market.

Before a record company could release a greatest hits album with 4 new songs on it. If I was a fan of that band I had to buy that greatest hits album at full price for 4 songs just to have them on CD.

And it didn't end there

With 'special editions' of albums being released 6 months after an album has come out with bonus tracks for the exact same price. I remember when Echo & The Bunnymen's Evergreen album came out. I was going to buy it but ended up buying something else instead. I'm glad I didn't because a month later I found out it was being released with a bonus disc featuring all their sessions for John Peel's show , for the exact same price.And obviously only a hardcore Bunnymen fan would be interested in hearing old Peel Sessions and would have bought the album when it came out originally anyway.


Also these days you can listen to an entire album before deciding to buy it rather than just a couple of singles. I'd say this is the biggest thing that has stopped me buying more CDs , finding out that the 2 or 3 songs I would have heard are the only 2 or 3 good songs on the album.

Thats why record companies are losing so much money these days. It's a buyers market & they can't rip us off anymore.