Try bandcamp if you’ve not already. You can buy music directly from the musicians, so they get a better share of the money.
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154 albums last 12 months, mostly new releases from Bandcamp.
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4 posts were split to a new topic: Media Form Factor
I’m not sure I understand the poll. If you go down to the record store and bring home a vinyl disc or whether you download from HD Tracks or whether you have a subscription to Qobuz, you’re buying music. The only time you’re not buying music is if you’re actually stealing it by copying music from someone else. That is clearly illegal.
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Technically none of them are buying music as the music remains to the party who owns the rights to the music. You are buying the right to listen to music. However, there is a difference with a subscription and a purchase. A Qobuz subscription will temporarily grant you the right to listen to the music. When your stop your subscription you no longer have access to the music. On the other hands, the vinyl or download that you purchased is till very much yours to listen to whenever you want. So “buying” in the poll refers to purchasing the right to listen to the music whenever you want and for as long as you want after you have completed your payment.
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I’m in the “Used to, but stream nowadays” camp. I have over 200 CD’s at home, which I have ripped to uncompressed FLAC and connected to my Roon Core. Qobuz and Tidal supply me with the rest here.
I was gifted a year sub to Deezer and I have Apple Music through Apple One. I barely use them. So I will be dropping Deezer. I’ll keep Apple Music as I do use the other parts of my Apple One sub. But I wouldn’t be missing it if it wasn’t a part of Apple One.
I think the majority here probably do both. Several of my favorite albums/artists have disappeared from Qobuz lately. So I bought the CDs. I’ll probably continue to buy music that’s not available on my streaming platform although Qobuz is getting better at featuring Indy artists. Bandcamp is a favorite.
I make it point to buy music of artists who are still living. As an example I could not care less if the estate of Jimi Hendrix makes any money off me. I buy things off Discogs that are no longer in print or not steaming.
The only music I buy these days are albums from lesser known and up and coming artists. The streaming services pay so poorly that I want to help those artists out. As for the artists that have ‘made it’ and are famous, I only stream their music because I don’t think they need my help.
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I have Qobuz Sublime and buy about an album a month, only the high res titles as many albums are under $10. I like owning the music. Like many here I have thousands of FLAC 44/16 and up and hundreds of high resolution albums on NAS.
I like owning music. I also don’t know how music will be accessed in 10 years with the Neil Young and Sting etc selling their catalogs.
I used Google Music years ago, they went away.
Will Qobuz or Tidal be around then? Who knows?
With Sublime I can get high res music at a reasonable price, and maybe the songwriter and the artist can make some money too. Getting paid for their work, what a concept.
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It is of course sometimes “more than cheaper” but at bargain prices.
Bandcamp gets 95% of my digital music purchases. I also purchase vinyl records, even though I don’t own a working turntable. I do both to support the artist / label more directly.
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I have ripped all my 600 CDs , over 10k tracks and stored into SSD (external drive to my Roon Core) and backup in HDD.
My first experience network streaming was back in 2005 with Slim Devices Squeezebox V3, mostly listen to my owned ripped collection and internet radio stations when Spotify/Tidal were not launched yet.
Since streaming music apps like Spotify/Tidal available in 2010s, I mostly listen to these streaming music apps via streamer and over 10k ripped tracks , since then , I hardly buy physical media unless it’s a good recording or “audiophile” CD.
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For vinyl, I buy all-analog only.
For digital, I find used CDs of the vinyl I buy (mostly jazz) and anything that isn’t available for streaming that I need/want to hear.
In the buying days, I bought lots of stuff just to hear it, and never listened to it again. That’s over with.
I sold 8,000 CDs and 800 albums in 2014 - once high-rez came out, my vinyl became dispensable in most cases because these sounded better on my Sony player and my expensive portable players. When Roon came out, with Tidal/Qobuz attached, I now ditched the Sony and moved to a Roon server. I didn’t even need to buy things on HDTracks. Slowly but surely, everything has been licensed for streaming, so, I see the buying curve go way down. Now all the mainstream streamers are moving to high rez, and mainstream phones support it, so I ditched the A&K portable, and now think that in 5 years, we’ll have high-rez everywhere.
Bought 6 albums so far this week.
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I’ve bought the BluRay of Within Temptation’s Black Symphony concert this week. Already owned the DVD and audio CD. It is that good.
Also my first music purchase in a long time.
Just got 15 more CDs from Charity shops today. 
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I didn’t expect anyone to take the “All the time” option so literally 
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One of my wife’s favourite albums across all genres. I ended up buying most of the Within Temptation albums after a number disappeared off Tidal (my wife was not impressed).
That was one of the things that got me buying lots of CDs again.
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I just recently bought some used CDs for albums that were not available on Qobuz or had been removed. Soulive’s entire catalog disappeared from Qobuz recently.