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How do you build your music library?
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Tiresias
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Dec 3, 2011, 05:48 AM
 
In the age of digital music downloads, there are two options:

A) Download however many songs on an album you like.

B) Download the entire album.

As someone with severe CDO (that's OCD with all the letters in alphabetical order, like they should be) I like the symmetry of option A.

I've heard the argument that an album is a cohesive work of art that needs to be listened to as such. This doesn't really hold true in all cases. It's a fact that some artists produce only one or two awesome tracks. Sometimes, I like one song enough to want it in my library without downloading the whole album. I put them together into a compilation.

But as a result of generally following option A, I now have a gargantuan music library. Built up over about 10 years, it now consists of more than 10,000 tracks. I only listen to about 1,000 of those regularly. And iTunes is bursting at the seams. It behaves sluggishly under the weight of that much data. It also does a few other weird things, I won't go into.

I'm seriously considering deleting tracks that I don't regularly listen to. Or at least dropping them onto an external harddrive.

But there is something that stands in my way: If iTunes informs me that track X or Y is 1 of 15, but there are only 3 or 4 tracks for that album, well, then, how am I going to sleep at night?

Give me courage.
     
Lateralus
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Dec 3, 2011, 06:10 AM
 
I have nearly 9,000 songs in my Library - one track is not part of an album or full EP.
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Waragainstsleep
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Dec 3, 2011, 08:09 AM
 
Lone songs are pretty rare in my library too. I think the best way to manage a large library these days is to have a dedicated machine that stays on. Mac Mini would be best given the power consumption.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
Tiresias  (op)
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Dec 3, 2011, 09:49 AM
 
Right.

The problem is really based on hard drive capacity. In the future, when computers the size of credit cards have 100 petabytes of storage, there will be no need to delete anything, ever.

Meanwhile...
     
Waragainstsleep
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Dec 3, 2011, 10:59 AM
 
I've always considered the music part of my library to be negligible in terms of capacity. 10,000 songs is what 50GB or so? Thats not so much really. Its my movie library thats the real space killer.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
andi*pandi
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Dec 3, 2011, 12:56 PM
 
Most of my songs are albums. One-offs are those novelty songs purchased on a whim, or free single of the day things, or mixes others have sent me.

I would like to get rid of some things, but the hoarder in me says noooo.... you may need that rare Weird Al track someday.

And my brand of OCD claims that duplicate songs (greatest hits, soundtracks, compilations) have to count as different so I can't delete them because then if I listen to a soundtrack a song would be missing. AND THAT WOULD BE WRONG.
     
Waragainstsleep
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Dec 3, 2011, 01:25 PM
 
I keep duplicates too.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
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Dec 3, 2011, 03:18 PM
 
Originally Posted by andi*pandi View Post
Most of my songs are albums. One-offs are those novelty songs purchased on a whim, or free single of the day things, or mixes others have sent me.

I would like to get rid of some things, but the hoarder in me says noooo.... you may need that rare Weird Al track someday.

And my brand of OCD claims that duplicate songs (greatest hits, soundtracks, compilations) have to count as different so I can't delete them because then if I listen to a soundtrack a song would be missing. AND THAT WOULD BE WRONG.
That's me, exactly, too.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Dec 3, 2011, 03:39 PM
 
Originally Posted by andi*pandi View Post
Most of my songs are albums. One-offs are those novelty songs purchased on a whim, or free single of the day things, or mixes others have sent me.

I would like to get rid of some things, but the hoarder in me says noooo.... you may need that rare Weird Al track someday.

And my brand of OCD claims that duplicate songs (greatest hits, soundtracks, compilations) have to count as different so I can't delete them because then if I listen to a soundtrack a song would be missing. AND THAT WOULD BE WRONG.
Yup.

     
ShortcutToMoncton
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Dec 3, 2011, 04:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
I've always considered the music part of my library to be negligible in terms of capacity. 10,000 songs is what 50GB or so? Thats not so much really. Its my movie library thats the real space killer.
It's about 175 gigs for me. You should start listening to higher-quality music files.

And, my brand of OCD means I delete the same song that appears on different albums. I only keep the versions that appeared on the artist's album.
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Waragainstsleep
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Dec 3, 2011, 04:58 PM
 
What data rate are you using? Anything over 320kbps is a waste IMO.
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boy8cookie
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Dec 3, 2011, 05:24 PM
 
How do I build my music library?

One torrent at a time.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Dec 3, 2011, 05:27 PM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
What data rate are you using? Anything over 320kbps is a waste IMO.
That's your opinion.

You'll never be able to use a better codec for transfer to other devices without losing more quality.
     
besson3c
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Dec 3, 2011, 07:06 PM
 
Originally Posted by boy8cookie View Post
How do I build my music library?

One torrent at a time.

I hope you have found other ways to support the artists you feel are worth supporting...
     
Waragainstsleep
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Dec 3, 2011, 07:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
That's your opinion.
It is. Hence "IMO".

Not just my opinion though, if its good enough for Trent Reznor, its good enough for me.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
Lateralus
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Dec 3, 2011, 07:31 PM
 
Actually, when it comes to modern compression, and particularly in the case of AAC, anything over 192k~ is wasted space and is almost universally indistinguishable from the source CD to the human ear. But if you think you have magic ears, then head over to the HydrogenAudio forums and prepare to have your ass handed to you as you attempt to argue your placebos. You don't tend to get audibly better sound over AAC/LAME-MP3 until you venture into HD audio territory - and even then, equipment is the the first bottleneck.

That said, I encode at around 256k with AAC @ tVBR and then all of my most treasured stuff in Apple Lossless.
( Last edited by Lateralus; Dec 3, 2011 at 10:54 PM. )
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Waragainstsleep
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Dec 3, 2011, 10:35 PM
 
Its refreshing to hear that. When I worked in a shop the number of tw@ts I would get swearing blind that they couldn't stand to listen to anything under 512kbps was just bonkers. These idiots genuinely took great offence if you even tried to reason gently with them on the subject, let alone call them out as pretentious fools. These are the sort of people who spend $800 per metre on 'oxygen-free' speaker cables.

When I was touring prospective universities, a professor in the physics department told the group about a study they did comparing gold=plated speaker cables to standard copper. Turned out that in real-world conditions, copper performed better than gold. Nearly as funny as wasting cash on gold-plated HDMI cables....
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
Spheric Harlot
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Dec 4, 2011, 12:33 AM
 
And we went from discussion of audio quality to discussion of gullibility and snake-oil salesmen within four posts of it coming up.

Well done.

I don't explain your job to you (let alone tell you that the standards and criteria you use to judge the quality of its results are bunk), and I'd really appreciate it if you did the same for mine.
     
ghporter
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Dec 4, 2011, 07:53 AM
 
My main library, on my computer, is built from ripped CDs, from singles I heard and liked, and from whole albums I bought because I liked a single or two on them.

All my rips are at the highest quality level available, because sometimes I play major parts of my library through my home stereo. But when I put songs on my Nano, do I need that level? Considering the earphones/buds I use, probably not at all. So I often down-convert for my mobile devices (but I don't always actively go about making that happen). And it depends on which mobile device I am using; my car's sound system is a lot better than my earbuds, and I connect via line-out, so my Classic iPod has everything at the highest bitrate.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Waragainstsleep
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Dec 4, 2011, 09:11 AM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
And we went from discussion of audio quality to discussion of gullibility and snake-oil salesmen within four posts of it coming up.

Well done.

I don't explain your job to you (let alone tell you that the standards and criteria you use to judge the quality of its results are bunk), and I'd really appreciate it if you did the same for mine.
Its relevant. This thread is about building and managing an iTunes music library and disk capacity is a factor for some people and data rates are obviously a factor in the required capacity.

Sorry that you're choosing to take offence but I have no idea what your job is (I assumed from your location that you worked for Airbus but I'm guessing you don't spend your days listening to AIFF recordings of jet engines so perhaps I read too much into that). My assumption for this thread was that we were talking home music libraries. Keeping a pro library whether its master recordings from a studio or indeed recordings of jet engines for detailed analysis has very obvious justification for keeping much higher quality copies, but then it has equally obvious justification for enterprise level storage and backup solutions to keep those files on.

If someone wants to keep 50MB copies of every song they own on a MacBook Pro, plus duplicates for every best of and movie sound track that also carries that same song then they need to accept they are being a bit overly demanding and buy a bigger hard drive.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
OreoCookie
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Dec 4, 2011, 09:44 AM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
Nearly as funny as wasting cash on gold-plated HDMI cables....
Although I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I thought gold plating was to ensure good contact since gold does not oxidize.
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ghporter
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Dec 4, 2011, 10:46 AM
 
...well yes, in some applications having gold plated contacts is important to ensure good electrical connections. But the typical home environment is far more benign than the industrial/aerospace applications gold plated contacts were originally intended for. Further, the price premium for consumer-grade cables with gold plated contacts and shells is outrageous; even at today's insane gold prices, you get a few molecules thickness of gold on any plated contact (probably fewer nowadays), but the pricing makes it look like you're getting a pretty thick layer of gold. "Fraud by pricing" is a term that comes to mind to describe this sort of thing.

Bright tin coated contacts and shells will do a fine job of ensuring good contact between pins and sockets on consumer (and most commercial) grade cables, and won't set you back a month's pay for a single HDMI cable, either. And tin is very resistant to oxidization, so you'll probably never see any oxidization of tinned connector pins. It's just not as "classy looking" (read that as "expensive looking") as gold.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Waragainstsleep
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Dec 4, 2011, 10:57 AM
 
Actually you can get gold plated HDMI cables pretty cheaply on eBay or Amazon and avoiding oxidisation is a reasonable justification but they aren't sold that way on the high street. Go into a Currys Digital (I'm guessing these are like Best Buy or Target) they'll tell you it gives you a better signal and charge you ÂŁ30. Its the same thing they did when DVD players got cheap (ÂŁ25) and then they charged you ÂŁ12 for the 50p SCART cable.

In the UK, I heard that PC World asked all the printer manufacturers to stop including USB cables. They were charging ÂŁ10+ for them and that was where their profit was on a ÂŁ40 HP printer.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
Gankdawg
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Dec 4, 2011, 11:04 AM
 
One song at a time via iTMS. Majority of my library is ripped from CDs that I own. The overwhelming majority of those CDs have 2, maybe 3 good songs on them which is the reason I buy one at a time now. I rarely buy an entire album now.
     
ShortcutToMoncton
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Dec 4, 2011, 11:18 AM
 
Originally Posted by Lateralus View Post
Actually, when it comes to modern compression, and particularly in the case of AAC, anything over 192k~ is wasted space and is almost universally indistinguishable from the source CD to the human ear. But if you think you have magic ears, then head over to the HydrogenAudio forums and prepare to have your ass handed to you as you attempt to argue your placebos. You don't tend to get audibly better sound over AAC/LAME-MP3 until you venture into HD audio territory - and even then, equipment is the the first bottleneck.

That said, I encode at around 256k with AAC @ tVBR and then all of my most treasured stuff in Apple Lossless.
I agree that I can't hear a difference with files over 256k AAC vs. a CD itself. But people who actually do this for a living claim they can - Spheric probably says hello - so I don't see why I would ever argue with their expertise. But why compress the files, anyway? In today's world of almost-unlimited storage space I see no reason to start stripping out data.

I've been getting everything in HD whenever possible - I've got a pretty good library now. I can hear the difference between 24-bit and 16-bit audio in blind tests I've done, although sometimes it depends on the recording too. And HD tracks are massively huge (24/96-192).
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Spheric Harlot
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Dec 4, 2011, 11:39 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
Although I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I thought gold plating was to ensure good contact since gold does not oxidize.
The gold plating is usually so thin, however, that just connecting and disconnecting the cable a couple times eliminates the advantage.
     
SpaceMonkey
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Dec 4, 2011, 02:05 PM
 
There are a couple of questions here I guess.

Q: How do I buy music?

A: Almost everything I buy is as an album, in CD form. While all of the music I listen to is in computerized form (on my Mac, on my iPod, etc.) I appreciate having the CD on hand as an "original" source so I can convert to multiple formats as necessary. I have bought a few MP3 albums from Amazon when they have their monthly $5 sales.

Q: How do I organize and listen to my music?

A: Upon purchasing, CDs get ripped to Apple Lossless files and stored on my Mac (and backed up, of course). The files are then converted to VBR MP3 files (LAME -V2, averaging ~200 kbps) and added to my iTunes library. Most of my listening is done at the computer on headphones or during my commute on my iPod.

Although my iPod has the option to convert files to 128 kbps AAC files when syncing, I don't simply add the lossless files to my iTunes library for listening at home for the simple reason that I still have a sizable number of files that were not bought as CDs (Amazon MP3 purchases or older downloads) and I don't want to down-convert those.

At home, I listen primarily through the iTunes DJ feature, drawing from a combination of smart playlists (a weighted mix of highest rated, least recently played, least often played, and random).

iTunes library size: 4,082 songs, 21.43 GB
Lossless files: 64.51 GB

I haven't noticed any strange iTunes behavior with my library, although I know it's a far cry from the OP's.
( Last edited by SpaceMonkey; Dec 4, 2011 at 02:23 PM. )

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Salty
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Dec 4, 2011, 07:44 PM
 
About a third of my library is CDs I had when I was younger before iTunes ... maybe less than that? Nearly everything else is purchased from iTunes as full albums. I've downloaded a few discographies of bands that I wasn't in love with, or who had already broken up. (I support artists, not labels)

Pretty well everything is organized, I recently had to get rid of all my ratings because I felt a need to download the beta of iTunes 10.5 to get it in Cocoa and then I couldn't' get a newer beta and so my library died and I decided to just start from scratch as far as meta data went. It's mostly all unrated now and that bothers me.

The last few years I've moved mostly toward cycling through my recently purchased albums, and then you slowly get favourites in there. I keep all the old stuff but it rarely gets listened to. As far as liking individual songs, I generally prefer the artist even over the album. Sure I'll uncheck some genuinely bad songs that made it into the mix, but most of my musicians have interesting things to say even in the songs that don't necessarily get my toes tapping right away.

Also sometimes you fall in love with an album after ten listens. Derek Webb's Stockholm Syndrome irritated the hell out of me at first, now I love it.
     
Lateralus
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Dec 4, 2011, 08:14 PM
 
People use Ratings?
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ghporter
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Dec 4, 2011, 08:40 PM
 
Yeah... why? My library isn't something I just pour random music files into; I either put things I like in there, or put in things I might like and then check them out. Either way, if it stays in my library, it's because I like it, so everything would have 5 stars anyway...

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SpaceMonkey
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Dec 4, 2011, 08:48 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
Yeah... why? My library isn't something I just pour random music files into; I either put things I like in there, or put in things I might like and then check them out. Either way, if it stays in my library, it's because I like it, so everything would have 5 stars anyway...
Or you keep albums. If you use "I like this album" as a baseline, then there are likely songs that you really like (a song that you wouldn't mind listening repeatedly to in a single session), songs that are "okay," and songs that you rarely if ever want to hear*. Then ratings are a useful way to set up playlists.

*I think a 5 star range is overkill, since for me there are really only those three classes of songs. I only use 4-, 3-, or 2-star ratings.

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Lateralus
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Dec 4, 2011, 08:54 PM
 
Who needs self-assigned stars to tell them which songs they like?
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Please de-liv-er
     
SpaceMonkey
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Dec 4, 2011, 08:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by Lateralus View Post
Who needs self-assigned stars to tell them which songs they like?
I don't, but my iTunes smart playlists do. I obsessively maintain the genre tag for the same reason.

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Lateralus
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Dec 4, 2011, 08:58 PM
 
As do I, and it's because the genre tag is crucial information to a sprawling Library. Stars are not. Musical tastes vary and change, the genre of a song does not.
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SpaceMonkey
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Dec 4, 2011, 09:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by Lateralus View Post
As do I, and it's because the genre tag is crucial information to a sprawling Library. Stars are not. Musical tastes vary and change, the genre of a song does not.
I didn't say I never changed the star values, either. Your quibble about what is "crucial" seems a little weird. What is crucial to my listening habits may not be crucial to yours. For example, my iPod that I use on my commute is an iPod shuffle. Since it's small and I can't navigate on it, I only want songs on there that I "really like." In that case, stars are essential for my easily maintaining the playlist that the iPod syncs with.

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Tiresias  (op)
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Dec 5, 2011, 09:58 AM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
Yeah... why? My library isn't something I just pour random music files into; I either put things I like in there, or put in things I might like and then check them out. Either way, if it stays in my library, it's because I like it, so everything would have 5 stars anyway...
Your appreciation for each artist is uniform across their entire output? And uniform across your entire music library without any variation or nuance?

I use five-star ratings to highlight my favorite tracks so they're easy to find when I want to listen to them.

A smart playlist for starred tracks is also my iPhone sync, as I said in the playcount thread—and that definitely makes sense, non?
     
Waragainstsleep
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Dec 5, 2011, 10:30 AM
 
Originally Posted by Tiresias View Post
Your appreciation for each artist is uniform across their entire output?
You obviously haven't heard the latest Metallica album then.
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Dec 5, 2011, 12:35 PM
 
I am a former nightclub DJ. I have about 4000 lp's and about 1400 45's. I also have about 3000 purely digital cuts. I have set up play lists to categorize everything. I have the decades from 1950- 2000, and then other playlists for sound effects, Classical music, Humor, and then Christmas, Halloween. For large amounts of one artists work I would build a playlist for them. I have many many one hit wonders and very few entire LP's or CD's worth of music.

From 2000-2003 I would take 30 or so LPs every weekend and ONE TUNE AT A TIME, copy them over using CD Spin Doctor. Of course the turntable, tone arm and cart are all top of the line. Same with the Preamp. I use a DBX 118 to 'fix' some background noise issues. I copied over 1900 cuts from the Vinyl. Ugh! I have several hard drives with the music on it, stored elsewhere, just because it was a pain.
     
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Dec 5, 2011, 01:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by Lateralus View Post
Who needs self-assigned stars to tell them which songs they like?
Sometimes I'm in the mood for songs I really like. Sometimes for more songs.
     
ShortcutToMoncton
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Dec 5, 2011, 02:05 PM
 
I simply don't have the time required to rate individual songs - that would be an enormous task. I suppose I could do so for albums, but as someone else mentioned, I'm not sure that would be terribly helpful as I generally only add albums I think are great - and the mark of a great album is that their are no "bad" songs, in my view.

99% of the time I add music by entire albums. I download the album, for free. Then I listen to it. I consider this a try-before-you-buy approach. If I think the album is only half-decent, I'll be on the fence whether I keep it or delete it entirely. If the album is good, I'll keep it and probably buy a hard copy. If it's great, I'll buy it. Generally I then re-rip from the hard copy as well.

For hi-def I've been buying digital music as that seems to be the only available option - physical media is rare to non-existent.
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Lateralus
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Dec 5, 2011, 02:27 PM
 
Yeah, I generally don't buy albums, except that they're sometimes well cheaper at the store than they are on iTunes. Particularly on debut.

Other than that, I do buy special edition/collectible stuff. Take for example the newly released re-issues of the first two Smashing Pumpkins' albums. The box sets are full of so much awesome shit and are so well made that I could never be satisfied with a digital copy.
I like chicken
I like liver
Meow Mix, Meow Mix
Please de-liv-er
     
   
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