Admittedly I go straight to one of the streaming services, but for smaller bands I like who are on bandcamp, I’ll use that to buy their stuff and throw it on my plex/jellyfin. I am also trying to cultivate a local music library again after finding my iTunes library from 2006 lol.
I started going mostly digital about a decade ago. I had moved overseas and so my space was limited. After the initial move, I was constantly moving, so buying physical copies just didn't make sense, especially when I had different regions to contend with.
Download 320kb/s and up only usually for free. I'd have to be rich to justify paying for things I can get for free at better qualities instead. Internet bill only life.
Mostly Spotify for my listening. I listen almost exclusively to full albums, but often will let the autoplay continue to see if there's anything I like.
Once in a while I will listen to BBC 6 Music. Have discovered a lot of artists there that I love.
Streaming services for casual listening, but I have an archive on a home theater PC of music I use for my college radio show with each song in mp3 format.
I probably obtain music in just about every conceivable way possible. Sometimes I'm listening on YouTube for city pop uploads, other times it's SoundCloud for weird obscure indie tracks. Sometimes I'll do some soul seeking to flesh out my local collection of FLACs for my iPod or Strawberry, or I'll pop into Bandcamp to find hidden gems. I also buy a fair bit of used vinyl from Discogs, and I'll occasionally hit up importCDs for the occasional budget-friendly Tatsuro Yamashita album. I even hunt around at local thrift stores to add to my cassette and CD collections, which have both grown to a fairly substantial size. Sometimes indie labels like Light in the Attic will get city pop reissues that aren't all that expensive, and I've bought a passable quality cassette from them before. I've been working on getting a thrown-together component Hi-fi setup from a bunch of thrift store scores, and it actually sounds and works quite well. I have a massive stack of portable CD players, and a trusty cassette walkman that has really decent W+F for what it is. Aside from MD (so far), I guess you could say I'm interested in diversifying my music-listening portfolio.
I use Spotify and Amazon Music for most things, with occasional excursions to Bandcamp and YouTube. If I really like something I'll buy an LP or a download. Spotify gives good recommendations but it tends to lock you into things that are very much the same as what you've already been listening to, and after a while you realize your musical world has become very small. So sometimes I go to everynoise.com for a different way to navigate the Spotify catalogue, and hop around genres until I find something interesting, then back to Spotify to listen around. And I perform classical music so that helps with discovery, and if there's a festival in town I'll go and listen to random bands.
Music
Discussion about all things music, music production, and the music industry. Your own music is also acceptable here.
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