Metal Reviews

I don't download music anymore.
Because I can afford buying the real thing (and cds are cheaper than they've ever been).
Because downloading is too easy, it kind of spoils the fun...
On average, I buy about 50 cds a month, I honestly can say I dug deep enough in most of these. Sure, by listening to a lot of music you get the thing faster... Add to that the downloads, it's just unmanageable.
And so I quit downloading... except on extremely rare occasion when my fanboyism indulges in a early and juicy leak... I'm only human...

Ho, and I'm still not buying the "buying mp3s thingy", I would feel robbed.

What about you ?

Can't afford buying albums. Have no desire to have a plethora of CDs laying around. Attending shows and buying merch is where it's at for me. It is enough for my friends in the DIY scene, hence it is enough for larger bands.

I download 6-8 albums a month and buy 3-4 (almost always ones I've already downloaded and love.) Hadn't thought of it, but my appetite for new music has shrunk, and I hardly ever download albums I dislike these days, so I could probably afford to just buy albums.

I do youtube explorations until I can buy something these days.

*can't wait for Ken to join this thread!*

I chose "No I don't" but I should elaborate a bit. I've never downloaded an entire album. What I used to do, before the days of MySpace and YouTube, was download only two or three songs from an album (majority of these being the album's singles). If I really liked all those songs I would then go buy the CD. To me this is no different than watching the trailers for a movie and then going to see it in theatres.

But now that pretty much everything can be found online streaming, I don't literally download tracks to my hard drive anymore but I'll still use the same process as I mentioned above. Again, the majority of these are singles and can be found on the official band's pages so they're allowing those songs to be listened for free anyway.

This kinda just reads as "look at me on my moral high horse".

I want to vote "François Hollande" but there is no option to do so in your poll.

(I download then systematically buy albums I like. The rest I drop eventually.)

My downloading habits lasted only for a few days. I started buying again after that . Never will I download again but only sampling on you tube just not to buy albums I can't appreciate.

Just wait for Ken to arrive.

I know you support through concerts & merch. More than I could say for myself.

I use Youtube to test albums out, but I always buy what I like in the form of a CD.. You can get just about anything on Amazon.. With most being relatively cheap..I like having the physical object for some reason..Same goes for Dvds and Books.....

I primarily buy all my music from iTunes now. I don't want the clutter of cd cases, if I order physical cd's then Amazon takes forever to ship anything to people who are NOT AmazonPrime members, plus with iTunes I enjoy that as soon as I download the album it is sent to all of my devices. I also like knowing that if there is a song or album not on my phone or ipad, I can just download it from the iCloud.

Mike Amazon has some top sellers which the rating might not always show. "Importcds_" and "Nagiry" are the main two distributors I buy from at Amazon. Import ships right away, while, Nagiry sometimes takes up to 48 hours to ship. Import arrives in maybe a week or so while Nagiry takes a bit longer. I never buy from Amazon directly. I used to in the past but then I discovered these great sellers which have the particular piece of music for much, much cheaper and the shipping is in most cases much faster. I would never consider digital files a collection of any sort. CD's, tapes and now I have discovered and buy the magnificence of vinyl (which is rather expensive compared to CD's).

I haven't downloaded "to keep" since 2003-2004.

I will look at odd Youtube clip to check new bands out.

However if I like the music, I buy the CD.

Like MitchW, I like the physical product.

Plus if I buy a CD I'm supporting the music industry including the infrastructure required to maintain it.

To put it simply, if bands don't sell, labels don't invest in them. That means less albums, less tours and less music for everyone.

Finally downloaded music often sounds more inferior due to multiple compressions and other digital fucking about that makes it sound crap.

Eh, it's not that hard to find websites who are pretty strict about this sort of thing.

I used to download a lot but can not stomach MP3 anymore unless I am serverely attached to certain songs and there is no other way. Using FLAC exclusively has dwindled the options down a lot.

It is also a matter of not having a lot of garbage. I have about 500 albums on the hard drive and adding 50 albums to this of stuff that I have lukewarm interest in muddies the water, so I don't bother anymore. I have tons of stuff to listen to and tons of albums I need to listen to.

If I had the money I would probably end up owning a couple thousand albums and digitizing them.

The lack of abundance of HD space and the ease of finding the stuff makes having 30,000 tracks impossible these days nd I don't miss the 25K songs I no longer have access to.

Downloading is a thing of the past. I buy 100% of my music... unless its offered free by the band. But I also don't buy a whole lot of new music. I'm content rediscovering my old albums.

I did buy a lot of physical CD´s before, but converted to iTunes a couple of years ago. However, when you´re into a genre such as this, you won´t find everything on iTunes.

So I just started buying again, mainly off of eBay. I expect going back to the normal 30-50 albums per month + the occasional digital products.

For you or in general?

I should note that bands that are uber-DIY and lefty I'll totally buy albums from like Skagos or Panopticon. They operate outside of the record industry and I know where my money is going.

Thanks for the information. I do appreciate it. I have seen 'Importcds_' on Amazon, in fact I may have bought a few things from them before...I just can't remember. I don't think I've bought anything from Nagiry but I will certainly look into them as well. I've been on the hunt for a few albums that have been released in Europe but not in the US yet (particularly the new Swallow The Sun) so perhaps these sellers will be the answer. Thanks again

Dodax are quite good too. I use them the most with Nagiry.