Really I prefer buying CDs at shows. Artists usually get to buy CDs from their own labels for $1 each, where if you buy it on Amazon/iTunes, they have to pay their label back for the recording costs, so they get like $0 until they hit some number (usually a few thousand). So if I buy a CD for $12, they're probably getting at least $10 of that.
Particularly on Bandcamp there are countless small, honest labels that act as a curator and really help to develop their artists while taking a fair cut. Being featured on one of them is a huge opportunity for most artists.
I also buy almost everything I find on Bandcamp. Excepting those über-hipster techno artists with 100-copies vinyl-only releases (but those you can usually still find rips on Soulseek.)
Begin excerpt from said interview:
What do you think about OiNK being shut down?
Trent: I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted.
If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don't feel cool when I go there. I'm tired of seeing John Mayer's face pop up. I feel like I'm being hustled when I visit there, and I don't think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc.
Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that's what's such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it?
People on those boards, they're grateful for the person that uploaded it — they're the hero. They're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band. I'm not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.
Cease excerpt from said interview.
Flash forward 11 years and there still isn't a legal alternative to OiNK' Pink Palace (OPP) that can hold a candle to it. I love music, but the music that I love I can not find on any streaming service.
The bands I like are old enough that they are no longer touring or producing music and since I can not find any of their "old" songs on any (legal) streaming or downloading sites I am left with zero options to support the bands I personally like.
[1]: https://www.vulture.com/2007/10/trent_reznor_and_saul_willia...
Redacted has almost anything that's not the most obscure of the underground.
Although for the more obscure things, youtube-dl is #1 where soulseek fails
How come? I know What.CD closed down, but I remember that RuTracker had quite a large selection of high-fidelity music records.
I've used Google Play when I couldn't find something on Bandcamp because it lets me purchase and download the album in a browser. But even then you have to have an account.
They want to make sure everyone uses their software that runs on their overpriced hardware, and DRM is yet another way to enforce that.
but yeah I never liked it/like it on windows.
iTunes successfully turned me off pirating music, why would I do it when I can pay 99p for a song and have all the metadata correct, including album art, perfectly synced to all my devices in perpetuity? And no DRM means I can play them on my non-apple/iTunes devices and media players.. great!
Well, unfortunately I want to own my music, so I don't like to use streaming services and there was an issue[0] with some music going missing. So for as long as apple are pushing their subscription model so hard I'm going to go back to ripping from youtube or downloading FLAC torrents and converting them myself.
(sorry, I'm a little bitter that the entire UX around apple's media player changed to push this bullshit so hard)
https://picard.musicbrainz.org/
I even… buy music on iTunes… and overwrite all of their metadata with MusicBrainz's.
I haven't tried bandcamp but iTunes is annoying for me today. Features like the "complete my album" and recommendations no longer exist except inside Apple Music.
Seconded. My music search these days is