So now I find myself in a bit of a quandary. After decades of purchasing music on 10cm plastic discs of varying formats, I'm seriously considering ceasing the practice. For the last couple years Amazon has been a great source of these discs, with many of them available for about $12 or less, and free shipping on orders over $39. I hadn't checked my wishlist on there in a couple months, but when I did on the weekend I was surprised to find that the vast number of cheap discs on my list had all dried up. Damn near everything was either really expensive, or just plain unavailable. That'd been my experience with pretty much every meatspace music store for the last six or so years, so that's also not an option I can go back to.
I still want to buy music. I still want to at least attempt to get some money to the artists who created these great works, regardless of the unknown number of middle-men and shitty contracts that get in the way of that. But at the same time, I can't justify the cost of $17-24 per CD at the volume I want to buy at. As such, it looks like buying physical albums is no longer an option for me.
Now, I've made a few choices about this in the past, thinking of a (what was then hypothetical) future when artists wouldn't even release CDs, and what I'd want out of things. I came up with the following:
- No DRM. Never.
- I won't pay money for an MP3, no matter the bitrate. Either lossless (FLAC) or 256kbps-ish AAC, or no dice. Lossless preferred.
- I want to be able to re-download the album if there's ever an issue, free of charge. If my computer dies and my backups also fail, I want to be able to get my stuff back. Theoretically, with the physical products my house insurance would cover such a situation, so I want the equivalent in a non-physical situation as well.
- I'm not interested in a subscription service.
So, my questions to you fine folks, are as follows:
- Are there other criteria I should be considering before buying?
- Given that criteria, where should I consider buying from?
Up until recently, iTunes wasn't an option due to the fact that they'd charge you a second time to download the album a second time. However, with their new "iCloud" feature, tracks you buy are automatically backed up into that, so you can download them as often as you like. They've also moved pretty much completely to DRM-free AAC format, with the odd thing being available in their proprietary lossless format (ALAC). Doesn't seem like a bad option.
I've also found
Zunior.com, which seems to be a great source for independent Canadian music. Everything available in FLAC, re-downloads are available. Of course, its limited in scope to a specific market, but if I want something out of that market, I'll gladly buy from there.
CDBaby, HMV, and Puretracks are all out because they only sell MP3s, as would be Amazon's MP3 store if it operated in this country. eMusic and Rhapsody are also out because they both only work on subscription basis. Is there another place I should be looking into that I'm just forgetting about?
