Paying for Music

brent

I have torrented on very rare occasions and I was never quite comfortable any time I did it, i.e. it never grew on me and I never became confident. I believe you make yourself a law target or at least what I tell myself.

ANYHOW here's the deal and my question:

If you are going to pay a musical artist, where do you do it? Cheapest place? Or just a site you align yourself with? What sites to do you trust with your money and bank info? What sites do you not trust with your money and your bank info?

I'm personally looking at Bandcamp since I like their scrappiness. Is love of scrappiness a valid reason? (It led me to Ikey..).

//As an aside, I'm perplexed to say in this ultra-lame and vile Most Foul Year of Our Lord 2024 I've have been discovering a lot of great music. I haven't done that in two decades. Now I want to digitally own it.//

Thoughts?
Thanks

BuzzPCSOS

brent Unless you want the latest releases charity shops sell CDs for a pittance, eBay has a good selection of music CDs both old and new.
There are many music collector sites online where you can get music in various formats.
I prefer to get CDs which can easily be converted to MP3 or other formats using the tools available in the repo.
MP3 files will play on most modern-ish music systems including car stereos via a memory stick. This makes building your own compilations easy. The tracks can be volume balanced using MP3 gain which runs fine under Linux Wine.

stekte

Every time i shop online i use prepay-ed cards. I consider it to be the best option for me. As for music i choose to have non digital.

brent

stekte right on, thank you. Prepaid cards are the crappiest gift you can give someone since they won't buy gasoline, liquor, groceries most of the time. If music-heads love them, then great. I am someone who had a turntable as a child, then tapes, then CDs. You obviously prefer one of the big three three there which is way cool. I try to lighten my load lately, mp4/flac ok with me.
Thanks for this POV.

stekte

I am still using my turntable and my cd player. Some years ago i backed up my tapes as flac. The sound from lps and cds is way better than any digital format.

SethStorm666

I use and pay for Spotify. It may not be the cheapest place, but they have a huge collection of music to explorer.
They take Paypal if you don't wanna put in your credit card.

brent

BuzzPCSOS
I live in thrift stores and I'm really not interested in any latest releases. I would rather have albums but those days are passed. I spent some days ripping all my CDs. I got tired of all the plastic laying around. That's why digital for me.
That said, consistent volume levels have always plagued me on playback.

BuzzPCSOS The tracks can be volume balanced using MP3 gain which runs fine under Linux Wine.

I really wish I knew that when I ripped all that plastic! Ugh! The curse of MP3 is the varying volume.

BuzzPCSOS

brent MP3Gain sets a consistent volume level either for a whole album or as each track individually and works with MP3s that are already created.
The website explains the reasons for MP3Gain to be in existence far better than I can. My own opinion of the software is that it is a very important tool for anyone with a large collections of MP3s.
If you use Wine then it runs well in that environment. I think it is supported in Snap but not in Flatpak.

Edit: If you are ripping new it is always worth keeping an eye on quality. Keep bitrates to 320Kbps as long as you have plenty of storage. Most rippers will default to 128Kbps which should be increased to 320Kbps in settings. Good rippers give you the option, not so good ones don't. For Linux my go-to program is Asunder which is in the Repo as notive Solus or Flatpak. Under settings change Encoder to MP3, un-check variable bitrate and move the slider up to 320Kbps for best quality.