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TMA Discussions Part II: Physical Copies vs. Digital Files


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There was a brilliant record store in Manchester called Power Cutz (i think)which had all my kind of stuff in when I was 16 - I remember getting my grant from college and going down there with the cheque cashed and some of my wages from the supermarket and blowing about £60 on CDs in one visit. Good times!

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I get much of my stuff used, it helps get the price down a bit, while still getting a full physical copy of the albums I like. Also, used selections tend to feature much more rare and out of print items, which is helpful to me being so young and listening to a lot of stuff that you can't find new anymore. Ebay has also been great for me, found hundreds of great things on it, but I've seen just as many ripoffs and shitheads asking way too much for rare items. If you're patient and you look in the right places, you can find almost anything without paying too much.

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I really enjoyed leafing through the inlay books on the two Iron Maiden CDs I bought this morning. Having the artwork in your hands to cast your eye over still gives me a little buzz that no digital booklet can ever manage to equal. The 3 Cds I bought today cost me £7 (whats that in your money BAN? $10?). A new release is £8-£9 online and about £12-£15 in the store nowadays. There is a massive hole in the supposed battle with piracy that the record companies and music stores have been missing for years.

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I really enjoyed leafing through the inlay books on the two Iron Maiden CDs I bought this morning. Having the artwork in your hands to cast your eye over still gives me a little buzz that no digital booklet can ever manage to equal. The 3 Cds I bought today cost me £7 (whats that in your money BAN? $10?). A new release is £8-£9 online and about £12-£15 in the store nowadays. There is a massive hole in the supposed battle with piracy that the record companies and music stores have been missing for years.
Yeah, looks like your conversion rate is pretty close. For most used CD's, I pay anywhere from $3-9 depending on what it is and where it's from, but try to stick with good quality copies. It's about the same or less cost as legal downloading for me, but I prefer to have the hard copy.
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My birthday presents today have largely consisted of money today so I have invested in Itunes vouchers because I can't see any point in the near future where I will have time off to have a trip into Manchester or Liverpool for a good scour of record shops. I have made my mind up that I do need to take quarterly trips into the city and have a good look around the backstreet stores (esp around Northern Quarter of Manchester) though to see what I can get for decent value.

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I do the same thing mate, go and check out the record stores in the city when I can but rarely does this yield more then bitter disappointment at the time wasted trawling through garbage only to find albums which I already have. At the end of the year I'm going to order a few cds through amazon.com and make that a quarterly thing

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Amazon isn't bad for music in either digital or cd format. The downloads are usually 50p cheaper than Itunes and Amazon usually has more choice. Last night Itunes didn't even have one Trouble album to download. They had one track from memory. The thing I like about dowloading at Amazon is it goes straight into my cloud player and I can then pick the stuff up from my phone on the app I have. I havent synced my ipod in ages as I find i never have enough space to put all that I want to on there, although I use it less since I quit the gym.

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