replacing albums
Dear LazyWeb,
Dani and I have a lot of albums and cassettes that we don't play any more, so we have begun the process of figuring out how to upgrade to digital media (while culling the stuff we don't care about any more). Some albums exist as CDs or downloads; others we'll have to burn ourselves (we have hardware for that). Mostly we're replacing albums, we think, and not just grabbing the "good tracks". But not all albums were reissued as CDs, so there are some individual tracks in our future assuming we can find them. (We're only through "folk, A to C" so far so expectations could change, but this is what it's looking like now.)
Even though most of this is going to end up as MP3s anyway, I prefer to buy physical CDs where we can. Yes, it's extra work to then burn them and we have to store the CDs, but I want both the liner notes and the security of knowing that some digital nanny isn't going to prevent me from moving that album to a new computer or iPod. It's also easier to browse; cover art and location on the shelves are meaningful guideposts for me, and iTunes' "genre" is not nearly rich enough for sorting; I need multi-level catagorization.
First questions: where besides Amazon should we be looking online for reasonably-priced CDs, some obscure? Is anybody beating Amazon on price consistently enough to look into? (I realize that the Amazonians among my readers might not want to answer that. :-) )
Now, about downloads. We haven't bought much music in this form before. We want it to be as easy as possible to play whatever we buy on multiple computes and iPods, including future ones and future tech. Sometimes this is prevented (DRM, I presume) -- I bought a song from iTunes and we were unable to play it on Dani's computer. Other times things appear to work fine -- Dani bought a song from Amazon and I could play it just fine. Next questions: are these typical experiences for those two vendors? Are there other vendors we should look at?
Thanks.
Dani and I have a lot of albums and cassettes that we don't play any more, so we have begun the process of figuring out how to upgrade to digital media (while culling the stuff we don't care about any more). Some albums exist as CDs or downloads; others we'll have to burn ourselves (we have hardware for that). Mostly we're replacing albums, we think, and not just grabbing the "good tracks". But not all albums were reissued as CDs, so there are some individual tracks in our future assuming we can find them. (We're only through "folk, A to C" so far so expectations could change, but this is what it's looking like now.)
Even though most of this is going to end up as MP3s anyway, I prefer to buy physical CDs where we can. Yes, it's extra work to then burn them and we have to store the CDs, but I want both the liner notes and the security of knowing that some digital nanny isn't going to prevent me from moving that album to a new computer or iPod. It's also easier to browse; cover art and location on the shelves are meaningful guideposts for me, and iTunes' "genre" is not nearly rich enough for sorting; I need multi-level catagorization.
First questions: where besides Amazon should we be looking online for reasonably-priced CDs, some obscure? Is anybody beating Amazon on price consistently enough to look into? (I realize that the Amazonians among my readers might not want to answer that. :-) )
Now, about downloads. We haven't bought much music in this form before. We want it to be as easy as possible to play whatever we buy on multiple computes and iPods, including future ones and future tech. Sometimes this is prevented (DRM, I presume) -- I bought a song from iTunes and we were unable to play it on Dani's computer. Other times things appear to work fine -- Dani bought a song from Amazon and I could play it just fine. Next questions: are these typical experiences for those two vendors? Are there other vendors we should look at?
Thanks.