Hacker News Reader

Comment by sgt | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone still buy albums on iTunes? I haven't done that in a while, but I have to say I prefer to physically own the music I listen to often. If I can't get a physical media like CD or vinyl, then iTunes store was second best aside from illegal options.

View on HN

I really like to buy on Bandcamp. They've been running promotions and either forgoing their 15% commission or donating it to Covid/BLM efforts. I think it's one of the best music platforms and I've discovered so many fantastic artists that aren't on Spotify or anywhere else.

It depends on the artists you are following but I tend to only buy albums on Bandcamp :

* Artists get most of the money, Bandcamp takes a fixed rate.

* I can have physical albums and/or .flac numeric version.

* If I am lazy, I have access to the streaming app of Bandcamp for the music I bought or to discover (actively, not through playlist) new artists.

Not perferct but better than iTunes and Spotify for me (and only for me not in general).

I do. I enjoy the entire album experience, and tend to enjoy artists that make fully connected albums more than others. Tool, Arcade Fire, and Pink Floyd are great examples.

I don’t need the physical media though.

Why? Probably something about renting vs. owning that’s always driven many of my decisions on spending money.

I buy digital music from Bandcamp whenever possible. (Otherwise I buy it from Amazon MP3 or pirate it from Soulseek.) I like to build a collection and I can't stand the notion that some streaming company or copyright holder can just decide I'm not allowed to listen to an album anymore.

Make sure you backup your Bandcamp purchases. I know of at least two artists whose Bandcamp accounts were deleted. The artists claim that Bandcamp never notified them of any copyright claims or policy violations.

There is an album I purchased which no longer appears in my collection. I am only able to listen to it via mobile app because it's still cached on the device.

In the course of writing this response I realized that I had not contacted customer support so I now have.

I have such a hodgepodge of purchased music. I have a giant library of old pirated MP3s. I have 30ish MP3s I bought from Amazon years ago when I was trying to avoid iTunes. And then I have about 15 tracks bought from iTunes, mixed with some mixtapes that were free but imported into iTunes.

I listen to none of it now. I was a Pandora customer, now I'm a YouTube Music customer. In the car, it's SiriusXM.

I normally purchase a vinyl which comes with a digital download code for mp3/FLAC. But I will still normally just stream the music.

Yes. There will always be times when the internet isn't there for you. To me, flac file backups are king, and what makes bandcamp so good.

Spotify does allow you to store your songs locally on your smartphone. Although you are of course locked into their ecosystem.

For me it works, for others it may not be adequate.

Spotify seems to regularly delete all my music downloaded to my phone, and it's where I notice right as I'm losing service.

I buy albums on Bandcamp when it's an artist I love. Bandcamp is also where my band makes the majority of our sales, a combination of digital purchases and merch. It seems like a growing number of people really enjoy supporting artists directly and Bandcamp is the best platform for that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com