The Hickensian

Ryan said 1278 days ago:

You haven’t lost it, you’re just in denial. ;)

Actually, I think there’s some merit in the idea of purchasing important albums on physical media, however the whole reason I buy music online is so I don’t have to deal with more stuff in my physical space—no matter how good the music.

paul haine said 1278 days ago:

I won’t buy albums from iTunes, only singles. If an album is good enough then I’ll buy it on CD, and if it turns out to be disappointing I’ll ebay it and recoup some of the costs. If you can afford to buy the same album twice then fair play…but if you buy it from iTunes and then change your mind, you’re stuck with it. At least you can pass on physical CDs to other people.

And yeah, you could burn the album to CD yourself, but in the case of Sigur Ros you’d miss out on that lovely, lovely packaging.

Jon Hicks said 1278 days ago:

Danny, it would’ve been so much better if you’d called me a mentalist.

harry said 1278 days ago:

For those of you that don’t know about it, AllofMP3 is approximately 1/10 the cost of iTMS, has no DRM, and songs can be downloaded in numorous formats, including CD-quality (the larger the file, the more $). I’ve been using it for almost a year without any problems. It doesn’t have as much inventory, but unless you are looking for something very obscure, you should be good to go.

Christian said 1278 days ago:

To whom is the “status” of these albums apparent or important? The wife and kids? (Somehow I’m thinking not.) Do lots of people drop by the home office and routinely compare your iTunes library with your CD collection, making verbal or written note of duplicates and commenting on their apparent importance?

If not, who are you rewarding by purchasing the album twice? Yourself for having good taste? Have a cognac instead. The artist? Because you know that only 11% of the album profit goes to the artist with the rest going to the retail store, marketers, and greedy recording executive. Depending on how the artist’s contract is written, you might even be fleecing them by increasing production costs that they might have to bear.

So sorry Jon, not to sound harsh, but I definitely think this is a bad idea. If you want to really show off the status of an album, use this very widely-read weblog to publicly comment on/extol a great album or artist. Buying the album twice has no point that I can see.

Denis Radenkovic said 1278 days ago:

In 2005, I bought 5 singles from iTMS… and lots of physical CD’s

Andrew Hamann said 1278 days ago:

I did that too a couple of The Who’s CDs, and a Coldplay CD, because I liked them so much. So too answer your question, no, you are not alone…

semioticmonkey said 1278 days ago:

let me mumble.
i have 2 versions of Steve Reich’s “Music For 18 Musicians”, 2 versions of Glass’s “Einstein on the beach”, 3 versions of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” etc etc. But never bought a Downloadable version of any of these.
I well understand your point but i prefer to buy another CD or something “special” (differents instrumentist, different recording etc) than buy a downloadable version and then a CD.
I believe this has to do with the media-weather. All of us, i think, has differents media for the same album bought across the time (a Vinyl, a cassette tape, a CD). Now it is come the full digital time. So there is nothing wrong into this. Maybe it is to question the “why” we still think the physical media as the “real thing”. Are we all sentimentalists or there is more into this? Why we still consider the full digital products a cut-version of the “real thing”? (i know, the quality and so on. But nevertheless the question sounds again and again in my def hears)

sorry if i wrote too much. sorry for my baaaad english.
my first post here after so many time reading you Jon. i promise not to post further.

Neil T. said 1278 days ago:

I’m not a big fan of the sound quality of files bought from iTMS – I’d rather buy them on CD and then copy them myself. But I do occasionbally buy songs from ITMS and then buy the CD if I like them, though I’ve never bought a full album.

I also check out the free download of the week – I’ve found some good stuff that way, like We Are Scientists and Wire Daisies.

Robin Wright said 1278 days ago:

That is one of the reasons I don’t order hole albums from ITMS. If I want the album I rather buy it in the shop.

On the other hand, it would be nice if they also let you order a hardcopy from ITMS, from the album you have bought. (no extra feed ofcourse ;) ... Maybe a little..)

Denis Somar said 1278 days ago:

Jon,

I wouldn’t call you psychotic at all. I’ve been in the same boat and have wanted to have a hard original of the music rather than iTunes and it’s usually for the teritary experiences of the album, read: the design of the jewel case, the typography, and usually the additional content. The Los Lonely Boys album has a kickass live performance video on their CD which has yet to make it to iTunes. Similarly, the booklets of the Santana CDs are neglected in their iTunes counterpart. It is however much easier to click buy album then to navigate and find a legitimate music store where I live.

Ian Brown said 1278 days ago:

I completely understand you there, I prefer to actually own the CD rather than downloading anything. I do tend to buy a little too much from i-Tunes for my budget; however, if I really like the album I almost always buy the actual CD.

Like you said, I think it’s the status of actually owning X amount of albums in your collection.

ben haldenby said 1278 days ago:

I don’t buy CDs anymore for the exact same reason as Ryan, I don’t want extra stuff cluttering up my physical environment. In fact just this evening I’ve got all of my old CDs down from the loft because I’m finally going to sell the remaining ones (about 4-500) on eBay. So before I do I’m going to re-rip (for a second time) about 3/4 of them at a much higher bitrate. I wanted to go Apple Lossless but I just don’t have the space, plus I’d end up only being able to fit about 20 albums on my iPod mini. Looking around now there’s piles of CDs all over the floor. I never thought I’d do this twice I can tell you.

PS Google Earth recently made it into my dock

Kristin said 1278 days ago:

You haven’t lost it. I LOVE having the tangible CD. For me, there’s a lot of history in my CD collection. I still have the first CDs I purchased back in 1984; the Amadeus soundtrack and U2 Unforgettable Fire…CDs I bought travelling…CDs given as gifts from those people who know me all too well. I like browsing through the racks at the record store. I’ve bought CDs just based on the packaging before, and have rarely been disappointed. And most of all I like actually seeing all the music I own. I think being of a certain age makes a difference too. My husband and I just spent a ****load of money shipping 6 boxes of his vinyl to the US from England!...and he is a happy man now. I’m sure our kids will be very confused by all our “old” stuff, but by God, we’ll still be listening to it and keeping it dusted off!

Arlo Rose said 1278 days ago:

You’re not crazy at all. I’ve bought (or gotten from a more… ummm… questionable source) songs and albums, then just days later gone to a local shop and grabbed the physical CD. I’m with everyone else that says that MP3s feel too transitory.
My reason is twofold. One, I’ve always DJd as a hobby and as a result, having the 12” or the CD of a single/album means I can play it in its highest quality when I’m doing my thing. I’ve not yet gone the way of Sasha and started to use an app like Live to mix, I just use turntables, a Denon rack mount dual CD player, and a mixer. Even if I did, I’d want AIFF files for that, not MP3s with some poor encoding. My second reason is that I once decided to RIP every single one of my CDs and put it on a music server I wrote and designed… after months of the ripping process (which I had fairly well automated, picking which piece of cover art was applied, grabbing the track and album info out of the ID3 tags and stuffing it into MySQL), and having gotten through hundreds of CDs (which barely scratched my collection) I went out of town only to have the server crash. When I got back home, the drive was fried and all that music lost. Yes, I should have had a regular backup, but… at the same time, I still have all the CDs, so all is well.

Small Paul said 1278 days ago:

I’m with you. CDs are lossless, don’t have DRM (or rather, I’ve never come across any “protected” CDs that work on my Mac), and aren’t destroyed when my hard drive fails and I haven’t backed up.

But I won’t be surprised if people a few years younger than me will now, or soon, just see our CDs as an anachronism well within our lifetime.

oliver taylor said 1278 days ago:

I buy CDs I love because they are lossless, but really for no other reason. And yes, I’ve bought albums twice this way.

Jason G said 1278 days ago:

I own 4 copies of Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys. Two on CD and two on vinyl. Maybe I need to add a DRM’ed iTunes copy to my list!

Matias said 1278 days ago:

I understand you. CDs are something real. I like to touch them, feel them, even smell them.

And I think that the CD-mp3 generation has the same feelings that the Vinyl-CD generation had before. Vinyls had big and nice sleeves that CDs hadn’t. So cover design turned into something closer to packaging design(Spiritualized’s albums are good examples). Maybe what mp3 need to became more popular is something like that.

Jeff Wheeler said 1278 days ago:

I prefer to think about getting an album for several days before I get it on either iTunes or a real cd. During that time, I’m arguing with myself whether the cd is worth getting, or if I should just go to iTunes instead. It’s a very slow process.

olly said 1278 days ago:

Jon, it has to be said buying an album twice is a bit generous, although it’s something I’ve done many times before (lost albums, replacing vinyl etc). Good for the artists though :)

I think you should stop buying albums via iTunes for three reasons. 1) the quality of the 128kbps AAC files is not that great (CD audio is much better). 2) CDs from play.com (or similar) only cost around a pound more than iTunes albums (ok, you have to wait a few days but it’s worth it IMO). 3) DRM is evil.

I buy the odd track from iTunes but when it comes to albums, CDs still rule – mainly for the quality and for archiving purposes. Even better, if you buy CDs from FOPP (usually £10 each) then if you don’t like the album you can take it back, no questions asked.

Some online music stores such as bleep.com and beatport.com (both dance-related) are much better value than iTunes: no DRM and higher quality audio (320kbps MP3 or even WAV!).

Roger Johansson said 1278 days ago:

I’ve done that a lot even though I’ve never bought anything from the iTunes Music Store. When I bought my first CD player I had to spend a lot of money buying the CD versions of my favourite albums that I already had on vinyl.

Richard Rutter said 1278 days ago:

I’ve never bought an entire album from iTMS but in the past I have bought some album tracks and then gone on to buy the album on CD (Elbow’s Leaders of the Free World springs to mind). But that really annoys me.

I will also occasionally buy two physical formats of the same album. I love my turntable and I still buy vinyl when I know it’s a good pressing and/or has great packaging. But a double 12” is kind of inconvenient if you want to listen to the album on the train or in the car, so I’ll sometimes buy the CD too if my brother hasn’t already bought it.

Mark said 1278 days ago:

John you are just a normal music lover. Since I got my first iPod and the itms has become available I have not bought a single CD. I can’t tell the difference between CD and digital quality anyway. Part of me wishes I had a huge rack filled with CD’s and part of me is glad I do not. In some ways I envy your passion for the tunes.

Speaking of could you possible post your playlist? Not the files just an outputted html list. I would love to see what you listen to and have stored away. Here is an app that will do it easily if you are so inclined to try it.

iTunes Publisher

Gustavs said 1278 days ago:

Heh, this happens at times. Oh and by the way, I love the way you have made the comments page. Nice page you got here.

Marla said 1277 days ago:

That’s messed up, Jon. Almost as much as this: I have lots of cds, and sometimes I forget if I still have a particular one after all the moves, breakups, and reckless lending. So if I can’t find it after a quick hunt on the shelves, I’ll buy it (or the best tracks) from iTMS. More than once I’ve discovered later that I have downloaded a CD I already owned…

mattj said 1277 days ago:

Wouldn’t touch iTMS with bloomin’ barge pole. It’s convenient in the same way that a McDonald’s Drive Thru is convenient. iTMS is all very slick and enticing but the Web has given countless independent record shops, labels, even bands the means to sell music in a way that’s almost(!) as convenient for music fans. This is worth supporting in my opinon. I can recommend posteverything.com for starters.

jeff noble said 1277 days ago:

Just found your site the other day through Google. Looking for a solution to a Mac issue I was having. In the meantime, however, I got hooked on your site. Great entries! Nice observations! Keep it up! And thanks!
Jeff

Brad Schiff said 1277 days ago:

If you’ve lost it, so have I.

Not exactly the same thing. . . but, if a friend makes me a copy of a CD for me, and I REALLY enjoy the album, I’ll go buy it myself. My issue is probably a lot more common then yours, but hey, I was trying to make you feel better ;).

Thom said 1277 days ago:

We’ve all been there :-)

Jerome Dahdah said 1277 days ago:

I avoid buying music for ethical reasons, similar to what Christian mentioned above. There’s a nice database called RIAARadar that can help you determine whether you are giving your money to independant labels / the artists or whether you are making RIAA execs richer.

I completely understand the desire to have physical copies of your favorite albums. I think pretty much the same… mp3s just aren’t the real thing. But that’s where the dilemma is. Many good artists are signed on to RIAA labels. Buying from iTMS is out of the question because of the DRM: my PC is my property and nobody else has the right to tell me what I can do with it. Especially I avoid buying music for ethical reasons, similar to what Christian mentioned above. There’s a nice database called RIAARadar that can help you determine whether you are giving your money to independant labels / the artists or whether you are making RIAA execs richer.

I completely understand the desire to have physical copies of your favorite albums. I think pretty much the same… mp3s just aren’t the real thing. But that’s where the dilemma is. Many good artists are signed on to RIAA labels. Buying from iTMS is out of the question because of the DRM: my PC is my property and nobody else has the right to tell me what I can do with it. Especially record labels.

Ethics aside: I don’t understand why you would buy the music twice. Try Last.fm if you want a legal way to preview music and if you like it so much, skip the iTMS step and go right to the store for the CD. I think that would do it for me. :)

Jon Hicks said 1277 days ago:

Jerome – so if an artist you want to buy is on an RIAA label, do you just not buy it?

Jerome Dahdah said 1277 days ago:

Yes, that’s correct.

Jerome Dahdah said 1277 days ago:

That’s the usual argument. :) You could just as well see it this way: boycott the labels, persuade them to change their practices and pay the artists fairly. It may also some day stop them from their price-fixing practices, privacy invasions, pointless lawsuits and abuse of the legal system. Someone has to make the first step somewhere, right? It’s not much now but if everyone gets together it can make a difference. Call me a dreamer if you like, I’m just not one for the doublethink thing.

I could just as well go and buy shoes from Nike and argue that if I don’t, the kids in their child labor factories would get even less than they do now. It’s just not right.

We could discuss for ages but it comes down to what your personal choice is. I choose this path for myself.

Marc Jones said 1277 days ago:

I’ve done it the other way around. Sold many CDs I have on iTunes (backed up on a LaCie external firewire drive) to fund more music (whether this transgresses copyright laws is open to question BTW).

Cannot bring myself to get rid of Beatles, Who, Jam, Paul Weller CDs. Most of the rest are currently going west as I stock up on Blue Note and reggae.

Josh Franco said 1276 days ago:

Yeah, my dad owns these really old vinyl records, now I own CDs and I got a feeling that mp3s won’t last as long as the vinyls did… but who knows! :D—If I’ve bought 3 or 4 songs on iTMS already I just buy the whole CD … been doing that for a while now…

Phsycially owning a cd? Hell ya, gotta love the album cover arts… Dunno but that gives a CD that special touch. ;)

Matthew Good said 1276 days ago:

Having been a multi-platinum selling artist, I can say that ones primary market has a great deal to do with the prospects an artist has with regards to making a living. In Canada it’s very difficult for the majority of Canadian bands to eek out a living for more than a few years, if that. Those of us that survive longer than a decade are, for the most part, by no means millionaires. In fact, most rely on their ability to tour to survive just as most would on their daily jobs. The difference being that you can only tour once on a release.

Don’t get me wrong, I miss vinyl dearly, but I think the web will ultimately be a very positive tool with regards to the re-emergence of artistically driven and controlled music.

Johnie Thornton said 1276 days ago:

No Jon, I think you’re right. Buy the CD too. What are your kids’ children going to find in the attic in 50 years time?

Just a thought about allofmp3.com Harry mentions above. Here’s their legal stuff. Note the bit about foriegn users (ie. not Russian):
——————————Is it legal to download music from AllOFMP3.com?

All the materials in MediaServices projects are available for distribution through the Internet in accordance with license # LS-3Ðœ-05-03 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. Under the license terms, MediaServices pays license fees for all materials subject to the Law of the Russian Federation “On Copyright and Related Rights”. All materials are available solely for personal use and must not be used for further distribution, resale or broadcasting.

The user bears sole responsibility for any use and distribution of all materials received from AllOFMP3.com. This responsibility is dependent on the national legislation in each user’s country of residence. The Administration of AllOFMP3.com does not possess information on the laws of each particular country and is not responsible for the actions of foreign users.——————————

Cyrus said 1273 days ago:

Well.. it really depends on my day. Once I had purchased 2 same album CDs within 3 days! Human brains sometimes can be so… impressive? haha.

I haven’t tried buying stuff from iTunes, mainly because I prefer physical disc (and mostly I would only buy if the CD comes with either fancy gift or interesting packaging).

jesse said 1272 days ago:

It’s all about the art … especially to the designer. How the music and the cover fit together … i think it is very important. The best artists their covers are an extension …. another peice of the puzzle.

Mind you I’m tempted by those Sigur Ros albums by the art alone … regardless even of what it sounds like. They are very tidy.

I am surprised you waited so long.

Nice Paul said 1272 days ago:

I almost always intend to buy music in non-DRM CD form, but there have been a few occasions when I can’t wait until my next trip into town so I’ve succumbed to an iTMS download, with the intention of replacing it with a CD ‘one day’... though in all cases that day has yet to come.

James Craig said 1271 days ago:

I’ve got several albums on vinyl that I’ve either ripped to MP3 (it’s a pain), bought on CD, or bought/downloaded on MP3. I feel no guilt in downloading an illegal MP3 if I legally own the album on a format that’s difficult to transfer (vinyl or occasionally my old cassette tapes).

Patrick Johnson said 1270 days ago:

Hmm I find this kind of weird..although thats just me and I usually never buy music at all heh(dont tell anyone =D)

Jon Hicks said 1270 days ago:

Not on a thread about music, no.

Kenny said 1269 days ago:

I don’t think it’s that weird – if you think that the artist is so good they deserve two purchases then sure.

I would probably do the same, if I wasn’t a poor student.

beth said 1268 days ago:

I think it’s just an audiophile thing, I almost always pick up a vinyl copy of an album I buy whether on CD, or through iTunes. I like flexibility, and I also like to have the physical artwork.