Travel Technology - Where do u get your music?

A question came to me when I noticed people buying CD's at the airport(I was amazed that CD's were still selling in airports); I wondered where most people actually get their music from nowadays. Walk around any airport or street for that matter and you will see every other individual wearing a DAP or CD player.

I think I stopped buying CD's 6yrs ago, utilizing P2P/IRC?BB's instead(paying $10 for 10 crappy songs just didn't seem like a value to me) and it was only a year ago that I actually started to purchase music again.

I didn't purchase CD's but instead patronized online MP3 sites. I stayed away from the mainstream sites such as Itunes, Real Napster and Sony because they charged about $1 per song for low quality, DRM encrypted data. I instead bought a few thousand songs from the Russian MP3 sites such as allofmp3 and mp3search that charged me not by the type or popularity of music but by the size of the data I wanted to download. I can pick the type of data and encoding format that I want. So instead of spending $1 for a 128kbs DRM MP3 I can spend $1 for an ENTIRE album encoded @ 192kbs or better.

Now some will argue the legality of the Russian sites but that is a battle for lawyers and their clients to decide in court (I doubt the sites will be for much longer).

Either way, I listen to various types of music that I would have never purchased because of the exorbiant costs of $10 per CD. When you are paying $1 for an entire album you don't really think twice and just download it. In some cases I like an album so much I will buy the actual CD(usually Jazz or classical) because I want the best possible quality.

Personally I can't survive those 3-20hr flights without my music. Good music really makes a difference in the traveling experience.

So where do FT'ers get their music?

I for one still buy some CD's because virtually everything I listen to, except for jazz, is foreign. I find the majority of American music to be empty crap.

My tastes include

Afro-Cuban(Son, )
Brazilian(Samba, Bossa)
Reggae
Jazz(Miles, Byrd, Monk,Ellington,...)
Various African artists(Baba Maal, Ladysmith, Salif Keita)
Some classical

I usually sample stuff from newsgroups and Limewire, then buy it via the web because you can't find it in most us chains.

Austin is a music city, so we're blessed with great stores for buying hard copies, including Waterloo, Cheapo, Alien Records, Encore, etc. However, as tastes, the city and buying habits have changed, many stores have closed... Tower, Technophilia, Sound Exchange (one of the most lamentable losses... where do kids get their punk now?), 360 degrees, and the cluttered hippie record shop next to the head shop and french cafe, all three now replaced with a Starbucks and other sterile establishments.

Waterloo has a whole slew of iPods mounted on kiosks throughout the store, allowing customers to listen before buying. Great idea.

All this being said, I buy about 95% from the iTunes Music Store now and probably 5% at Waterloo. I do buy a lot more music these days than I did before it was available on the Web.

The main reason why I'm drawn to ITMS is that it's easy to browse and sample, two things much more tedious, even with listening kiosks, in a brick-and-mortar store.

I also have access to about 50 of my nearby co-worker's digital music libraries through iTunes Sharing. This is brilliant and has actually led to many purchases, as I'm reminded of forgotten songs that I can't live without after their rediscovery.

I still will often buy a CD when browsing at stores or concerts and will rip it for my RioKarma while letting my wife use it in her car or stereo. I also use Napster because it is easy and convenient for me, though I am curious to see what others are using.

I still rummage through the cheap music bins at best buy, circuit city etc. but buy most of my music online (ITMS) I also get alot of my music for free from Archive.org (mostly grateful dead live shows)

I buy most of my music from Itunes. If the songs that I want aren't available on iTunes I use Limewire until they are on iTunes. I used to get all of my songs from programs like Limewire, Kazaa, but I started realizing that I'm stealing music. Whether or not you think the record industries are ripping you off its still stealing and might as well go into Best Buy and take the CD's you want and leave without paying.

I buy mine from all over...if I want to have a "hard copy" of the music, I get the CD (unless it's got one of those copy-protection schemes built in - then I refuse out of principle and hit AllofMP3.com).

Otherwise, the bulk of my music is either from iTunes or AllofMP3.

The first time they had that Pepsi/iTunes promo, I went "dumpster diving" and went through the bags of bottles (which were separated since I was working in a bottle-deposit state - all the deposit refunds at work were donated to a local food bank). Ended up getting something like 60 free songs, since no one else in the office was tech-savvy and had an iPod.

I occasionally buy CD's as gifts for others, but I can't remember the last time I bought one for myself. I get my music at either iTunes Music Store or allofmp3.com.

I stopped buying CDs after the MP3 craze started, but have recently started buying CDs again. For a while I was using Napster, Sony, AOL, and even the Walmart online music stores to buy songs and burn to CDs. However, I've found that they are indeed not as high in quality as an original CD, so have reverted to buying oringinal CDs.

Here's what I did:

I have 2 CDs with the same song, one is original, the other burned from a purchase online.

I rip both to .wav file, and get the same file size.

I convert both .wav files to .mp3, VBR 128k to 320k, and here's where the difference shows.

The original CD converted to MP3 has a higher file size than the burned CD conversion. This simply means there was more data on the orignal than burned, which had to be encoded in VBR using a higher bitrate.

Being the type of person that I am, I go for the bigger file.

I use itunes.com and allofmp3.com
allofmp3 is cheap and of good quality

www.hybridized.org - Live sets sent by DJs to owner of site. Currently the Greg Benz Aurium mixes make me go all soft inside!

TranceAddict Amateur DJ Forums (http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=73) - Top notch amateur DJs upload sets they put together and freely distribute them. The Violet Crown Sessions (http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&forumid=73&threadid=215898) are amongst the best music of any genre I have heard put together and can thoroughly recommend them if you want to try something different. Very chilled and sophisticated ^^ (except the beginning of Session 007 :p)

-TranceAddict.com Professional Live Sets (http://www.tranceaddict.com/livesets.shtml). Legal downloads of Tiesto, Paul van Dyk, Chicane, John '00' Fleming et al ^

-www.beatport.com and www.audiojelly.com

-Shop! Yeah sometimes I even buy CDs! how 20th century!

Funny, nobody here admits to downloading off one of the P2P services :D

Funny, nobody here admits to downloading off one of the P2P services :D

Okay I will admit it. I use a bit torrent client and I belong to a couple of torrents forums. I would list them but they shut down and open like bordellos in evangelist christian territory.

Although I use P2P daily, the problems that arise are sometimes you get crappy or incomplete files.

So, the p2p sites have for the most part gone dark as far as good quality music files goes. By that I mean, high bit rate, good rips, and good content. Sure, one can always find the latest usher song ripped by some junk at 96kps, but no Monk at 360+ done with a good ripper.

I think people have learned, that the downloading was not the target for the RIAA, but the UPLOADING was. So, further distribution slowed a great deal.

Personally, for classical, vocal or jazz, I don't find 19X- enough for great sound, with good headphones and a good player. That is where I still buy the CD's,

Funny, nobody here admits to downloading off one of the P2P services :DI'll admit to using WinMX. I buy CDs of stuff that I like when I see them. I have LOTS and LOTS of CDs. I'd say that close to 100% of the stuff I download and share with the P2P tools is not available anywhere other than there. Most all of the files have had their copyrights expire.

i also stopped buying cds with the proliferation of mp3 sites. the only cds i'd buy are probably jazz, but i haven't done that in years. now i mostly just listen to shoutcast or download recorded radio broadcasts (e.g. armin van buuren's newest tunes selected :D).

now i think about it, it's scary how much money i used to spend on cds :O a lot of it has to do with changing musical tastes though, the stuff i listen to now are all freely available on shoutcast.

I get most of mine from the iTunes store. If they dont have it from Amazon. Occassionally from Music Match store. I havent been in a brick and morter record store for the better part of a decade as far as I can remember.

Having grown up in the 70's-80's, with LPs and CDs, I still like to buy complete "albums." Pink Floyd and many other artists produced their albums to be listened to in full, so often, I do not want to just listen to individual songs. One reason why I am not crazy about kazaa, limewire and the rest. Plus, there seems to be so much clutter when I use limewire...so much of what I have downloaded is unuseable. Maybe I just don't know how to use it, though (at 41, I might need a lesson from the neighborhood teenagers!).

I tend to buy most of my music from music clubs like BMG (when they have specials). The prices can be incredible at times. There is a discussion thread on www.fatwallet.com about these deals. I also have a few favorite used CD stores and occasionally Best Buy/Tower et al.

FDuvall

Funny, nobody here admits to downloading off one of the P2P services :D

Well P2P is not good for audio media I listen to, although perhaps for other forms it might be better...;)

I can get the odd liveset off there but unless many other folk have it then downloading +100MB mixes takes a long time at 3kb/sec :eek: The stuff that attracts a million hits on a search doesn't appeal to my ears.

The CDs I have purchased have all been ripped to 320k vbr mp3s. Same with my friends - they rip them in one uniform method and then we share.

According to this article on MSN Slate (http://slate.msn.com/id/2115868), AllofMP3 is legal-kinda-sorta-but-not-really...

Your thoughts?

www.hybridized.org - Live sets sent by DJs to owner of site. Currently the Greg Benz Aurium mixes make me go all soft inside!


That's a good one. There are some really great Hybrid sets on there.

According to this article on MSN Slate (http://slate.msn.com/id/2115868), AllofMP3 is legal-kinda-sorta-but-not-really...

Your thoughts?

Did some searching on this. Is tempting, but technically it seems it would be illegal to use it here in NZ. The copyright law here states that you can purchase/download from an overseas site as long as they have the permission from the copyright holder to offer the track. Allofmp3 technically does not. It does work around Russian law through a loophole but it does not have permission to technically offer the tracks to download. Too bad, as they have a lot of good stuff on offer.

Did some searching on this. Is tempting, but technically it seems it would be illegal to use it here in NZ. The copyright law here states that you can purchase/download from an overseas site as long as they have the permission from the copyright holder to offer the track. Allofmp3 technically does not. It does work around Russian law through a loophole but it does not have permission to technically offer the tracks to download. Too bad, as they have a lot of good stuff on offer.

As long as it is semi, sorta, quasi, kinda legal I will continue to download from allofmp3.com. All of the legal crap has to be decided amongst the courts, lawyers and their clients. Point is if they really were a blatantly illegal site then they would have been shut down by now. It is not like they are hiding what they do, the operation is very much in the open. They have to have servers to host their business and banking accounts to do transactions. This not a nickel and dime operation run out of a dingy basement with an utraceable funds being paid. The Russian government to this point views them as legal, so that is good enough for me.

Eventually the music industry will find a way to shut them down but until then I will keep downloading with zeal!!

I think the real question is would a customer of the site be liable and prosecuted for downloading the music. I seriously doubt that and if the RIAA or any other industry authority, attempted to go after downloaders then they would have lawsuits up the wazoo, that would eat up their resources and make the endeavor economically unfeasible. Basically by going after downloaders they would be harassing potential customers of music and that is not a smart business move, better to go after the providers.

A question came to me when I noticed people buying CD's at the airport(I was amazed that CD's were still selling in airports); I wondered where most people actually get their music from nowadays. Walk around any airport or street for that matter and you will see every other individual wearing a DAP or CD player.
[...]
So where do FT'ers get their music?

Mostly from CDs I rip. I don't like having any sort of DRM on my music, so I tend to buy stuff either from places like Amoeba (http://www.amoebamusic.com) or buy it from the artists at shows, etc. I tend to like a lot of Indie Rock and/or electronica, so getting it right from the source and getting the money to the artists instead of some droid at the RIAA is not much of a problem.
JD

www.hybridized.org - Live sets sent by DJs to owner of site. Currently the Greg Benz Aurium mixes make me go all soft inside!

TranceAddict Amateur DJ Forums (http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=73) - Top notch amateur DJs upload sets they put together and freely distribute them. The Violet Crown Sessions (http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&forumid=73&threadid=215898) are amongst the best music of any genre I have heard put together and can thoroughly recommend them if you want to try something different. Very chilled and sophisticated ^^ (except the beginning of Session 007 :p)

-TranceAddict.com Professional Live Sets (http://www.tranceaddict.com/livesets.shtml). Legal downloads of Tiesto, Paul van Dyk, Chicane, John '00' Fleming et al


"Friggin' sweet!"
Thanks for the links dude!
Tiesto is awesome. Nothin' quite like kicking back in 15A on a 744 while "Flight 643" pounds through the headphones. :D

JD
JD

I used to either get my music off of Bearshare or by buying CDs. But now that I've discovered iTunes I've become an addict. Thankfully my costs have been kept down by the Pepsi promotion (finally my Diet Pepsi addiction paid me back!) and through promotions for law students from LexisNexis.

I'd never seen or heard of allofmp3.com until this thread. Apparently I live in a cave and didn't know it. Is it safe to give them your credit card info?

I used to either get my music off of Bearshare or by buying CDs. But now that I've discovered iTunes I've become an addict. Thankfully my costs have been kept down by the Pepsi promotion (finally my Diet Pepsi addiction paid me back!) and through promotions for law students from LexisNexis.

I'd never seen or heard of allofmp3.com until this thread. Apparently I live in a cave and didn't know it. Is it safe to give them your credit card info?

I have used them for over a year and I have not had one problem with using my credit card.


Here is a link to an interview with the CIO of the site owner

http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/34512.html


As far as providing credit card info they supposedly use the following 3rd party services

http://www.assist.ru/eng/about/security.htm

http://www.cyberplat.com/

Personally I don't worry about credit card fraud, after all credit card companies supposedly monitor your transaction pattern usage and limit your liability of fradulant use to $50.

As long as it is semi, sorta, quasi, kinda legal I will continue to download from allofmp3.com. All of the legal crap has to be decided amongst the courts, lawyers and their clients. Point is if they really were a blatantly illegal site then they would have been shut down by now. It is not like they are hiding what they do, the operation is very much in the open. They have to have servers to host their business and banking accounts to do transactions. This not a nickel and dime operation run out of a dingy basement with an utraceable funds being paid. The Russian government to this point views them as legal, so that is good enough for me.

Eventually the music industry will find a way to shut them down but until then I will keep downloading with zeal!!

I think the real question is would a customer of the site be liable and prosecuted for downloading the music. I seriously doubt that and if the RIAA or any other industry authority, attempted to go after downloaders then they would have lawsuits up the wazoo, that would eat up their resources and make the endeavor economically unfeasible. Basically by going after downloaders they would be harassing potential customers of music and that is not a smart business move, better to go after the providers.

The Russian government views them as legal for people in Russia to use. Are you Russian? They are selling you songs which they don't own the US rights to. There's nothing legal, quasi semi or sorta about it. The copyright owners are not getting a dime from them.

If you want to use them, it's your own business. But don't fool yourself into thinking it's ethically different than just downloading off Gnutella or Bittorrent. Here's a hint. If you wonder if the record companies will sue you for your music purchase, it's probably not an above board purchase.

Yahoo just announced (http://www.betanews.com/article/Yahoo_Music_Service_Challenges_iTunes/1115769679) an all you can eat susbscription download service for $4.99/month. It's basically the same as Napster to Go's $14.99/month service. No joy for Mac or Ipod owners, but if you have a DRM'd WMV player, and don't mind renting your music, it's quite a deal.

"Friggin' sweet!"
Thanks for the links dude!
Tiesto is awesome. Nothin' quite like kicking back in 15A on a 744 while "Flight 643" pounds through the headphones. :D


You'll grow out of Tiesto when you see Hybridized :p

I'd never seen or heard of allofmp3.com until this thread. Apparently I live in a cave and didn't know it. Is it safe to give them your credit card info?

This is how I recharge my allofmp3.com subscription:

1. Purchase a prepaid iCard through xrost.com
2. Pay for iCard through their PayPal link
3. DO NOT LOG INTO PAYPAL, just click the button next to "If you do not currently have a PayPal account"
4. Use a one-time virtual credit card number from Citibank (Discover Card never seems to work with PayPal)
5. Once payment is processed, apply iCard PIN code and claim ID numbers at allofmp3.com

The other perk is that you get a 10% bonus using the prepaid iCard method.

The Russian government views them as legal for people in Russia to use. Are you Russian? They are selling you songs which they don't own the US rights to. There's nothing legal, quasi semi or sorta about it. The copyright owners are not getting a dime from them.

If you want to use them, it's your own business. But don't fool yourself into thinking it's ethically different than just downloading off Gnutella or Bittorrent. Here's a hint. If you wonder if the record companies will sue you for your music purchase, it's probably not an above board purchase.


Inevitably you get one who crashes the thread wanting to make this a legal or ethical debate.

Your confusing ethics/morals with legal stuff.

Like I said before,that is the stuff for lawyers. Now if you wish to be technical about it, it is not "illegal" for me to purchase the music. Your points are flawed from the get go. You say the Russian government views them as legal for people in Russia to use and then you ask me if I am Russian. Does that mean one has to be Russian to purchase music in Russia as you infer? Can one not purchase music in Russia and then import it into their own country fro personal use? Does the USA have an embargo against Russian based music?

Would it be illegal for me to fly to Russia and purchase music there, then import it back to the USA? Does one have to physically be in Russia to purchase the music or is it sufficient that the servers are located in Russia and that is where the music is purchased? In effect I make the transaction in Russia and I import the music over the internet into the USA the same as if I physically carried a CD purchased in Russia.

You may have an argument based on the ethics/morals of my purchasing the music but there is nothing illegal to my knowledge concerning my purchase, unless there are new international laws concerning the tranfer of data over the internet.

I don't care if copyright owners are getting a dime or not, they can hire lawyers to protect their interests.

Please don't pretend to know the legal points of this situation, I know I sure as hell don't and the simple logic of my example would probably not hold up against a real lawyer steeped in intl law but it easily defeats your point. I am sure there are teams of well paid and intelligent lawyers hashing all of this stuff out. Until they figure it out I will continue to purchase the music.

Wow! I didn't think so many "internet junkies" on this board paid for music still. I feel like a bad guy :(

Inevitably you get one who crashes the thread wanting to make this a legal or ethical debate.

Your confusing ethics/morals with legal stuff.

Like I said before,that is the stuff for lawyers. Now if you wish to be technical about it, it is not "illegal" for me to purchase the music. Your points are flawed from the get go. You say the Russian government views them as legal for people in Russia to use and then you ask me if I am Russian. Does that mean one has to be Russian to purchase music in Russia as you infer? Can one not purchase music in Russia and then import it into their own country fro personal use? Does the USA have an embargo against Russian based music?

Would it be illegal for me to fly to Russia and purchase music there, then import it back to the USA? Does one have to physically be in Russia to purchase the music or is it sufficient that the servers are located in Russia and that is where the music is purchased? In effect I make the transaction in Russia and I import the music over the internet into the USA the same as if I physically carried a CD purchased in Russia.

You may have an argument based on the ethics/morals of my purchasing the music but there is nothing illegal to my knowledge concerning my purchase, unless there are new international laws concerning the tranfer of data over the internet.

I don't care if copyright owners are getting a dime or not, they can hire lawyers to protect their interests.

Please don't pretend to know the legal points of this situation, I know I sure as hell don't and the simple logic of my example would probably not hold up against a real lawyer steeped in intl law but it easily defeats your point. I am sure there are teams of well paid and intelligent lawyers hashing all of this stuff out. Until they figure it out I will continue to purchase the music.

Are you being purposely obtuse? Did you read the article linked above? Here (http://slate.msn.com/id/2115868) it is again.
"But get out your balaclava, pop the caviar, and activate those frequent-flyer miles: Because in order to download legally from a Russian rights-holder, you'd likely have to actually go to Russia. Foreign-rights-holders usually only control the copyright within the country itself, and that includes Internet distribution."

This is the reason there are different iTunes stores for different countries.

But you probably know all this. Common sense says I can't create a pdf copy of Harry Potter and sell them to you for 5 cents a pop. If it makes you feel better, pretend it's legal. I agree that the chances of the record companies suing users of the service is practically zero.

In the beginning of this thread you said:
"Now some will argue the legality of the Russian sites but that is a battle for lawyers and their clients to decide in court (I doubt the sites will be for much longer)."

Why do you doubt the sites will exist much longer? Because their business model is basically the same as a fence?

In the beginning of this thread you said:
"Now some will argue the legality of the Russian sites but that is a battle for lawyers and their clients to decide in court (I doubt the sites will be for much longer)."

Why do you doubt the sites will exist much longer? Because their business model is basically the same as a fence?


I don't think they will be around much longer because I don't think that they will be able to withstand the monetary, political and legal resources of the RIAA. Changes in laws can be bought. I would not be surprised if the RIAA is already working on that.

I would not be surprised if the RIAA is already working on that.They most certainly are :D:
http://img58.echo.cx/img58/9174/riaamp32qj.gif

I don't think they will be around much longer because I don't think that they will be able to withstand the monetary, political and legal resources of the RIAA. Changes in laws can be bought. I would not be surprised if the RIAA is already working on that.

Won't matter though, since they are not covered or governed by our laws, the RIAA won't have much of a case at all.

I use Napster's subscription service and when I can't find something on that I usually download it on iTunes. On rare occasion, when I really really like an artist of CD, I’ll actually go out to <gasp> a music store a buy it.

As far as Napster goes, it really is an excellent service, 15$ a month for all the music you can stream, which is great for those of us that listen to music mostly on our computers. I'm considering upgrading to their "portable" tier which lets you actually download the songs for free instead of just streaming them, and then copy the files to your MP3 player. Unfortunately that means I'd have to ditch my iPod, so I'm holding off on that for now :D

I still use P2P sites.

I use Napster's subscription service and when I can't find something on that I usually download it on iTunes. On rare occasion, when I really really like an artist of CD, I’ll actually go out to <gasp> a music store a buy it.

As far as Napster goes, it really is an excellent service, 15$ a month for all the music you can stream, which is great for those of us that listen to music mostly on our computers. I'm considering upgrading to their "portable" tier which lets you actually download the songs for free instead of just streaming them, and then copy the files to your MP3 player. Unfortunately that means I'd have to ditch my iPod, so I'm holding off on that for now :D


It would still be 15$ a month, nothing more for the Napster to GO service. Getting VERY difficult to convert songs to MP3 without DRM though, so only go this route if you are going to use a MSFT DRM plays for sure, MP3 player,

It CMB that I cannot play songs I am paying for, on my ipod. But hey, whadya gonna do.