Do you prefer shopping at record stores or iTunes?

I do my shopping at The Pirate Bay.

True, but itunes is great for most things that are harder to find. At a store like best buy, you’re likely to only find what’s popular. And nobody wants to buy a Nickelback CD. Hopefully. (cringes).

If I want individual songs then I buy from iTunes, but if i want the whole cd then I usually buy from the record store. However to purchase a whole cd on iTunes can be cheaper than buying it in the stores. The point you made about finding rare material in record stores is true. Also you can’t find some bands on either iTunes or the record store. I like them both and it just depends on what you want to buy!

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities BestBuy is certainly not a record store.
I’m talking about places that sell only music. Best Buy is weak.
And no, no one wants Nickleback.

I would prefer a record store because it much fun to look at the cd covers and it’s fun to discover new and as you said rare things, you just don’t know what you can find it’s all fun in mystery. But iTunes isn’t that bad either, the price are cheap and it’s easier to download in your ipod and there’s hardly anybody who buy CD’s anymore but I still like to collect some CD’s from a certain type of artist.

However, if it is an amazing band who I really want to support, I will always buy the actual cd.

I haven’t even been in a record store in years…
iTunes has plenty of discovery options. That’s the whole point of Genius.

I’m usually with JohnPowell here in the way that I don’t really “shop” for my music, but in the last year I have bought 5 or 6 cd’s from the local record store. Personally, I think that if i’m going to buy the CD anyway, I might as well support local businesses too. I don’t mind coughing up the extra dough.

I should mention that I don’t pay for music. But I buy tons of t-shirts and go to a lot of shows. Mostly from bands I heard of on last.fm and downloaded their stuff.

I spend a lot more now on music related stuff now then I used to spend on CDs.

I like iTunes. Nothing like music shopping in my underwear!!!

We’ve got a few cool record stores left in NYC, Other Music and Academy in Manhattan and Sound Fix and Academy (North Side) in Williamsburg. Ironically, the big chains, Tower and Virgin, have shut down.

I rarely buy whole albums anymore. The iTunes experience has actually broadened my musical horizons. I would never buy a whole CD, and I never have, when I know I might like only one or two songs. This used to limit the music I would buy, but no more.

I’ve never been to iTunes or any other music download site, for that matter. It’s a nice way for Indie musicians to publish their work, but mostly it’s one of the greatest ripoffs ever perpetrated on the American (or otherwise) consumer. What do you get when you buy a music download, anyway? What happens when your hard drive crashes and you lose it? What happens when iTunes doesn’t want you to move it where you want to move it? You didn’t really buy anything, did you? When you buy something, it’s yours to do with as you will. When you “buy” something from iTunes, it still mostly belongs to them. Yeah, I heard they were lightening up on DRM lately, but not for everything.

Buy CDs and rip them for your digital music players. Make some copies as a backup. I have CDs I bought in the 1980s that still play perfectly. The computers I owned back then bit the dust long ago.

I prefer used CD stores.

i absolutely prefer going to actual stores for music. specifically, i love going to record stores – i love music on vinyl – but it’s pretty expensive, and i’m pretty much jobless.

but stores that sell music in any physical format are the best. first of all, i absolutely hate only having the mp3 version of a song. hate it. music is personal, and maybe i’m just being silly, but just seeing the song come up on my itunes? absolutely not satisfying. and wait, paying for something i can’t even hold? no thank you. also, i’m a total sucker for album art, and having it just as a ‘jpeg’ online does not do it for me.
then there’s the whole aspect of just clicking onto an album and buying it, or even worse, buying part of it. albums were not made to be split into little pieces. an album is an album and a single is a single. there is an intended difference. if a band only has one song i like, i might download it. but if i actually like a band, there is no doubt about it – i will buy the album.

i think the internet is a great way for smaller bands to sell their music, because i guess it’s cheaper and easier for them to get their music out, but as for buying everything on mp3? i won’t do it.

i could literally write a (poorly-structured) book on my hatred for the way technology has affected music purchases

Since I’ve discovered the iPod (I was a little late to the party – I only bought one 2 years ago), I haven’t listened to a CD in that entire time and haven’t been to a record store either to buy anything. I have to admit that I’m sort of an Itunes junkie and that’s the only place I get any and all new music these days.

I prefer the CD shops because I like to support the small businesses and I like having an original hard copy of a CD and not just a burned copy.