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Braver,

Interesting. I know that in Germany, music stores have CD's without the shrinkwrap, and have listening stations where people line up with their stack of CD's to go over before purchasing. I don't know how many other countries have similiar practices, but it sounds like the Netherlands do also.

Retail stores in the US have not seen fit to adopt this practice, however. Some have toyed with the idea of having mp3 copies of their inventory so that people can preview music that way. Other models are being considered, but I don't see the situation changing any time soon. I wonder if this would result in more sales in the long run, or just more physical theft. Does the European community have any stats on this? This has got to affect digital theft also, one way or the other.

As for mp3's are concerned, I use them to burn my own compilations to play on my portable, mostly. Occasionally I download a sample of something I might be interested in but not really sure about. More often than not, it results in a retail buy, though.

The filesharing programs have revolutionized how I discover new artists - by browsing other's list and sampling I find new artists I like, thus I have more to shop for. In general, I don't like going through the process of searching for & downloading an entire CD of music when the sound quality is so much better off the original.

Most music stores in the us have a listening station with a scanner that ids the barcodes on cds. You can listen to any part of it without opening the shrinkwrap. A lot of used music stores will take off the security crap and let you listen in the store as well.

If I had anything better than this 56k connection, you can bet I'd be buying a hell of a lot less cds.

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It's easy to get lossless or extremely high quality lossy files, you just have to do a little more homework, and have broadband.

To be quite honest, I buy more cds these days than ever. Mp3 allows me to take recommendations I get, sample and then decide whether or not to buy the cd.

Then again, being among you guys makes me loathe that downloaded mp3 sound so I'm forced to buy cds.

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I don't know about Germany, but I can't rememver anything else than being able to listening to the music before buying it. (in the Nederlands)

When I was a little kid the LP's were still in the covers in the shelves. So you went to the counter and gave it to salesguy who put it on and you could have a listen. That changed later on. More shoplifing I quess. Now the CD covers are in the rack and the CD's are left behind the counter.

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Only place I've seen the barcode scanning idea is wal-mart.... and who really shops at wal-mart for music. I've seen one small used cd stores that take the shrink wrap off new CDs and allowed you to listen to the CD. I've also seen a few small ones that keep a database of many songs they have.

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If what you're talking about is wav files, I'd tend to agree. I haven't found a compressed medium yet that doesn't degrade sound quality significantly.

I have only used MP3s to try out songs on CDs I've been interested in buying. If I do or do not buy the CD, I always delete the MP3. I've probably bought more CDs because of MP3s and have never kept an MP3 that I've downloaded because I don't have a burner and it just isn't worth it.

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indeed, theft should be pretty low. the only way you can get the actual CDs is to get behind the counter and get a handfull of the paper sleeves with the actual CDs in it. no way to tell whats inside tho.

funny thing is, there are people who download the music from the internet, and then go to a store to steal the case with the artwork....

problem with listening in the store is IMO, it's very hard to get a straight opinion on something from a first listen. besides, theres usually something else playing on the stores system, which makes it even harder.. and then there the absolutely terrible headphones in most stores... I do listen to stuff I'm absolutely not sure about before buying tho. but not a lot. and only in quiet stores with nice set-ups (Senns or Beyers).

it's not a perfect system, but it's nice to be able to check before you buy. you can do that with almost everything, but with software and music, somehow thats just not allways how it works.

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Yea, I'm familiar with Ogg and AAC encoders. The problem is, what file sharing program offers a good selection of these? I think I've only downloaded about 2 OGG files ever, because no one seems to use it for music I'm interested in.

The problem with filesharing is that you can only find the popular albums. As soon as you want something more obscure you can search till you blue in the face.
And then again I wouldn't dream of listening to my favorite albums in 192+kbps (even if hearing the difference is more an imagenary thing as actually hearing it.) It just wouldn't be the same.

I do all my demoing in store, either at Tower Records or Borders. I usually buy all my CDs there too. It's sometimes a few bucks more then if I went hardcore bargain hunting, but Towers/Borders has turned me on to some stuff I would've never dreamed of just buying on my own otherwise, enough to feel like giving the store those few extra bucks for it. Othertimes I'll just audition a never heard of CD I can't help but end up wanting on the spot. Some genres just require leaps of faith though, such as soundtracks, or foreign stuff.

For me, being able to visually see and pick up the CD while I'm in the buying mood tends to help a lot in just getting me curious about an album I've never heard of before. This is versus just getting random names of recommended artists from people, and then ending up not even having the time to find demo files on them, or not finding anything at all.

I buy far less cds because of mp3. If I can get an 192kbs mp3 of a song (for free), that's good enough for me most of the time. I also buy less because sampling music reminds me that 90 percent of the music out there sucks and now I can avoid buying it!

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Do I have to spell it out for you? There are entire DirectConnect hubs that only allow mpc(best lossy codec) or flac(best lossless codec). Of course, there is the matter of being allowed to join...