[ckZA]

Where I am currently staying we don't get any support to music streaming sites. As such, to get into new music it's going to be Youtube or dabbling in to frowned upon means.
 
Downloading albums the illegal way is wrong, but with the lack of exposure before buying I am not going to play roulette with my money. Currently looking into VPN and Tidal for new music exposure. If it was easier to get exposure to new music, via music streaming I think more people would be buying music than just getting it for free. By keeping it out of reach to non US/EU countries the industry is, once again, to blame for shooting itself in both feet. I got the money, I have internet and I want to be legal. 
 
 
That being said:
 
I collect mainly old stuff in digital format, as modern music sucks imho. I can't get how records from 50 years ago were captured and mastered better than most things today. As such, hdtracks has been a saving grace for getting good old music for me the past few days.
 
I import a lot of techno vinyl from Germany and Virgin Store has been doing a stellar job of getting repressed non dance music vinyl here locally. 
 
My absolute favorites will be bought on vinyl. Liked albums will be digital. And I'm focusing a lot now on DSD/FLAC songs I can buy, even if it means I have some albums in triple format.
 
I follow a similar approach to music - I will listen to it entirely via any means, frowned upon and not. If it's a decent album I'll try and buy it digitally. I say try, because once again based on my location I can be blocked from doing so. And when I say I'll try, I go through VPN's and really try. 

 

[Grouchator]

Here's the way I work: 
 
I look for things at my local music shop. 
 
If they have what I'm looking for, I buy the CD and rip it onto my computer and phone. Same with vinyl with mp3 codes. 
 
If they don't (probably because it's an obscure Norwegian band or something.) I either get a CD imported or settle for buying a digital copy. 
 
This way, I both get the convenience of a digital library and the physical knick knack I can put on my shelf and admire, as well as use in things like sound systems and cars. It's a pretty stupid habit, but it's the way I do things and I like the physicality of it. 

 

[DiscoProJoe]

  My music is mostly illegal, which I am not proud of.

 
I'm proud of the content I have, whether it's legal or illegal. Personally, I'm a staunch libertarian and am totally opposed to all patents and copyrights -- both morally and practically. My views on this "IP" topic are closely in line with those of Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell, Wendy McElroy, Stephan Kinsella, and Jeffrey Tucker.
 
Anyway,...Go file-sharing, Go 3D printing, Go Internet! Break those chains. 

 

 

[spleenandcigars]

For a long time i was used to download illegal songs and after a while, that became a problem. I downloaded over 2Tb of songs and listened to 5% of it mostly.
Now, i mainly use Spotify and Youtube for digital formats and every month i try to buy a vinyl record for my collecion. 

 

[DiscoProJoe]

  I downloaded over 2Tb of songs and listened to 5% of it mostly.

 
Wow, that's totally different from how I collect music. My collection is currently 56 GB (.056 TB), which currently includes 707 albums and 9,842 songs, and I listen to nearly all of it.
 
Here's an example of how I do things:  my last major music addition project was last year, which I named my K-Pop Music Addition Project. (K-Pop stands for "Korean pop.")  The majority of this project involved Korean pop and disco, but also included a lot of Japanese pop (J-Pop), plus some Chinese pop (C-Pop), and some Western-world pop & disco as well. Roughly 35 full days of hard work was spent on this megaproject off-and-on from mid-May through mid-October. It included an unbelievable amount of exploring, discovering, sampling, selecting, downloading, selecting again, converting, and organizing, and when the main project was finally finished on October 15th, a whopping 865 new songs and 71 new albums & singles entered the collection! It has been by far my biggest music addition project to date in terms of time and difficulty, and October 15th set a record for the most new songs added in one day, topping the previous record of 854 from June 12, 2012 at the conclusion of that project.
 
During last year's project, I probably sampled somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000 songs, and added 865 of them to my music collection. Most of these songs I sampled on Melodishop and MP3Va before choosing whether to download them (which is really convenient), but on other sites, you just have to download them first before sampling. But even after "buying" and downloading a song off Melodishop and MP3Va, I'd always sample it again before choosing whether to add it to my collection, or delete it.
 
So, yeah, I'm really picky about what I add, which is a big reason why my music collection continues to be my most prized possession. I also keep backups of it on three separate USB hard drives -- with two of them stored at alternate locations in case something bad happens. Peace of mind is a good thing! 

 

 

[AdmiralSquid]

I personally used this guide:
 
http://www.cuttingcords.com/home/ultimate-server/getting-started
 
I made my old PC into a mini server, and use the Headphones server/site to find all of my music. It searches the many Indexers and sites I have an account on, I set it to only DL FLAC and 320 mp3. I just type it in, forget it about it. It's amazing, if you guys have a halfway decent computer with free storage I can't recommend it enough... I skipped all the TV/Movie sections of that guide and just did the music part, but follow it step by step and it will hold your hand the whole way through. I'm not the most computer literate person and I easily did it. Huge quality of life improvement with this server + Plex + Subsonic. I can now listen to my high quality music anywhere, including my iPhone (normally can't listen to FLAC on iPhone, but since it's streaming it works). 

 

[demon2277]

I may be illegal

 

[yeahx]

There is no reason for FLAC on an iPhone. It's probably encoding it before it streams anyways.

 

[CocaCola15]

Former collector who now just pays Rhapsody $10 a month to hear new music. Got tired of managing all those files. Having a lot of fun listening to new music at a fixed price. For going out, I will still use part of my collection on my iphone, but at home, use wifi to listen to Rhapsody (no data use issues). For serious listening, an iPod Classic 160GB and an inexpensive HP, I still collect 320k files. Decided a while ago that my older ears don't hear the difference from FLAC. A good place to explore music is newsgroups/usegoups, which still exist if you know how to access them. Streaming is a great cheap alternative as it seems SQ has gotten better with all the competition.

 

[ZMan2k2]

The library's in my city are free.  They have a half-way decent CD collection, and I can try different genre's, artists, etc.  What I normally do is, get a few CD's, rip them, take them back to the library, then donate to the library $10 per CD that I keep.  I figure that way, the artist gets the money, since the library bought the CD. I get a copy, then I donate, so the library can buy more CD's, and I can try more artists.  

 

[minjam11]

  The library's in my city are free.  They have a half-way decent CD collection, and I can try different genre's, artists, etc.  What I normally do is, get a few CD's, rip them, take them back to the library, then donate to the library $10 per CD that I keep.  I figure that way, the artist gets the money, since the library bought the CD. I get a copy, then I donate, so the library can buy more CD's, and I can try more artists.  

 
Wish I had a library like that. That's a pretty nice way of finding new music!

 

[CanadianMaestro]

Buy CDs from resellers. Rip to FLAC. Store on 1TB drives. Playback thru Bryston BDP-1 and iPad for control,  on main rig. Heaven.
Keep CDs in home library.
Very rarely will buy a "hi-res" album from online store.

 

[399942]

del

 

[CanadianMaestro]

If you're into classical music, and in NYC, there's a terrific LP shop that has wall-to-wall vintage LPs. It's on West 72nd, just west of Broadway, before West end Avenue. It's called Westsider Records.

 

[CanadianMaestro]

Interesting article on "hi-res" here:
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/415361/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded
 
I agree about downloading/pirating. Not good, but what can be done to regulate it?
I have no problem buying then ripping CDs, and sharing the FLAC with friends on USB sticks.
Besides, I listen to a lot of classical, and there's no site that does free downloads of complete, high-quality classical recordings.
Good thing, too.