The Most Important Question Of The Day

[ericcoleman]

[Poll #1388013]

Comments

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

I'm old school (Hell, I've been doing vinyl this week). I also like having the original on disc in case the file becomes corrupted.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

A me-too post, to say Me Too. Backups backups backups.

[tlunquist.livejournal.com]

I can download one song I like, instead of having to find storage for a plastic disc in a plastic box that has one song I like and ten songs I don't. I can back up my downloads however many times I need to, or even burn them onto plastic discs if I must, but the cost and space savings of not having a bunch of music I don't like gives the download option top billing in my book.

Digital downloads

[ctrlalttabby.livejournal.com]

Which I then burn to CD for use in the car. :)

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

How nice for you that you have that option consistently at your disposal. Not all of us do.

[tlunquist.livejournal.com]

If I didn't already have a computer with a hard drive and a CD burner, I could use the money I saved not buying $17 CDs full of songs I don't like to finance the needed computer upgrades.

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

Much as I love owning physical CDs, it is easier to do digital downloads, uses less resources (a good thing to consider during Earth Day), and I always rip my CDs anyways for use on my PC.

The only caveat I will say is that any digital download that is crippled to only work on the PC you download it with is NOT acceptable, since I usually have one PC for my downloads but move the file to a differet PC for storage and use.

I also prefer to not have to connect to a specific server every time I want to play the file since servers do go offline. But I find the "only usable on the downloading PC" more annoying of the two DRM schemes.

[tollermom]

For me it's a quality issue. Digital downloads are still not as high a quality as the CD (assuming a professionally mastered CD to begin with). It's like asking "TIF or JPEG?"... I'll take the TIF, please, 'cause I can then downsample for as many JPEGs as I want, but I can't ever turn that JPEG back into a TIF. Same w/ music. I buy some stuff online, 'cause I mostly listen to music in the Trooper, which isn't exactly an excellent listening space, but if it's something that I really care about, I want the CD so I can listen to the full quality, as artist and engineer intended it, on the system in the living room.

[david-stowell.livejournal.com]

Absolutely, positively, Compact Discs.

1) I want something I can physically hang onto, pressed (not burned), complete with art and liner notes.

2) The audio quality is far and away better than any digital download - MP3 compression is lossy by definition, and a trained ear can spot the losses a mile off, even at a high bit rate. I don't even like the sound of iPods, and they claim that they're lossless...