How do you consume music these days?

[BurtReynolds]

I think Backspacer was the last CD I ever bought. I avoid itunes like the plague, but seldom use Amazon any more either.

I pretty much live on Spotify these days. Discovered a lot of great bands on there. It has almost everything I could ever need, though there are a few high quality playlists on youtube I listen to from time to time.

[Harry Lime]

I discovered all the Delta bluesmen on Pandora. Pretty much saved my life.

[super nintendo chalmers]

I'm probably good for one or two CDs a year, probably even less now that I don't have a player in my car anymore. I swapped it for a new tape deck, so I've been buying a lot of tapes cheap on discogs to jam in the car. It's been pretty fun. That being said, its pretty much just records and downloads (sometimes nefarious when I don't want to spend the bread).

[Jorge]

I still buy a lot of CDs, the occasional vinyl record, and I purchase downloads when I can't find the physical product anywhere. I try to keep the "illegal downloads" to a minimum, but sometimes they're unavoidable.

[Kevin Davis]

I preview stuff anywhere it pops up, but I still do most of what accounts for my best listening on my CD player (or more rarely, on my iPod, which is usually just comprised of a playlist ripped from my CD's). I enjoy having a physical library and have always found liner notes, album art, etc. have enriched the listening experience for me. I have a turntable and enjoy the experience of listening to music on vinyl but for me it remains a novelty.

[Jorge]

Oh, yeah-- when I'm not home, I'm using my iPod.

And Youtube is a really quick and easy solution for sharing music.

[Lament]

I wander the streets of the city and listen to street performers. It's the only pure, untainted musical expression left. Everyone else is a sellout.

[Kevin Davis]

I use my iPod pretty much exclusively for the shuffle feature--for the serendipitous combinations it dreams up that I never would have on my own. Some of the most satisfying listening of my adult life has come as a result of dumping 50-60 assorted CD's from various eras of my life into my iPod and letting it decide what to do with them. The impression I usually come away with is how unfamiliar I am with my own collection--when I was 15 or 16 I could probably name you every song on every CD I owned within 5 seconds of it starting; shuffling through a larger collection produces far more instances of, ''Wait, what is this? Oh yeah...'' and ultimately leads to a greater, broader appreciation of the music already on my shelf.

[zeb]

I like coming up with meticulously crafted playlists for each of my favourite artists (or artists I regrettably overlooked for far too long) and listening to that via my iPod in the car.

[zeb]

I've probably bought more pieces of vinyl than I have CDs over the last five years.

[Lament]

I tend to move around a lot, so a few years ago I sucked it up, bought an external hard drive, and put my entire collection on it. I have one of those iPods that holds like 25,000 songs, so that's pretty much how I privately consume most of my music. I'll listen to SiriusXM pretty regularly as well to see if I hear anything I want to start playing (or go back to playing) at work, and I'll generally use youtube (or, much in much rarer instances, spotify) to re-listen to stuff that I make a note to check out after hearing on the radio. Same thing with artists/songs I come across people mentioning on twitter/in blogs/via conversation/etc. I also use youtube and keepvid to rip vidoes to play at work.

[zeb]

What did you rip your physical collection at, Lament? 320?

[Jorge]

Don't those youtube rips sound like garbage for the most part?

[zeb]

I ask because I ripped mine too early, before hard drive space became an issue, and now I'm stuck with a very large collection ripped at predominantly 192.

[BurtReynolds]

My next car stereo will be able to stream music off of Spotify, then I can probably throw my dinky little ipod in the trash.

[zeb]

My next car stereo will be able to stream music off of Spotify, then I can probably throw my dinky little ipod in the trash.

I bought a 160gb iPod last year and it's been a revelation. Up until that point I was dicking around with CDs (retail and burnt) in the car and it was very inconvenient. That click wheel is a fucking god send.

[Lament]

What did you rip your physical collection at, Lament? 320?

I believe so, but I could easily be wrong. It very well may be 192. I'm pretty technologically limited, so I had a friend set everything up for me in terms of all of the settings things were ripped at. I still have my entire physical collection in storage, and for what it's worth I intend on going back to listening to things on CD whenever I do decide to settle down somewhere (or at least I tell myself that).

Don't those youtube rips sound like garbage for the most part?

No, not really. Nearly all of the ones that end up getting played in the club are from Vevo, and they're pretty decent quality. In that setting you can't really tell the difference between something I'm playing from a CD or DVD vs. a video file. The sheer size of the club and the volume things are being played at makes a lot of the nuances in things pretty muted regardless of the quality of the recording, so a lot of shortcomings/flaws in the recording are hidden because of that. I hope that made sense...

[Birds in Hell]

My general preference is lossless digital but I'll still buy the occasional CD if that's not available. I tried the vinyl thing for a while, it's not for me. I don't care for MP3s.

I have a 160GB iPod Classic with Apple Lossless files on it, that's my main listening system (such as it is).

[Jorge]

Don't those youtube rips sound like garbage for the most part?

No, not really. Nearly all of the ones that end up getting played in the club are from Vevo, and they're pretty decent quality. In that setting you can't really tell the difference between something I'm playing from a CD or DVD vs. a video file. The sheer size of the club and the volume things are being played at makes a lot of the nuances in things pretty muted regardless of the quality of the recording, so a lot of shortcomings/flaws in the recording are hidden because of that. I hope that made sense...

I guess the Youtube ripping tools I've used are of lesser quality. The videos I've ripped usually result in really really shitty files-- I mean noticeably shitty, beyond audiophile bitrate griping. You know those shitty mp3s that have that "wet" sound to them? That's what I mean.

[Lament]

Have you ever tried keepvid? They give you a lot of options for how you'd like them to rip each video. The owner of the club requests that the ones we rip be mp4/480p. They end up looking and sounding surprisingly good.