I'm looking to replace my CD collection (it got stolen).
I'm would like to be able to purchase the music outright and download to my phone for offline playback.
Not really interested in a online streaming subscription service/anything with ongoing payments.
I haven't used anything like this since iTunes circa 2000 so things may have changed in 2 decades.
Thanks.
Bandcamp lets you purchase music outright and gives a good portion of the price to the artists.
Hey thanks for that, it looks pretty good.
I probably should have added that I'm trying to replace my 90s grunge/metal collection.
Unfortunately the bands I'm after aren't on Bandcamp.
If you have the digital files, I would just play them.
It would be very hard to argue that somebody stole the copyright licence you purchased included with your CD media in the 1990s.
Your CD thief would be breaking copyright, of course, but probably not their highest priority.
If you don't have the digital files, or otherwise feel you need to pay the artists, likely the best way to do so is track down their website and see what they offer. Smaller bands often have options to buy direct, or via bandcamp or similar.
Larger artists will have links to their record label's store, and often Google Music store and iTunes store where you can buy and download the digital files.
Unfortunately they stole the iPod AND the hard disk that I had all the digital files backed up on.
Along with my PSVita game collection (about 100 games)!
I had items in storage at a friend's place during a house move.
Might be cheaper to subscribe to Apple Music than it would be to buy them all on iTunes. While subscribed you will be able to download the music for playback offline. You won't need to add your old library because it would be like you own all the songs while subscribed. Apple already support cd quality playback so now is the perfect time to forget your physical CD collection for good. You might be able to sell it, some people will collect anything.
The best thing about doing this is you don't have to think about organising files or media manually ever again. It frees up a lot of time and mental energy.
Yeah possibly. I'm not a huge music fan and would only be looking to get about 20 CDs.
At $30 each this would be around $600 total.
$600 would buy me 50 months (4.1 years) of Apple Music assuming the cost stays the same.
The music I'm wanting to replace is 30 years old and I'm not really interested in getting anything new so $600 for 20 CDs that will last me another 30 years seems like the better investment. 🤣
Can't you rip your CDs into MP3s and just upload to your phone via USB cable?
CDs were stolen. I don't have access to them 😢
I see and sorry to hear that. Thanks for the clarification.
Spotify or apple music, much of a muchness really. Both are easy to use, offer the same capabilities. Amazon music perhaps as well, but I've never used that - it offers higher quality (but, lets be real, for 90s grunge/metal that probably isnt so important!)
I'm going to assume you care about audio quality.
I don't know of any obscure sources of music, you should ask music people for that. But Bandcamp and iTunes were among the best sources when I looked into this years ago (not recently, but less than two decades ago). I'm not saying "the" best, because I didn't research enough to say that with confidence.
iTunes gives you a file that is good quality and can be converted without significant loss of quality, and it's an established platform that will probably be around for at least the rest of your lifetime. Bandcamp lets you download .flac files for (I think) all purchases.
The downside of iTunes is needing to deal with iTunes.
You may also want to consider a dedicated mp3 player for your music. Your phone is fine if you have a small library, but anything else is going to cut into your storage space, and it's nice being able to listen to music and not worry about battery drain, use your phone for other things, and leave it behind sometimes so you can enjoy music without being tethered to a distraction device.
Having an mp3 player also lets you use an Android phone but use iTunes for music. You could just convert the audio files for use on Android, but that's an extra step.
Next time, rip your analog media (CDs; anything physical) to digital files and keep 3 backups of them:
To lose your files, all three need to be taken out, which is very unlikely. And you can use those storage locations to store other important things, too, so you can go about your days without worrying you'll lose them.
iTunes or wherever you buy your music from that lets you buy it online doesn't count as a location, because you have no control over it. Amazon have, in the past, removed Kindle ebooks from the library of people who bought them because all these services sell you is a license, not something to keep. You get around that by making sure you keep it in a place they can't take it away.
Why not just stream music from Spotify? It requires an internet connection, the quality is not equal to being able to choose what quality you want, and you don't own anything. You can't lend it, pass it down, and you're on the hook for another monthly fee for as long as you use it. The free version is good for discovering new music you might like, though. The situation of many services pulling out of Russia should show you that owning stuff still matters.
Things have definitely changed since the early 2000s.
There's a reason why music streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music have become so popular over the last decade and taken over the old market and method of buying each song/album individually; it's so much more convenient and it can work out to be cheaper as well.
Give it a shot, OP.
You can download the songs off Spotify and Apple Music for offline playback too if that's something that's really important to you. They aren't .mp3 files though, so you won't be able to transfer it to a USB stick or anything.