Buy The Disc

Sometimes the packaging is rather nice too.

I may have mentioned earlier that I'm embarking on a love affair with higher quality audio. One symptom of this is the huge pile of music CDs that I've brought down from the loft to re-rip in a loss-less format. Another is that I'm trying to buy my new music in higher quality than the average digital download fare. 

I wanted a proper copy of Oooh La La by the Crash Test Dummies.  Turned out that there was pretty much no way to buy an uncompressed file. But I can get the actual physical disk, including rather nice packaging and a booklet from Amazon for just over a fiver. What's more, Amazon have this "auto-rip" feature where you automatically get a digital copy of any physical media that you purchase from them. So I get an mp3 file and a proper copy for less than the price of a digital download from iTunes. Delivered for free the next day. Which struck me as a really good deal. So I bought a copy.

And then I found out that Amazon have applied the auto-rip thing to all of my past purchases as well. I seem to have digital copies of disks that I've bought and given away as presents, which puts me in a rather strange place, copyright wise. 

Anyhoo, if you are buying music I can recommend taking a look at physical purchase of media. It is often cheaper and you have a route to higher quality sounds. Even if you end up ripping the disk and then putting it with the others in the loft....