Hey all!
As you may or may not know, I'm a pretty busy guy. I am currently working on my senior project and chose the topic of Pirating Vs Purchasing music.
For this project, I am conducting a survey on what people tend to do most when it comes to obtaining their music.
Iv'e already conducted the survey with about 20 of my friends and more than half of them said they would be willing to do both.

So I thought It wouldn't hurt to bring the question up with the
Dollars Community.

As for me, I tend to do both. That's why I'm making it an option.
I sometimes download first, review, and purchase later.
If I see an album in a record store, that I have already downloaded, and I have enough money to get it, I don't hesitate to do so.
Usually if I listen to an album online first, and find out that it's absolutely amazing. (Like Whirr's Distressor album, or Whirr's entire discography, for example.) I would never even think about downloading any of their material.
Overall, in my opinion nothing beats the feeling of physically owning an album or LP.

So anyway, how do you guys obtain your music?
Do you Pirate, Purchase or both?

http://dollars-bbs.org/music/res/1316313144.html
Sorta beat you to this one, bro.
Granted your OP by far outweighs mine. Whatever we decide to do with this is fine by me.

"As for me, I tend to do both. That's why I'm making it an option. I sometimes download first, review, and purchase later.
If I see an album in a record store, that I have already downloaded, and I have enough money to get it, I don't hesitate to do so." basically sums up me as well.
/o/

Sadly, nobody purchases music anymore.

Jailbroken iPods and thousands of music downloading applications prove that.

Unless it's a fuckin boss song and thats the only way to get it.

~Des bitches love sosa

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I either buy or YouTube.

It's legal to download where I live
so I download. ^^;;
I don't go to CD stores often -sigh- ;___;

It's legal to download where I live
so I download. ^^;;
I don't go to CD stores often -sigh- ;___;

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and as of late, rar files. Lots of rars.

My friend's got a collection of about 100-130 CD's, so I usually just burn his music to my hard drive.
Other than that, I'll usually save up some money to buy the album, but if I'm out of cash, I'll just download/ torrent.

I rarely have enough money, nor do I go out often enough to buy all of my music. So yes, admittedly I do pirate a lot of my music.
That's not to say that I don't buy music at all, in fact I buy music as often as I am able to. I only started seriously collecting them maybe 4 years ago, and at the moment, I have a collection of roughly 30 - 35 albums.

On the old thread for this, this was my reply:

"I download music music most of the time, but only because I can't afford to buy all of it (I listen to a lot of music). Also, some stuff is really hard to get your hands on, so I have to download in order to be able to listen. That's my justification anyway. I still buy CD's as often as I can, and I think that if you have the money, it's pathetic to download all of your music."

Pretty much the same.

^ Also, I checked out Whirr. It was awesome.

Since I rarely come across money and I don't have a job, I pirate my music. If I really like a certain group or artist, I'll support them by paying for the music.

I buy a track or two every week on pay day, usually from the Play Store.

I'll download the full album but as one track and depending on how good it is, ill deleate it and Buy the Full Album.

just google ant.com
that's my answer.

Last.fm a mother for discovering new music. also there is a part with free downloading songs but not all songs ofc. but yeah, i use last.fm since 2008. anyone has an account there?

I don't really buy whole items unless i really like the music. I would usually just download them off iTunes or listen to them on Youtube

That's why there are the youtube converters if your poor like meh :D

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>>18 I know right!? I use those too. If you can get good music for free, why NOT use it?

I download music I'm interested in. If I like it, I buy it. If I don't I delete it.

Bump. I usually just listen to things on YouTube, or listen to my dad's collection of CDs.

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All I basically do is this
Google search: "*Artist name* *album/release name* Blogspot"
Blogger is one of the best ways to spread and find good free music.People often put up album reviews etc with a download link. I have a blogger myself to give back to the interwebs I guess
www.cavsreviews.blogspot.com is the url I think...

Anyway Bumpppp^^^^^^^^^^^

I usually torrent my music, but if I really like the band I'll buy their CD.

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I listen to music first before buying it, because I support a system of music distribution based on that principle. I want that to be how music is bought in the first place.

I found my favorite artist of all time only because I could listen to his music before I bought it. Without that ability to listen to it for free, I never would have spent a penny on it.

I don't think humans will be fair all the time, but I still think the mindset of 'If you download a song you didn't buy, you should go to jail' does not work in favor of the majority of people.

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for discussion

so discuss

I usually torrent my music if I want an entire album. I always find the quality excellent (remember to look for 320kbps, though.) If I want individual songs, fast, on my iPhone then I'll use the app iDownloader and fish out audio links on Mp3Skull (individual songs aren't long-term, and I usually listen to it for a couple weeks and then delete it.)

iTunes

I just use soundcloud, it's free but does require Internet.

But hey, it works.

Far as listening to music online goes, my favourite platform is probably bandcamp. If I want to check out a band or artist, bandcamp is always where I go first.

Also there are a lot of small independent artists that will let you download their music for free.

I listen to music (offline) through Musify...I don't really purchase the songs...

Oooh, and I'm gonna mention that I've totally discovered some of my favourite bands through implulse buying albums without a thorough prior listening.

I got into both sleepmakeswaves and Tesseract that way.

I'd say at least 3/4 of my library was ripped off of YouTube. The rest was purchased through iTunes gift cards given to me.

I buy physical copies of the music that i really love. If it's just a single or something i can't get that way, i get it through itunes. If i can't find it there, then, and only then will i try to rip it off of youtube.

>>40 TesseracT is freaking amazing

I support local bands and rob signed bands.

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I don't have access to buy musics, so I still pirate most of my songs. But I try to use Spotify if the song I liked were available.

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Since I'm mostly interested in older music (1920 - 1990), I pirate it. I actually made it a rule a few years ago never to spend any money on music, apart from people playing on the streets.

My reasoning is that when I go to work, I'm payed for my work one single time, and not a dozen times for several decades.

Furthermore, the composers of a lot of songs I like *died* a long time ago. There's no logical reason to pay for these songs.

(so yes, the concept of "intellectual property" eludes me. To quote a politician from my country: "If you got visions, go see a doctor.")

It really depends for me, mainly on how expensive the album is, who its by, if I want the entire album or just a few songs, etc.

For example, if I see an album I want from a popular group or artist and find what I want off youtube, I'll just convert the link into an MP3, but if it were perhaps a smaller group who releases music from their own record label, I'll totally pay for it to support that growing artist artist.

There's also the question "if I want the full (or majority of) the album or if I only want a few select songs. That being said, even if I wanted an album from a smaller artist but I only wanted one song off an album, I'll just convert the song and call it a day.

Usually I would use Spotify but I can only use it in my laptop since I'm too broke for premium. I also purchase some albums here and there.

For listening to music in my phone, I downloaded an app called iFile Organizer and it works really well! You can download mp3 and even mp4 through YouTube and soundcloud. I highly recommend if you're broke like me.

Sorry Matto, but I really disagree with you. I do pirate some things, but I never pirate music. I usually use Spotify.

"My reasoning is that when I go to work, I'm payed for my work one single time, and not a dozen times for several decades."

To me that is a really dumb line of thought, because if that were the case, then only one person could listen to one song. Imagine if they did these with books, or artworks. Imagine if every book written was only sold to one person, and for those hundreds of hours of work, $10-$20. Same applies to art, Same applies to Music.

What you're thinking of is intellectual property, you can claim it eludes you but really it isn't hard to understand. Artist's sell the right to use the work to individuals. Selling the IP, is handing over all ownership you have of the work, and people do this very often, however it is for thousands, possibly millions for a track depending on the effort gone in, its popularity and the assets used in production.

To buy the right to use = $1-3
To buy the right of ownership = $100-$1,000,000 or more depending-

In the world you want, only the rich could afford music which would be crazy. As an independent Musician trying to make a living through music piracy would kill any chances we have. For every Spotify stream, we get $0.004-0.008 cents, every sale on iTunes, Apple takes 30%, your label or manger will take 60% and you'll be left with the scraps.

Please do not pirate music, especially unpopular artists.

Also, music by deceased composers, after i believe 70 years end up in the public domain, however even artists from the 30s-90s, when you pay for music, you're paying the artists family.