My music purchasing habits

So far in calendar year 2003, I have purchased 3 compact discs. They were, in order:

Lyle Lovett, Smile - an album of his movie songs. I'd like to see some new original stuff from him, but that'll have to do for now. I bought it on April 16th from Amazon, and it was the first album I bought this year.

Dar Williams, The beauty of the rain - Terrific disc from an underrated singer-songwriter. I bought it at Newbury Comics a week ago.

Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - An album I decided to buy when I walked in to buy Dar Williams' album and saw it on sale for $9.99. It was worth it.

So far this year, I've spent about $35 between all three albums.

Meanwhile, Apple's iTunes Music Store has been open for just about a month. I didn't purchase anything from them until after my broadband service was back up and running - so that's since about May 30th. Since then, I've bought an album and two singles:

Suzanne Vega, Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega - The CD costs $13.49 at Amazon. I paid $9.95 for the download version, which arrived in about 6 minutes.

Then I bought two singles - Coldplay's Clocks (Ever since I heard it used for a Kurt Angle video tribute package the song has stuck in my head), and Lucinda Williams' Righteously.

Had Dar Williams' album been available via the iTMS (it's on an indy label and Apple doesn't have any of them signed up yet), I would have bought it in download form, too. I only use CD's for ripping to MP3 (now I rip to AAC, though, because it's smaller and sounds just as good) and playing in my car - and now that I have the iTrip working well I don't really need to use my car's CD player, either.

Basically, what I'm thinking in my case is that as long as I have broadband, CD purchases are pretty much a thing of the past. But I'll still buy some music - it's just going to be downloaded instead.

Will I occasionally still snarf a tune off Gnutella or Kazaa? Sure I will - but only if I want a single song and can't find it on iTMS. As much as I hate the RIAA, I still prefer to buy my music legally.

And by the way - I used to buy a lot more music in my younger days. Unfortunately, there's been a dearth of interesting music to buy in the last few years. Sales to me have not dropped due to piracy, they've dropped because of suckage.