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Best Place to Buy CDs?


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I have been a member of Columbia House and BMG (and whatever it was called before changing to BMG) since the time they were selling LPs. Even wtih the high shipping charges, the end price paid wasn't too bad with all the free selections they gave. Well Columbia House went away a few years ago and BMG is now chaning over to yourmusic.com.

This new version of BMG doesn't sound too bad -- all CDs are $6.99 and includes shipping. I don't mind paying that much for a new CD but the problem is BMG has a fairly poor selection (seemed to get worse over time) and the intial assessment is that yourmusic.com is the same. Does anyone have good suggestions for purchasing CDs (reasonable prices with good selections)? I'm one of those that likes to buy CDs versus downloading something. I don't own a single MP3 song.

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I have been thinking about asking the same thing for the last week, just kept forgetting. There must be some on line places with fair prices and a good selection, hope you get some good answers.

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Amazon

Ditto.

What I like about Amazon is that you can listen to tracks of the music, and while you're listening, you'll get a list of titles purchased by the people who bought the CD you're listening to. So it's an endless selection of like stuff. When I find something I like, I add it to my wish list. Often you can buy CD's with no shipping cost, or you can get used CD's with reasonable shipping costs from outside vendors.

For expanding your horizons, Pandora is a terrific tool. www.pandora.com

Greg

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I am fortunate that I have a friend and neighbor in the used music business. He is very critical about the condition of the music he sells, so he gives me good prices on the "seconds". Everything is entirely playable and usually in very good condition. He also sells on amazon, here is a link to his store------> CLICK HERE

(I am not affiliated nor do I receive any compensation from him. He is just a great guy who loves music and has turned it into a business. Richard is one of the most stand up and honest people I've had the pleasure to meet.)

If it is a new release I am looking for, One Click shopping at amazon is usually the way I go or I hit one of my local Record stores.

Dennie

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YourMusic.com does have great prices, but the selection is pretty limited. What bugs me is that you have to wait for a lot of titles to show up long after they were available everywhere else in the free world.

If I want something right now, I usually go to Amazon. Occasionally J&R MusicWorld, but not for a while. And I used to get fair prices on SACD's from Circuit City.com, but of course, not any longer.[:(]

I don't see any advantage to downloads as they currently exist. Quality is generally too low. Cost is too high. And you've got nothing tangible. Nothing to hold in your greasy little mits. No liner notes, no pics, nuttin'!

I love CD's!!! (SACD's with a CD layer would be even better if they were still a viable option.)

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I've noticed all the BMG discs are "made for BMG" or "made by BMG" under license, blah blah blah and they sound like absolute crap. I stopped BMG a couple of years ago due to this.

Amazon.com has the absolute best selection of CD and SACD/DVD-A online with really competetive prices. I buy used ones in "like new condition" many times for a fraction ($2) of the new price & haven't been disappointed yet.

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I'm lucky enough to live within walking distance of http://www.jr.com/category/music/jazz/n/174/ the last of the great record stores in NYC. (excluding specialty shops, Bleeker Bob's, Colony Records, Revolution, Downstairs records, Heck I'm not even sure many of these are still around.) With the cd market in the crapper, J&R has been running a $6.99 a cd sale,on selected titles, so last night I went to the jazz department and picked up 14 cds, 10 jazz/4 popular for $108 which includes our lovely 8 1/2 % sales tax. Not too bad.

I also buy cds on Ebay and find most of the dealers are pretty good, there are some decent deals on both new and used cds.

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Bit-torrent. (Vuze, specifically)

I know, it's illegal.

I know, the record labels don't get my money.

I know the millionaire musicians I download don't get my $3

I download thousands of songs a day and fill external hard drives.

Eventually it'll be impossible to do, and I better have every song by then...

Once I have a 5 figure income, I might consider buying the albums I really like, but doubt it.

Flame on... :)

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Thanks for all the great suggestions. Lots of suggestions for Amazon. It would seem the good prices here would be for the used CDs. Any issues with buying used? I'm one of those that tries to preserve my CDs like they are LPs -- hold 'em by the edges, don't touch them anywhere else, so they are as new with no scratched or even fingerprints.

I've never had any sound quality issues with the CDs I have received from BMG or Columbia House. Actually, I've had more than a few where the sound quality was outstanding. CDs are just ones and zeros right? [:D]

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Amazon is a excellent source for CDs and I've certainly bought my fair share. Same with Half.com.

I've found that most of the used CDs that I've managed to get have nearly always been in excellent shape and played just fine in my system.

There used to be a record store called Stangeland Records that specialized in the music that I like to listen to, but alas, they went out of business last spring. Royally sucks.

Other places where I've gotten CD, since these also specialize in my chosen genre of music:

Nightmare Records

CD Inzane

The Laser's Edge

ProgRock Records

These are a few of what I use to source my music. Of course, I've actually had pretty good luck in finding some of the music that I listen in good ol' Best Buy.

As for downloaded music, yeah, I know about all the talk about "low quality" and all that other [bs]. But there is no denying that I like the convience of it (i.e., not having to wait for a CD to arrive in the mail and such). For that I've been using eMusic for a number of years and just recently started using LaLa.com. I've also, on occasion, have use the Amazon MP3 store. I've found that I really like something that I have downloaded, I'll attempt to get a copy of the actual CD whenever possible. However, some of this that I listen to has never been released in the US and/or is out of print, thus very expensive or hard to get any other way other than via download.

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