Originally Posted by Trollheart

Now that I'm (almost) 50, I can say that I've sort of paid my dues, literally, in that I used to spend all my pocket money then part of my wages on albums. I used to buy them by the bagload. Seriously, I would go into town and come home with 10/20 albums. I did this for years, first with vinyl then with CDs (mostly replacing my vinyl albums with digital copies), but back then I knew what I liked and more of less stuck to it. Now as I get older there is so much more music out there I'd like to try, but I'll be damned if I'm plonking down ten or twenty Euro on the offchance it might be good. I can't afford that.

Not only have times changed, my circumstances have too. I worked for almost 30 years (in the one job) and had a pay packet. For the last coming up to four years now, I've been my sister's carer, having jacked in my job in 2009, and I now survive on about a tenth of what I used to make. Admittedly, I have less expenses but it's still hard to make ends meet.

So I download torrents but I also use those Russian websites where you can get albums for a dollar or less. Why shouldn't I? Half of what I buy may not be any good; if so, all I've lost is a dollar. It also enables me to build up my collections at a fraction of the cost, and I'm not one of those audiophiles who has to have perfect sound reproduction. Hell, I grew up on vinyl!

The closure of the likes of HMV is just their chickens coming home to roost. After decades of ripping us off, with no other option open to us, when we finally were able to give the record shops the two fingers they collapsed like so many sandcastles suddenly caught as the tide comes in. Good riddance, say I, though I feel for those who lost their jobs. But it's been comin'.

Finally, I no longer have a working stereo --- once the most important item in my life --- so any CDs I bought would just get ripped and transferred, then played on the PC anyway. So what's lost by just downloading MP3s? If you're not anal about the sound quality, then what difference does it make?