My current way is:

  • bandcamp.com for some artists
  • buying used CDs from a online music CD reseller and ripping them
  • download a few from youtube via youtube-dl or something

Now a few of those from youtube are great, i’d like to buy now the album. bandcamp.com doesn’t offer it and it is too specific/too new to get a used CD.

i could buy them from apple Itunes since it is rather cheap and it offers a DRM free download option (i think), but i’d like to avoid apple and its walled garden and bad user interface for linux people.

    • krolden@lemmy.ml
      4·
      2 years ago

      Music trackers are one of the worst ways of finding new music. Having to worry about your ratio all the time really hinders your ability to find new stuff. The only thing they’re really good for quality control.

      Direct p2p sharing will always be superior. https://slsknet.org

      Or youcouldd just buy music on band camp.

  • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
    9·
    2 years ago

    torrents, and yt-dlp (works with bandcamp, soundcloud, etc, not only youtube).

    with a few exceptions i only pay for music when i can do so without an intermediary taking a big cut and my data (eg, mostly only in-person at a show), but i have paid for things through bandcamp a few times.

    • krolden@lemmy.ml
      6·
      2 years ago

      I like paying for music when it comes with some merch or sometimes a really cool vinyl pressing. Also, seeing them live as much as possoble, however I haven’t seen any since before covid :(

  • vxnxnt@feddit.de
    8·
    2 years ago

    I also buy about 80-90% of my music from Bandcamp. If some music I really like isn’t on Bandcamp, then I download it from Youtube which would make up the other 10-20%.

    I’ve thought about maybe buying the music that’s not on Bandcamp from Itunes instead, but I really don’t like the idea of giving Apple my money or even using their services.

  • _ed@sopuli.xyz
    51·
    2 years ago

    Snap - thats pretty much what I do.

    Bandcamp where possible. Not interested in subscription services. I love physical media / Artwork but LPs are out of the price range, so CDs it is. Youtube dl for live gigs.

  • octt
    51·
    2 years ago

    Today I basically only look for lossless music, which complicates things, since I can’t just use yt-dlp and solve my problem.

    The few times I can buy lossless music, i do so on Bandcamp, paying with PayPal.

    When I can’t pay, my order is the following:

    • Bandcamp (nice artists often put some free stuff too on there)
    • Archive.org
    • Going on adventure on search engines trying to find FLAC torrents, reupload websites or (it actually happened one time) unprotected private HTTP servers (!) that Google will just publicly index, absolutely not giving a damn about the fact that the server exists just because someone forgot to close a port on their router
    • Whom@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 years ago

      There’s also qobuz, which has a hi-res store on top of its streaming service.

  • chrysn@lemmy.ml
    3·
    2 years ago

    My primary sources are:

    • 7digital (who AIU primarily run white-label music sales platforms, but also have direct per-country shops like https://uk.7digital.com/). Reasonably simple interface, reasonable prices, good general coverage.
    • hyperion records for everything classical.
    • If everything else fails, Amazon Music; the way you get the music out of it varies over time, but in the end it has been DRM free for some time.
  • Whom@lemmy.ml
    3·
    2 years ago

    Doesn’t give you what you’re looking for, but I grab almost everything from soulseek nowadays since I got tired of tools like deemix because you have to know if the album you’re looking for has any edits or removed tracks on streaming to avoid getting butchered versions. Occasionally I’ll buy a record from bandcamp or get a copy on wax, but not usually unless I’m already a fan.

    The drive with my collection died recently, so I’ve been raiding the hell out of slsk.

  • [moved to hexbear]@lemmy.ml
    3·
    2 years ago

    Deemix for the vast majority of stuff (I pay for a HiFi Deezer account so I can download FLACs), with Bandcamp, RuTracker and the occasional charity shop CD handling the other stuff not on Deezer.