Download stores

[jdh]

Curious who uses any download stores,and if so,which ones.I have always been a cd person,before Lps,and use iTunes for my iPod in lossless. I have started recently to try Downloading a few songs from various stores,and with so many formats,it can get confusing.usually I go for wav but started trying out others such as mp3 or aac, used iTunes store,emusic,beatport,boomkat,other music .To my ears,results all over the Map.emusic was the worst,the rest in the middle,so far beatport the best.none of them come close to cd or wav or flac.but what are your experiences?

[jkn]

I buy directly from several labels... 


http://ad21music.com  (flac)    (Max Corbacho, Bruno Sanfilippo, Ran Kirlian and all of my label's releases, Relaxed Machinery)

http://dataobscura.com   (mp3) (APK's label - a wide variety of wonderful ambient music)


I also tend to buy from Amazon.com when some things are on a good sale.

[Paul Vnuk (Ma Ja Le)]

I would break it down for me as:

30% E-Music
30% Amazon
15% iTunes
15% Direct From band/artist
10% Physical Proudct

[zzzone.net]

Bandcamp is great with a large variety of artists.  Bandcamp is also generally reasonably priced and has lossy and lossless files.

http://bandcamp.com/tag/ambient

I also like Boomkat.  BK stocks the a lot of cutting edge music.  FLAC albums are a bit expensive at 8.99 British pounds.

http://boomkat.com/downloads

[Poaalpina]

http://www.downloadplatform.com/

[jdh]

Thanks for the replies. I certainly think downloads will become the dominant source of music delivery into the future but for now,unless wav,flac,etc...it cannot match cd audio quality.
For sample length and mp3 quality,beatport seems to me the best but expensive in that a wav download is more than the cd version,ease of use and decent quality iTunes store is the best,inexpensive and decent ambient selection,emusic ( I became a member and yes,at least in Canada ,each track is 49 cents,no matter the length so that a 1 track Steve roach is .49)
Amazon is not avail in Canada yet.
My balance is 85% cd,10% iTunes store,5 % beatport,so far.

[jkn]

oddly - with Spotify, iTunes Cloud, Amazon Cloud, Google Cloud (I know they have special names, but close enough) -

Streaming and not downloading is likely the wave of the future for the vast majority of people.   Weird to think about... but in my opinion - true.