I’ll pay money rather than pirate an album under the following conditions:
1. I happen to be in a record store, see the album in front of me and doubt I’ll be able to find it for download. This happens more often than you’d think. I enjoy music that most people don’t, and the majority of stuff online is more likely to be major pop artists than minor underground.
2. If I want to buy a soundtrack. Soundtracks can be a pain to download and are harder to find than typical artists and solo albums. Not many people realize how much fun listening to music from movie soundtracks can be, so there are fewer people putting them up for download.
3. If I can’t find a bloody download. This happens to me all the time. The people on the net sharing music just don’t get their hands dirty enough looking for really unique underground artists. If you hear of a local band that doesn’t reside in a major city chances are you’re going to have a harder time finding someone willing to share it unless it’s the artist himself (which I have had happen thanks to soulseek).
4. If I’m at the show. I love looking at my albums and knowing that I bought it at a show.
5. If I find it on vinyl. I have no sound preference for vinyl it’s purely an aesthetic thing either you get it or you don’t.
By chance, Tyler Cowen also wrote on this topic recently. I was prompted to write up this list after spending about an hour waiting for installation work at Best Buy. While browsing I noticed a few things about the CD selection had changed recently.
1. They have a lot of classics and oldies (still mostly major acts) remastered and put out on generic release mix discs and greatest hits albums, but not the original albums.
2. Older releases of even current major artists are harder to find than they used to be lots of current artists have the most recent album only. My guess is that if it’s not selling they send back the extra stock and never bother restocking, then just direct people to the web to buy it.
I’m starting to think that hardcore collectors are going to be the only place to find a really wide variety of older music in the future.
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You wrote: “I’m starting to think that hardcore collectors are going to be the only place to find a really wide variety of older music in the future.”
Don’t you mean the only physical place? After all, more older music than ever before is available through pay online services… Am I sounding like “The Long Tail” here?
Yes more and more older artists are available on pay services like i-tunes, but my bet is that not many people are going to push for really broad ranges of underground music to be put online. So what I really mean is that before you get everything available there will be an inter period where you’ll have to be much more personally motivated to find stuff.