Buying music-Compilations versus individual tracks

[Morior]

I came across an article yesterday that resonated with me

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ividually.html

I tend to buy lots of compilation albums because I cant justify spending top doller on individual tracks when I can get sometimes up to 50 tracks for about 9 Euro. Admittadly they would not all be stellar tracks but I play techno-minimal-trance and top 40/latest tracks are not that big a deal to me. (BTW I am not a gigging DJ I just play for rmyself and the occasional informal events.)

Beatport is one of the places of choice for people getting music but the typical tracks on beatport range between 1.5 to 2.5 euros. Even if you buy an album the tracks still appear individually priced, and so your not getting any value for purchasing the full release

The era of the individual artist releasing an albums worth of great tracks is more or less gone in electronic music as now its all individual producers, I can barely name ten artists that I might have more than a handfull of tracks from, so we tend to be forced to buy individual tracks so I ask is individual download costing too much!!

[johney]

fuck beatport's pricing tbh. it's a joke when a EP in wav format costs the same or more than vinyl.
most places i buy from charge £0.99 for an mp3 (no top 40 though)

i usually buy only the tracks i want, but sometimes if i like one tune off a single or 2-3 from a 4 track EP, i'd buy the whole thing, usually those other tunes grow on you after a while.

I can't justify buying digital albums, when i get an album i want a CD, a physical product, i only bought Vex'd - Degenerate and the EE compilation on digital, because CD's were not available

[willisnz]

When I used to buy CD's I used to buy lots of compilations, but now buying mp3's I just pick the tracks I want, unless it is a significant release from a label I follow and if the good on there outweighs the bad I will get the whole thing.

I can't agree with this though;

"The era of the individual artist releasing an albums worth of great tracks is more or less gone in electronic music as now its all individual producers, I can barely name ten artists that I might have more than a handfull of tracks from, so we tend to be forced to buy individual tracks so I ask is individual download costing too much!!"

Albums by individual artists are something I still occasionally buy in full. I don't think you should be looking for an albums worth of great tracks. That is the job of a compilation. Albums are more about being a cohesive piece of work with highlights IMHO.

As for the price - anyone who came up with vinyl knows what it was like to pay for a full price 12" and build your whole collection that way. Honestly paying 1GBP or 2USD for a digital track is nothing. That is the change you would pay to park your car in town to go record shopping.

[djbert]

If you need full-length releases, online stores are rarely cost-effective. Just buy the CD and R&R (rip and resell). With older material, consider buying used as well. Occasionally, you'll run into releases which are cheaper as a download because the CD is a rare collectors item. Normally, though, a used CD on amazon is waaay cheaper.

Plus, you can make sure you get a perfect copy if you compare the rip versus CTDB or accuraterip. No bad rips which pop up in online stores every now and then. With CDs, you can rip to lossless. So you don't get MP3s or M4As, either.

Lastly, when you buy a CD on amazon or ebay, you know exactly which version you get. (On amazon, search by barcode which you can find on discogs. on ebay, sellers sometimes don't give complete info but you can shoot them an email, asking for barcode or catalog #.) Getting the exact version is important. New remasters are often of inferior quality to due excessive compression. Beatport very frequently provides incorrect release dates. They provide the release date of the initial version but you're really getting a shitty remaster.

[Morior]

Albums by individual artists are something I still occasionally buy in full. I don't think you should be looking for an albums worth of great tracks. That is the job of a compilation. Albums are more about being a cohesive piece of work with highlights IMHO.

As for the price - anyone who came up with vinyl knows what it was like to pay for a full price 12" and build your whole collection that way. Honestly paying 1GBP or 2USD for a digital track is nothing. That is the change you would pay to park your car in town to go record shopping.

I do think that there is the demise of the quality Electronic album and it has moved to an individual track model.

As for price, I buy ALL my music, I have virtually nothing that would be considered pirated. When you got vinyl you bought a product that had to be manufactured, recorded in an expensive studio in a lot of cases, pressed (probably with a minimum pressing number) Cover art created, labels printed, delivered to stores etc etc, so there was a fairly big cost base that had to be recovered, plus you always had it in your collection, rather than an insignificant file on your hard drive. Digital has changed that and even apple only charge 99c for the number one single, so I do think that beatport in particular is expensive, especially when you consider that a lot of the people buying would be young people who probably dont have a full time job, dont have savings etc. I can well afford to buy these things, but for what in many cases are pretty average tracks I think Im bieng charged over the odds, especially for albums which dont give any album price but just seem to add up all the individual tracks.

[photojojo]

EDM has never had much of a history of full album artists. I just bought two full single artists albums on Beatport though. That was rare to find two so so close to each other, but they're out there. I won't buy a whole compilation unless I like enough songs on it to even out the cost of buying the whole thing verus just the single tracks. Nine times out of ten the extra tracks just take up space though.

As far as vinyl goes I'll pay $2.50 all day long for a single track to not have to jack with vinyl. Even in the late 80's when prices for everything were much lower I still pay less now buying single tracks on Beatport. Plus it's more quality stuff over the whole collection rather than one good song and five crappy ones that I'm forced to buy.

[djbert]

I think price is only part of the story here. For me as a poor hobbyist, not an entirely negligible one: one used CD on amazon can cost as little as EUR 3.01 shipped; on ebay, prices here start around EUR 2.50 shipped.

But I don't think price is the whole story and the article doesn't convince me. For music released in the 90s or earlier which have recently been remastered, CD is the way to go because it's just gonna sound better. Places like amazon MP3 and beatport tend to carry nothing but the latest master, the sound quality of which is usually atrocious. That's one reason by the way why I hardly buy any 20xx music anymore.

[031999]

Compilation albums are great for finding hidden gems!

[Jester]

Compilations are the way to go IMO. Especially if you know a lot of the artists that you play are on the label anyway. Also if you are starting out, they are a great way to get exposed to more artists you may not have heard of before.
I may grab the odd EP but mainly compilations and artist albums.

[guiltyblade]

I like some compliations. I usually grab toolrooms compilations for instance.