However I would add that I prefer to support musicians by either buying their album or writing a review. here is a hell of a lot of music on the interweb that is not officially release or is hard to find and that's what is nice about downloads, even if MP3 does sound much worse than CD, vinyl or tape. You know I have many tapes from the eighties that still play just fine, but I have many CDRs that were burned 2-3 years ago that no longer function.
yes. i buy all records i really like on vinyl or CD (as much as i can afford). and having a Napster flat rate i have no need to download from P2P (which is something i hate anyway). only when something is out of print and not available on any kind of support it's hard to resist to the temptation of just downloading it.
>>You know I have many tapes from the eighties that still play just fine, but I have many CDRs that were burned 2-3 years ago that no longer function.<< You should back up all your stuff on an external hard drive so you'll always have access, it's a shame c.d's aren't more 'hardy', odd that the 'old' format (cassettes) last longer, or is it?
Ultimately, the reason CDRs tend to die is because people buy absurdly cheap ones, not realising there is a massive difference between those and decent-quality ones—at least in terms of longevity. The general recommendation is to make new burns of important material annually, or, as Ari says, drop everything on to a hard-drive and ensure you clone it regularly.
I'm not sure tapes were terribly durable, however. Over time, they wear down, causing loss of quality, and I had a number of tapes get eaten over the years. Also, I'd rather put up with the periodic inconvenience of cloning a drive or reburning than finding things in the linear path of a tape. (Love for vinyl I fully understand, but I've no real happy memories of using tapes, and was glad when MP3 became a viable alternative.)
s'funny because today I purchased 100 Memorex cd-r's at Best Buy for $16, now that's CHEAP, but they're not regarded as a 'cheap' brand name, most of 'em are made by the 'same factory' anyway so wtf
I didn't realize when I bought the Object 47 vinyl, it comes with Read and Burn 3 on Vinyl as an extra disc. I was so used to Vinyl coming on two disc instead of one.