Where's the good music at?

[jchrisobrien]

Are there any stores in the Boston are that have a good collection of industrial/EBM/stompy music? It's time for me to start catching up on like, four years worth of music!

Comments

[alonewiththemoon]

I don't know when the last time I bought music at an actual store was... eMusic.com has a lot of that genre and handy dandy links to related artists from each individual artist, and listening samples.

[silas7.livejournal.com]

I've heard about emusic for a long time, it is probably my best bet to acquire music. I'm very old fashioned about my format though, paying money for mp3's seems very ephemeral to me.

I should probably just get over it. :)

[alonewiththemoon]

You can't beat the instant gratification factor :-)

[silas7.livejournal.com]

Hah! I just commented on that to Cris :)

[cris.livejournal.com]

the only brick and mortar store that I bother checking out nowadays is Newbury Comics, but their selection is a bit touch and go for EBM/stompy.

Mail order (ie. Storming the Base or Isotank) is still your best bet if you want the physical media. Otherwise, there's online download from places like Emusic or Amazon as badryiaz indicated.

[silas7.livejournal.com]

What's your opinion on downloading .mp3's? I'm still bothered by the intangibility of them. One hard drive error and your money is gone. I imagine you could just burn the files to CD as soon as you get them to have as a backup. I still like getting album art and the like too. There are also issues with sound quality, but I don't know if that's as big a concern as before.

Still, welcome to the 21st century. There's a lot to be said for the instant gratification of clicking on a song and downloading it.

[heresiarch.livejournal.com]

emusic is high bitrate, no drm. i've switched over to all digital (ok, well technically cds are digital), except for things i can't buy online (like some albums on tympanik, and some labels that don't have a deal with emusic). i listen to all my music on my computer or iphone anyhow, and i finally got some basic DJ gear so i can spin with my laptop.

emusic is also better value pricewise, so you can experiment with new stuff at less risk. the only drawback to it in my mind is the organization of the website. it's easy to find artists you like if they're on there, and relatively easy to find labels, but there's no way (that i've found) to keep updated on artists and labels you like, without having to manually look them up each time. last.fm for instance, is better designed for helping you find new music you might like (so i use last.fm for internet radio, and emusic for most stuff i want to buy).

[cris.livejournal.com]

personally, I like having commerical CDs for albums that I really like, but the major benefit of online transfer, besides instant gratification is having the luxury to only pay for the songs that you want to have.

for me, burning MP3's to CD is only useful for having stuff to spin at an event or as a mix CD to give to a friend. Most of CD-R's don't tend to hold up well over time, and nowadays, I expect them to become coasters after 18 months or so.

If I know that I will like an album enough to want to own it for several years, I'll seek it out in a store or buy a CD from an online retailer.

If it's a nice song and I want to support the artist, but I either know that I'm not going to come back to it after a year or it's only one good song amongst twelve tracks of filler, then I'll just download it from a vendor and keep it on my computer. If my hard drive goes south then I'll pull a copy from Soulseek or Bittorrent ;)