Your most common source for music purchases?

[Dan Gould]

I'm curious about the ten people who still say that B&M stores get most of their money. Where do you guys live?

There are two Borders near me.

And the price and selection keep you coming back? I figured there was no way any of the B&M people would have identified Borders as the place, given the way they've squeezed inventory while reducing the value of coupons.

Then again, I decided to take a drive to the Borders I used to live near (now about 45 minutes away) and was pleasantly surprised at what was in stock. The jazz section is at best 1/2 what it was, but at least they had all of the recent batches of RVGs available.

[Alexander]

Brick and mortar for me. Lately, I've been paying cash for all of my purchases (ease up on the credit card debt) which means I haven't bought on-line in some time. Pop, rock, hip hop and other such "mainstream" musics are purchased at Best Buy (which is generally cheap, even moreso when the CD is new). Jazz, blues, and other less "mainstream" sounds are usually purchased at Borders or Barnes and Noble. My LPs are purchased at a couple of local used stores. I sometimes find used CDs as well, although the selection is usually pretty poor in that medium.

When I start working full time (currently have two part-time gigs), I might be able to start getting things on-line again.

Edited November 3, 2006 by Alexander

[Tom 1960]

The brick and mortars still get the majority of my purchases. That said, I find myself being alot more price conscious these days knowing I can get better deals off the net. Example, I had Hank Mobley's "Another Workout" and Jackie McLean's "Right Now" in my hands 2 weeks ago in a local independent shop. They wanted 14.99 a piece. I declined walking out the door sadly empty handed.

[chris olivarez]

CD Universe.

[Rooster_Ties]

and

[orchiddoctor]

I like the thrill of the chase. That, however, has been stifled somewhat by Google. It's all too easy to go to Gemm or Amazon or Ebay and look for sweet deals or used copies or for rarities. You could order fifty Coltrane cds in a half hour. Face it: an internet source doesn't have the same overhead issues as a brick and morter store and can special order through their own network. Anyone can list on Ebay. Still, I've had fun searching and waiting to find certains cds on line.

But when I get home to New York, I can't wait to take the IRT down to Bleeker Street and hit the half dozen or so Indie stores. Touching all those plastic covered circles, fondling the wrappers, licking the labels, and knowing that this is acceptable is much more enticing than surfing for por--er, I mean cds.

[JohnJ]

I'm curious about the ten people who still say that B&M stores get most of their money. Where do you guys live?

Tokyo. Disk Union is where I buy most of my music.

[clifford_thornton]

I would spend tons of $$ at Disk Union - my friend bought a serious stack of rare Japanese LPs there when he was in Tokyo last.

For jazz LPs and so forth, internet retailers, weird dealer/auction lists and eBay are where I go. I still buy a fair amount of old underground rock/punk records, usually re-purchasing things I wore out from high school, and for that the local record shops do me right. End of an Ear, here in Austin, has been good about ordering and keeping in stock the more obscure rock titles.

[ep1str0phy]

I live extremely close to the Berkeley Amoeba and Rasputin, so it's actually cheaper for me--in the long run--to go brick-and-mortar. For imports, I go to the usual online suspects (both corps. like Amazon and E-Bay and the smaller guys, like DMG...).

[Jazzmoose]

Online for me. There's not much choice anymore now that I live in the "big city"...