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Buying music for your iPhone

Where do you buy your compressed music from?

  • iTunes

    Votes: 34 59.6%

  • Amazon

    Votes: 1 1.8%

  • Others or I compress my own music from CDs

    Votes: 22 38.6%
  • Total voters
    57
R

reaborg

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 19, 2010
63
0
Santa Clara
For those who buy compressed albums/songs online for your iPhones, where do you currently purchase your music from? And why?

I have recently decided to stop buying CDs, as I never listen to the original lossless formats anyway, and CDs just take up too much room. And I have this nice shiny iPhone 4 (well kinda shiny after 9-10 months) which allows me to use either AAC or mp3. But I like sticking with one format. So I am considering buying either from iTunes or Amazon. Aside from seamless (or not so) integration and ease of use, what reasons have you guys (or gals) chosen to go with one over another?

By the way:
iTunes rip their songs in 256kbps AAC
Amazon in 256kbps VBR w/ Lame encoder

If Apple ever came out with a new format, based on their history, I know they will charge for an upgrade for every song ($0.30/song last time). However, I am also wondering how Amazon will handle this now with their cloud storage. The music that's bought from them and "stored" online, when they change their formats someday, do they get upgraded automatically at no charge? I am sure they don't have separate copies stored for each user (at least the music bought from them).
 
Most of us don't. I don't, and all my friends don't, at least.

MP3 320kbps or M4A ALAC. I like MP3 best; ALAC makes the music sound softer.
 
I buy CDs. That way I can choose which codec to use. I have Max set to make mp3/320 and ALAC copies when I insert a disc.


Prodo123 said:
MP3 320kbps or M4A ALAC. I like MP3 best; ALAC makes the music sound softer.
Click to expand...

You prefer lossy to lossless? o_O
 
Last edited:
AdrianK said:
I buy CDs. That way I can choose which codec to use. I have Max set to make mp3/320 and ALAC copies when I insert a disc.
Click to expand...

Ooh FLAC's also good, but iTunes doesn't support it...yet. Very, very sad, Apple.
I'd love if iPhones could play MKV, AVI and FLAC.
 
Amazon for me.

Why? Those $2 promos! But most importantly, I have a Swagbucks account which I use to buy $5 Amazon giftcards.

All my music is in the mp3 format and at 128kbps ("good" quality) for me just to have the more commonly used format and to save space. Not much of an audiophile. I have 1,084 songs at 3.98 GB. So 10 GB of space should fit a minimum of 2,500+ songs. What I do is download the song from Amazon. Then I add it to iTunes which I convert it to mp3 at 128kbps.

If I purchased more from iTunes, I would always have to use Sharepod to take the song off my iPhone. Amazon music is unrestricted and cheaper. And their cloud service seems to offer plenty of value. Some albums cost 99 cents or less. Using Swagbucks or their free $2 promos practically makes their 20 GB service FREE for years and years if they don't change any of the cost in the future. And if you have multiple Amazon accounts, that could add up to 40 or 60 GB per year of FREE online storage.
 
My gigantic 17Gb plethora of genres cost $100. 2200 songs, too.
Vinyl > CD > Digital Buy. Vinyl sounds good, very good. CD sounds not as good, but is smaller and better to store. Digital buy from Amazon or iTunes is horrible. No backup if your hard drive fails, whatever.

Plus, LP/CD Collections look better than a bunch of MP3 files.
 
I stopped buying CD's a year ago. I have 600 of those damn things and all they do is take up room. I mostly buy from iTunes.
 
No Amazon outside the US so I buy both cds and itunes depending on availability and price. I do tend to prefer itunes as it saves space-and to the person who mentioned hard drive crashes-buy an external drive and back up.
 
ozzyman500 said:
I stopped buying CD's a year ago. I have 600 of those damn things and all they do is take up room. I mostly buy from iTunes.
Click to expand...

I never thought I see the day I stop buying CD's and all I do is the ones I do buy is rip them and store them in the closet. I do buy used CD's and iTunes now. I try to buy from iTunes just to save storage, but if I go out and see a used CD store I check it out.
 
Just FYI for your iPhone. Something you might try (regardless of which provider you choose), select the "Convert to 128 AAC" radio box in iTunes to store the lower versions on your iPhone. This will let you store a lot more songs on your phone. Don't worry - the lossless ones will still be in iTunes for you.
 
I buy from both (Amazon && iTunes), obviously iTunes integrates better with the iPhone since it's able to auto buy directly from iPhone 4. Also I'm sure if Apple would allow a fully functional Amazon music store to run on their AppStore, many people would have both options.

Amazon has better prices and I love the fact that their music doesnt have any types of DRMs but so does iTunes.
 
I can't remember the last time I purchased a CD. It's iTunes all the way baby :D
 
I agree with you it may not be a valid statement in this sence, I forgot to add it is very practical and dependable since you can always search and buy almost any song out there with just a single click.

Example: I have "soundhound", I search the song and I have the option to buy it right in there even over my cellular data over iTunes see.
 
iApples said:
Totally disagree. Downloading all my songs would cost over $1500. No thanks. My way is more convenient. :)
Click to expand...

Wao $1,500 sure is a lot of money. But if u already have these songs there's really no reason why to update them in an iTunes or MP3 format, given the nature of this threat I assume u already have all of your $1,500 worth of song in MP3 format.
 
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