100% hand on heart I can say I have never illegally downloaded or torrented even a single track. Honestly

Yeah I'm the same, except not with CDs, mines is all legal digital. I even rebought on iTunes all my CDs from the past. I have spent £2500 on Music in two years, and god knows how much before then

Haha too right man. I just know far too many musicians to cheat them out of hard earned cash

I tend to buy CDs because I still like the idea of music as a physical object. It occurs to me that this is impractical, because my collection is split between my parents house and my glasgow flat, and until I get somewhere more permanent to live, it's kind of a pain in the ass. So I rip everything - but even that has its issues, as I am now a dual mac and PC user (my swanky new desktop in glasgow is PC, my macbook is for everything else). I have some 7" vinyls, four limited edition Secret Chiefs 3 releases, but otherwise it's all CD. I've got three Ikea Benno towers full in Perth, and one full in glasgow, with another half-tower's worth piled up in my bedroom waiting for somewhere to go...

Increasingly though, I'm beginning to see the problem of having everything physical. I've already given up on games being physical objects, and to be quite honest I wouldn't mind giving up on DVDs and the like and settling for some UK version of Netflix. Yet still I cling to the CDs. At this point I don't even know if it's just because I'm so invested in the idea that I can't let it go, or if I really do want some kind of a collection, like a library. I do rather like the idea of a physical music library, where only you know exactly where everything is, and you have to climb up ladders and pull things out, and blow the dust off the covers, but we're talking about CDs here, not vinyl. It's not really the same is it?

I don't ever illegally download stuff from hard working underground musician or from musicians who I look up to. I also never illegally download from any of my favorite bands and artists. Most of the artists i listen, give it for free anyways, but there a few who don't and those I purchase all their stuff, with an exception....

I only illegally download an album when I don't have the money. That's life. Not all of us are rich.

YouTube isn't really copyright infringement, because a lot of the time, the artists still get their money from it. Like, VEVO and shit.

Not to mention that less than 25% of those videos are actually posted by the artists officially licensed vevo/label/or other such youtube channel.

Well I'm fully converted to Kindle now, because I hadn't really read much in the way of paper books for years. I still love magazines though, got the last three or four years of Edge on a couple shelves.

With games, at least on PC, I am fully on board with Steam. Anything that's not on Steam seems like a hassle now. It's ridiculous.

Oh, speaking of which, anybody want a free copy of Portal on Steam? Got it in my Portal 2 pre-order and I obviously had Portal already. Beyond having to use Steam, there are no strings attached. It is in fact, a free copy of Portal.

Sure, I miss not having comprehensive manuals in games, but those have been going away for years, not just because of digital distribution. But unlike with music, I don't think I would miss boxed games especially. Sometimes limited editions are real nice, but that's a rarity.

but seriously... someone grab the free copy of portal, its a brilliant game!!!

i too love steam, i love my sony e-reader and i love i-tunes.... all digital is the future, and as long as i remember to back up purchases on a seperate harddrive there is never a problem... unless you use steam, which remembers what you have and have not bought... even if it isn't on your computer physicaly, its easy enough to re-download, (which is something i think itunes needs to start doing).

First the random thread now this. what the hell is going on? lol