I love CDs. The shiny, tangible little round silver things. I like thinking about the artwork, exploring the fine print ~ who wrote this pretty song? Who’s playing that sweet mandolin lead? But, like so many artists nowadays, the last two featured artists on Acoustic Pie released their newest work in digital format first. I had two choices: wait and hope for a CD version… or leap into the world of digitally released music. I leaped.
Not too bad, I found! I tried a bunch of sources including The Giants Who Have Practically Everything ~ iTunes and Amazon. But for my music, I bought from two smaller services that I liked much, much better ~ eMusic.com and 7digital.com. eMusic turned out to be great for mostly independent artists, the singer/songwriters I love to find and promote on Acoustic Pie, from Patty Griffin to The Chapin Sisters. 7digital proved to be a wonderful resource for international songwriters like John Spillane of Ireland and Helgi Jonnson of Iceland. CD Baby’s digital download service worked well, too, although I only found MP3 versions for albums that were already issued on CD.
The bottom line is… I liked it! There are drawbacks, for sure. Like most people, I’m tending to buy single songs rather than whole albums and in choosing songs based on a few quick listens to a small sample of the track, I’m sure I’m missing music that I would come to love over time. I miss the album text; I especially miss knowing who the songwriter is for each song. I have to Google and dig for that now and it’s not always easy to find. I have hope that more song data will be provided in the future.
So I guess I made the digital leap. I’m e-musical now :)
e-Musically yours,
~Kelley
The Acoustic Pie Blog 