Heh! Among IDM enthusiasts, I suspect that vinyl is the only music they still buy. And it's almost invariably music that is minutes old if it's even been released yet.

There's an interesting thing here though. The Long Tail should mean that there is a market for more music that is less well known. In reality though the shrinking profits available mean more concentration on the sure fire and heavily promoted short head. Every outlet, advertising, promotion, radio, etc, etc pushes you towards Guns N' Roses, Whitney Houston and Adele, even the online stores.

Ah Spotify. It gets worse (doesn't it always!?). Because there's less money in actual sales, we're being pushed away from the idea of purchase, collecting and storing music towards a rental, stream on demand future. The dynamics of this also push us towards a smaller range of more popular musics.

Rip physical media? I have a vague memory of ripping all my CDs 10 years ago. I haven't touched a CD since.

Smell. Right. The MP3 standard is 20 years old this year. Perhaps it's time to get over any distaste for it.

Ah, right, ok. So not so much mp3 as a format as the concept of buying digital music files. I'm beginning to think I'm becoming something of a dinosaur by still collecting music. However, the vast majority of music I listen to (IDM) is simply unavailable streamed except via youtube. And I still enjoy the hunter gatherer process of seeking out and collecting the music.