I used to work at a corporate BS job for FYE records as an assistant manager in high school. New cd's were 18.99 always. It was insane.

As far as the download stuff goes, I am a dj and sometimes do clubs with music I hate, i.e. fergie, black eyed peas, t-pain bla bla bla. I felt like I was getting raped paying for duplicate copies just to mix the poorly produced rap records that only have an instrumental to mix instead of having a DJ friendly cut that I could mix without buying two singles of lame songs.

Plus 95 percent of the time its promoting records just by playing them out and being a non radio and somewhat of a "local scene" dj I don't get massive hookups on promo copies.

So do I pay the 6 bucks each, 12 dollars per song since i need dupes, or download the cookie cutter rap shit? I mean I have spent like 200 bucks buying the new rap kids want to hear out, and the next month they want nothing to do with it and the next load of crap they are throwing at them. Support an industry that doesn't support me, the majority of it is garbage and the kids don't really know about it meanwhile I got thousands of dollars of records I can't stand that collect dust.

Or just download the stupid thing for free, play it out so kids go out and buy it then delete it once they hate it. Seems like the latter is a more fair exchange in my mind. At least that is how I justify it.

Now I save my 12 inch money for electro/house releases I really want and older punk records that have eluded me, rather than flavors of the week.

CD's were always around £14-£16 in the shops here.

The Velvet Underground requires Vinyl for maximum impact

I Still hate digital redo's of Brilliant Analog music......Mp whatevers and CD's suck for music recorded in fantastic better than digital can achieve analog.

I buy vinyl only. The only time I steal music is if it's out of print.