Spotify

[The Tasmanian]

Well said Ben

[ChrisW]

Yes, I'd love to see more direct sales possible.

[Text_Edifice]

Of the various platforms available I reckon http://bandcamp.com/ comes closest to realising the 'direct to fan' thing - though they obviously take their cut. I guess the thing is it doesn't have to be either / or – though I'm not sure a splatter-gun approach works well either.

[obutcher]

I'm pretty addicted to Spotify, but I'm also keen on hearing/keeping music I find and making sure people get paid. Not trying to sound too 'high and mighty', but I've been using it to find new artists, drop their music into a playlist called 'music to buy', then go out and buy it later on CD. I figure at least that way I'm giving money to bands I want to support and the other bands get at least something for their time unlike if I downloaded it though other means (torrents etc). In the last two weeks I've been buying a lot more CD's!

[jkhuri44]

CDs? what's that

WAV downloads all the way!

[Alistair]

Direct sales are the best- apart from anything else it's cool to have artists offer higher quality downloads more and more. They spend the time making the record, they want you to hear it as good as it can be!

I haven't really checked out bandcamp, but overall I've been impressed with CDbaby. Seems pretty no-nonsense and straightforward, and we haven't had any grief with them.

[obutcher]

WAV downloads all the way!

I'm too paranoid about hard drives failing! I work on the assumption that you can't format a CD collection, haha. It's a bit of a pain when moving house though

[ChrisW]

I buy about one CD a year I admit.
I'm buying downloads quite a bit.
I'm not interested in streaming as an alternative to owning music, as where I live the web is soooo slow.
And I'd rather own my music, not have it in a 'cloud'.

[Alistair]

An interesting addendum to the quick maths I posted- it seems Spotify actually pays out even less than they advertise.
http://www.zoekeating.com/php/
Scroll down to April 17th for a pretty graph