Scalzi's Weekend Assignment: Paying for New Music

I've been pretty, um, easygoing when it comes to participating in blogger John's Weekend Assignments, but I was getting ready to promote this week's edition (which is about recent albums you've bought) and realized that I had a photo lying around from a few weeks back that fit the bill pretty well (even though this isn't a photo shoot):

These represent my second-most recent album purchases -- it's significantly more than three albums, so I will look at it taking the perspective of a single purchase, since it resulted from a single trip to the used CD store (total cost for all nine albums was $33, which I thought was pretty good).

The CDs are:
Depeche Mode, The Singles
Lisa Germano, Lullaby for Liquid Pig
The Shamen, En Tact
Robbie Williams, The Ego Has Landed
Pet Shop Boys, Actually
Dressy Bessy, Sound Go Round
Sigur Ros, Takk
Ivy, In the Clear
Throwing Muses, Limbo

I believe that artists deserve to be compensated for their work, so I'm conflicted when it comes to buying used CDs, since the artist doesn't see a dime (then again, neither does the record label), and purchases on the secondary market don't count towards album sales.

On the plus side, if it was a purchased CD and not a promotional CD, the artist did see money on the original sale.

My third most recent purchase was Beth Orton's new CD at her recent concert at the 9:30 Club in DC. I like buying CDs at concerts, even if they're more expensive, since you know that when you buy stuff off the merchandise table, the artist gets a much bigger chunk of the revenue than when you buy it in the store.

My most recent purchase of an actual, non-used CD was The Legend of Johnny Cash a few weeks ago -- it was one of those backcatalog loss-leaders at a large chain electronics store, so I only paid ten bucks for it.

So, three different types of purchases.

Regarding extra credit: I have bought music off of iTunes, but not a complete album yet.

Thanks -- Joe

Tag: Weekend Assignment