Replies

I can tell you why I'm buying less CDs. Now that I can burn my own and have the wonderful iTunes to work with, I'm going back through all my many hundreds of CDs and making playlists of my favorite songs. They're really enjoyable and their new compilation context gives them a whole different sound.

I'm going back through all my many hundreds of CDs and making playlists of my favorite songs. They're really enjoyable and their new compilation context gives them a whole different sound.

Exactly. Being able to arrange my favorite cuts in the order I choose, has revived my interest in music.
I got tired of putting on CD's for one or two singles I like, and having to hit the stop button to avoid the crap I didn't like. I got so I rarely listened to them.
But now that I can burn CDs I listen to music more than I ever have.

I too have been burning my CDs into compilations (and mixing in some MP3s for good measure). I own nearly 1,000 CDs that I bought from 1985-2000. Over the last two years, I have bought relatively few new CDs. One reason is because of the RIAA "war" against file-sharing. But the other reason is that having been burning my own CDs, I now realize just how much I was getting ripped off. Consider this. I can buy a stack of 100 blank CDs for about $30. That's about 30 cents per CD! And that's retail. I would reckon that the record companies pay a lot less because they pay wholesale and in bulk lots. Probably more like a dime for a blank CD. Now these record companies have been lying to us all these years, making us think that these "state-of-the-art" CDs were so expensive that they had to charge us $15-20 per CD just to eke out a profit.