A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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I'm not so sure I would recommend 7Digital anymore since they've been delisting a lot of stuff lately, meaning even if you already bought it, you can't download it anymore.
Also, if you plan on building up a mainly digital collection, I wouldn't use lossy codecs like MP3 for my main files, instead opting for FLAC or some other lossless codec, which can then be safely transcoded to a lossy copy at will.
You could also buy CDs and rip them
CDs take quite some space once you have more than like 50. Selling them after ripping in large quantities is a lot of work. I wouldn't buy CDs unless I'm really into the physical medium (nothing wrong with that - sadly, most downloads lack high res artworks, booklets etc).
You could always get binders to stick them in to save space that way.
I just donate them when I'm done. Often you can buy the physical CD cheaper from places like discogs than you can a digital version. So I don't feel bad giving them away afterwards. Someone might even discover the bands I love.
hot take: if an artist is already popular, then they dont need your support anywhere near as much as a bandcamp artist does. i believe it is ethical to enjoy "popular" music without paying for every megabyte. just go see them when they come to town and buy a t-shirt if the spirit moves you.
I personally used 7digital to rebuild my music collection. They sell good licensed mp3s.
I have absolutely nothing negative to say about them. The prices were decent, the files are boring DRM free MP3s, and they had a really good selection of music.
Honestly it looks almost exactly the same as when I used it for the first time like 15 years ago.
They also sell flac. Bandcamp is my primary but 7digital is great for popular stuff.