I've only bought stuff on line from bleep. I don't have an iPod, and I won't ever buy a DRM-protected player. 99% of my digital music listening is at work, from my linux work computer.
The reasons I buy on line 1. I can shop at work, and listen immediately. 2. Having something digitized already makes it easier to work with in Ableton or Traktor. 3. I can find stuff on line I can't locally. Everything I can buy locally I do, especially since I've been buying from the same couple of shops for going on 20 years, and I want them to stay in business. As for sound quality, you need better equipment and/or ears that haven't been to as many loud shows as I have to tell the difference between 320kbs MP3s and uncompressed 16 bit audio. When I make MP3s of my own stuff I'm going direct from 24bit masters, and as long as I stay with medium-to-high quality VBRs or 320kbs fixed rate MP3s, they sound the same. I still buy CDs and vinyl, but I'm pretty choosy -- I have an embarrassing amount of CDs and vinyl and I don't listen to even a fraction of what I own. I have to really want something in order to want to store it as a physical object. Ultimately, I think CDs and Vinyl will become even more marginalized, and downloadable formats will be the rule rather than the exception. CDs and Vinyl just don't have the information density modern listeners demand. The issue of artists getting paid for their music is an ongoing problem, back to cassette trading 30+ years ago. I don't think DRM is viable because if you can listen to it, you can defeat it. At some point, artists are just going to have to depend on goodwill and a sense of fair play from their fans in order for them to get paid. There's no way to lock music back into a physical artifact, the way that vinyl and CDs do, and enforcing laws against copying music just amounts to treating your customers like criminals, something that has never worked. And really, the RIAA and MPAA are taking things to a ridiculous extent. No one pays to hear music on the radio, and no one pays to read a book from the library. I've never spoken to an author who didn't want their books in libraries. Having some of your audience get your work for free is just part of the game, isn't it?
