Where do I get my music?

I occasionally buy new albums online or in music shops. (I try to avoid supermarkets. I'd rather support shops like Fopp - even though they are no longer independent. I like physically browsing through stacks of CDs - something you don't really get to do online or in supermarkets.) I also pick up a fair few CDs in charity shops. (Latest finds being A Crow Left Of The Murderand Victorat £1.99 each.) However, for the last year and a bit, the place I've bought most of my new music is eMusic.



With eMusic, the focus on independent music rather than the big mainstream labels but there is still a huge range of stuff to choose from and they do have are some big names. (Although, it pays to do a bit of checking first as some of the downloads are obscure live recordings or dodgy "before they were famous" stuff.) A year on and I still have no problem downloading 75 tracks per month and have a backlog of albums that I want to download next.

Here are a few of my favourite finds so far to give you a flavour of what's there:

Rainbow Live in Munich: Pretty much the definitive Rainbow line up as far as I'm concerned and with some extraordinarily long tracks, you get a lot of musical bang for your download buck!

Joe Bonamassa - Sloe Gin: Sorry to keep going on about this... but Joe Bonamassa is currently my most listened to artist.

Chris Whitley - Dirt Floor: Painfully stark, stripped down acoustic Blues. Beautiful!

Motörhead-Motörizer: Loads of Motörhead stuff is available on eMusic including this, their most recent.

If you find yourself stuck for ideas, get back to me and I'll give you some more suggestions such as Thin Lizzy, EndeverafteR and Lethargy. As well as bucket loads of old Blues.

The best thing about eMusic though is that you can sign up, download fifty tracks for free. Then, if you don't like the look of what you see, you can cancel your subscription and keep the fifty tracks you've already downloaded.

With fifty tracks to gain, what have you got to lose?