Most of the people I know use iTunes, i recently sold 500 CD’s to my brother in laws mate for $50 – he has a son with Down’s syndrome and they go to markets and sell vinyl and CD’s as a father/son thing as the son really enjoys it. They were sitting in my garage gathering dust as I listen to my music on iTunes.

How do we as music fans source our music these days? I have over 300 musician friends on my Facebook page, My friends Kavisha Mazzella calls me a patron of the Arts as I sponsor many crowd funding campaigns and have many an obscure Australian CD through this practice. I even have a Haitian folk singer Leyla McCalla album Vari-Coloured Songs through this practice, Its beautiful but would never had sourced it except for having seen it on Kickstarter. Her  name called to me so I sponsored her on a whim.

Another method I use is Op Shopping, You pay between $1.00 to $3.25 a CD which gives you the opportunity to buy several and if one of them doesn’t work out I recycle them back to the opshop after putting them on my iTunes anyway. I recently got the best of Crowded House for a dollar using this method, I gave it to my sister Ruth to listen to in the car as I know she likes the Finn brothers music, cheap presents and much appreciated.

Another site I like is Bandcamp because musicians get more money than from iTunes and being played on Spotify. I have 83 albums in my collection courtesy of quite a few Disturbed Earth CD’s. My friend Dean Richards composes under the name Disturbed Earth and sells his wide range for $3.00 an album, I have eleven at the moment, some more listenable than others, I think I’ll buy another two after writing this. I became a friend with a musician called Yesod through band camp who lives in Missouri as he contacted me and asked me why I was buying his music, I had to tell him I had got onto it because I liked the name of his band and album covers.

My brother Hugo is an announcer on http://www.3RRR.org – his show is called Frank and is on Friday mornings from midnight to 2 a.m. He is my older brother and I must give him credit for my wide music tastes and I do have quite a few CD’s he has burnt me in my collection. I try not to access music through burnt albums although I copy CD’s from the local library but never copy them for other people.

How much music do I have on my iTunes, 16 days, 7 hours and I always listen on shuffle so I am pleasantly surprised track by track. Namaste my friends, until next time.