How on earth do you (legally) buy/download music these days?

B0bbyEwing

I could hop on YouTube & acquire it that way but I want to do it via proper means. It's been that long since I bought any new music that the 'old ways' seem to no longer exist?

I'm not interested in streaming at all so that rules out most of what search results are telling me. 
And I'm not looking at illegally getting music so that rules out the other section.

Just for a legit site where you can go on, search a track, buy a track without concern, without worrying the site looks dodgy & they're going to have off with your bank details etc & get the music legally, as in download it on to your hard drive & when the site goes down you still have the music & don't have to worry about having to find somewhere else to stream (paying more subscriptions no doubt. Flipping subscriptions coming out of folks ears these days!).

flaneurs_lobster

Assuming you mean buying MP3s rather than CDs/Vinyl then iTunes Store, Amazon Music, Google Play.

LightFlare

Plenty of places sell CDs and Vinyl

Im still old school and like to have a physical object that I have control over to do as I wish with

coffeehound

If you know the artist's label, they will often sell for download through their website

lr1277

I got my iTunes account long before I had any physical apple hardware. But it meant I listened to the music on my computer. I now have an iPhone so listen to the music on that.
Any ideas on how and where you want to listen to your downloaded music?

RumRat

If you have a streaming service like Spotify you can download music to your PC for playing off line if you want. So if you lose the internet you still have what you want to listen to.

prowla

You can buy lossless/high-definition tracks from https://www.hdtracks.com/ and https://uk.7digital.com/ (though I did get a faulty one from 7digital and my refund is pending).

If you want to stream (ie. pay a subscription but never own the music) then there are https://open.spotify.com/ and https://tidal.com/.

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is the most comon non-vendor lossless format.

alanrowell

Try Bandcamp , for non-pop music I'm finding that more and more artistes aren't releasing on CDs anymore, only downloads. 

Also try Amazon and itunes 

roytom2

I wonder if the used CD shops still exist? Berwick Street in Soho used to be good for that. Otherwise for me its the multitude of charity shops which have loads of cheap cds.

TimeLord1

If you buy vinyl nowadays in HMV most of it comes with a download MP3 code 

GrubbyGirl_2

Last time I bought a CD from Amazon it came with a digital download as well