CarbonStated

How legit are our music collections nowadays (yeah, I said nowadays - like a boss) when we literally have weeks and weeks worth of digitally-purchased, or even "pirated" music sitting on our hard drives? It used to be that people scoured record stores, garage sales, and swap meets to find rare and out-of-print albums to bolster their collections. Now they can sit on their ass-hugging la-z-boys and click through iTunes and Pirate Bay, instead of developing blisters by flipping through dusty record (CD?) bins. What's more, is that we have the music; just not the sources. There's nothing tangible - no physical disc, album art, or liner notes. It feels slightly cheapened.

In the age of bit torrents and music blogs it's easy to forget that nostalgic feeling of tearing through the annoying shrink wrap and clever sticky security device along the top of a brand new compact disc. I, for one, miss that feeling. I miss the album art and liner notes, part of the art that goes into making a record. In some cases, it's every bit as important and attractive as the music itself. I still try to buy physical CDs as much as I can, but I'm as "guilty" as anyone for downloading - even legally. But one thing's for sure: if this was even five years ago, my iTunes stats would definitely not read "6951 items, 53.4 days, 39.49 GB." I guess my real question is... Is it worth sacrificing tangibility to have access to so much more music, so much more easily? Thoughts or additions to the comments, please.