Indvidual singles from itunes – Amie (Pure Prairie Leageue), Barlight (Charlie Robison), Drinkin Song (Jason Boland) and some old rock classics, to name a few.

I’ve only bought 2 CDs completely from itunes. I’m old school, I prefer ‘hard copies.

This is an issue I’m pretty fired up about. In RL, I’m a chemist and I know first hand how little it really costs to make pharmaceuticals. The drug companies, and the record companies, will tell you that the research and development costs are huge but I promise you, most drug research is done in the public universities we all pay for already. It costs pennies to make a pill.

Same for CDs. Musicians will perform for peanuts early in their careers so the development costs are small. We know CDs cost a buck or two at most. The rest is ripoff, just like the drug companies.

The truth is that there are a handful of companies (4 or 5?) controlling country music distribution and sales. Same for big pharma. It’s up to the people to force them to change their ways. Portable mp3 players and subscription based downloading is a good way to do it.

The labels could lower ’suggested’ prices and places like Virgin Megastore would still charge that. So, labels would have to be willing to have suggested CD prices around 9.99 or less and they aren’t.

That being said I went to Ernest Tubbs record store in Ft. Worth yesterday and had a great time browsing. I ended up with CD’s by Nat Stuckey and Stoney LaRue.

I prefer the record store but it’s getting harder to justify the expense with Amazon and emusic downloads being so cheap.

I purchase CDs, 99% of the time from Best Buy after a price check, the other 1% from Target after a price check. I would go with a smaller family-owned record shop but the only small shop here 1. Doesn’t carry much country, if any at all. 2. Is well known for selling drugs. So they’d never get my business.

90% of my music comes from Walmart/Target/HMV/A&B Sound and the other 10% is pre-orders online.