Hi have you noticed that albums on iTunes have gone up a lot in price! A deluxe edition will set you back £12.99, even Beyonces last album is selling for £13.99 in the UK

I noticed this.. I was going to Purchase Nicki Minaj's album only to see its £14!

I'd be cheaper buying the CD.

I bought Anaconda off the album a while back so it will now cost me £13 to buy the rest of the album which I won't be doing at that price!

It's becoming more expensive to buy downloads than cds

That's why non-gullible people use Spotify.

I won't migrate to streaming services until they are CD quality or better. Also, I use a lot of music for video editing, and so for now I'm stuck with maintaining my own digital music library of files. I agree that iTunes has become a less attractive piece of software over the years. It seems overly system resource-hungry when operating a large library, and is a lot slower to commence playing a file than a simple media player like VLC.

iTunes should be selling files in lossless format. Why should the audio quality not rise in tandem with the price rises?

Spotify is not without its problems though: not CD quality, and a peer-to-peer model which gives away one's own broadband data to get files to other users. The latter is not so big a deal where unlimited data use is an option - but it's certainly an issue in countries where data is charged by usage.

This is why no-gullible people don't pay at all.

I'm glad I kept all my CDs. So many people seem to be getting rid of them now, to 'save space' or whatever.

I notice they charge VAT and email you an actual invoice these days, very odd.

They always have.

Th only time I've downloaded full album was during Google Plays 99p offers. I don't think I could justify spending £10-£15 on music downloads. Just buy the CD.

At least if an actual physical music shop stop stocking a CD they don't take your copy away, unlike iTunes who remove it from your library too.

One good reason to buy physically and not digitally.

Amazon now offer an MP3 download of an album when you buy a physical copy. I got Mark Ronson's new album for £6.99 meaning that I can listen to the MP3 download on my iPod now while I wait on the physical to arrive. That's cheaper than buying the album from iTunes and I still get the physical copy too.

This is why I use Amazon

This isn't available for all CDs though sadly. I've ordered a couple from Amazon and an MP3 copy wasn't available.

Isn't their premium version cd quality? From their FAQs ...

Spotify uses 3 quality ratings for streaming, all in the Ogg Vorbis format.

~96 kbps
Normal quality on mobile.
~160 kbps
Desktop and web player standard quality.
High quality on mobile.
~320 kbps (only available to Premium subscribers)
Desktop high quality.
Extreme quality on mobile.

IMO there is something seriously wrong when the price of a download is greater than the CD. iTunes pricing takes the piss.

I think Amazon have the best idea. Buy a CD, get the download for free. Best of both worlds. Download doesn't really affect me because i'll just rip my own CDs, but if you're lucky Amazon AutoRip occasionally include extra tracks. This is particuarly true of single bundles.

Love having my cd still buy them!

I can understand downloading individual tracks as it's cheaper than buying the CD but if you want the whole album, unless it's much cheaper as a download, you are better off with the CD. It's very easy to get a CD on your phone by using iTunes or similar software on your computer and they are independent of the whims of Apple, Microsoft etc. You also get something physical to collect.

£9.99 on Amazon and you get the AutoRip mp3 version as well as the CD.

£8.99 to download from HMV...no CD though.

Amazon are getting expensive for music as well....perhaps it is to do with them having to start paying proper taxes now.

Each to their own, but I've never found anything to which I want to listen that wasn't available free on YouTube.

This is also true, the biggest library of music out there. Being a Spotify user I use Youtube to get my Taylor Swift fix.

Only problem is that YT not really great for mobile phones as videos eat data like nobodies business, and the audio quality will always be at the lower end of the scale.

Spotify does have an extreme quality audio which is as good as if not better than CD quality on it's premium service.

I just can't understand why people use I-tunes at all, a complete con.

I appreciate that YouTube compresses the tracks, but the quality of the uploads is variable. The same track can be uploaded by several different people using different equipment. Downloaded as an mp3, I can't tell the difference between this and a CD track on my Vintage Hi-Fi.

Until the lawyers' letters start arriving. And then they pay thousands per infringement