My wife said she didn’t know where I preferred to source my music. Which prompted me to throw this little bit of content together.

When it comes to mainstream CD releases with nothing special about them (not special editions, signed etc.), then I tend to go to Amazon – with free next-day delivery and competitive prices you can’t complain. But, to be honest, this represents a minority of my music buying.

For everything else, you can categorize things into indie record stores or artist led.

• Artist Lead
  • I start with their website/newsletters – Unkle and Ryan Adams are good examples of this as they do a lot of limited issue stuff, and the mailing list people get a first look.
  • Bandcamp – A lot of niche artists work through Bandcamp
  • Patreon subscriptions – you’ll typically get to know about these via the artist’s website/newsletters. Again, it is more niche than mainstream.
• Indie record stores (I’m on a lot of indie store mailing lists), but the ones I tend to look at first are:
  • Resident Music – based in Brighton, so we don’t often get to have a browse, but good online service
  • Picadilly Records – from Manchester, but they seem to get to represent some US artists in the UK.
  • SDE (Super Deluxe Edition) – an online only operation that specializes in box sets and limited-issue BluRay audio content
  • Vinilo Record Store – one of the closer independent stores
  • Pie and Vinyl – I love this concept
  • Rough Trade – when in London, the place to visit