Thanks for the replies y'all. I guess I am having trouble deciding whether to buy a digital album, buy vinyl, or simply stream it from Spotify. I love Spotify but don't want to rely on it too much in the times that I am not around an internet connection. At the same time, I don't want my digital music collection to stop growing because I made the switch to streaming. So many options-- it's all so confusing.
buy vinyl when you can...it sounds better, you can create a digitized version pretty easily and you have all kinds of options at that point...
Not to mention almost all vinyl comes with a download code now.
I buy the vinyl (when available) to playback on my home stereo.
Download the MP3's to playback in the car or via streaming to my phone. If for some reason the vinyl doesn't come with a download code, I'm forced to go the "not exactly legal" router (without guilt).
Normally I have a media server to stream my MP3's to my phone, work computer, PS3 (which is hooked up to my home stereo), or anything else hooked up to the interwebs. I currently am in the process of putting together a new media server (one that uses less electricity)...but when I have it working I use
SUBSONIC. Subsonic server costs a few bucks ($25, I think), but well worth it. Very well maintained. Toss the app on your phone or pad-device and your good to go anywhere you have the interwebs. Subsonic will also convert formats on the fly, so you can keep your media server loaded with FLAC's so you get the best sound on your local network, but at the same time can convert on the fly to something that can be uploaded over you home internet connection. You can set it up to convert to whatever bitrate you want depending on your upload speed (or download speed on the other side).
For the home system I think I'm going to change out the PS3 and turn my
Raspberry Pi computer into a
XMBC server for the home system, so I can stream whole albums when I don't feel like flipping records. You can get an
app on your phone to use as a remote for the Raspberry Pi, so you won't even need a monitor hooked up to it to select your music. Pretty snazzy.
As for apps like Spotify, etc. I prefer not to use them except if I'm just looking for a quick listen. At the very least I prefer to BUY what I really like to support the artists (see the
David Lowrey thread).
As for the media server I'm working on, I'm thinking about putting together a cheap Atom based (or similar) barebones system running linux. I tried to get the Raspberry Pi rolling, but as the media server, I don't think it's going to cut it. It's just too unreliable. It freezes a lot, so obviously that isn't good if you on the road and find out you need to physically reset your server.
At the moment I'm looking at something like this
Foxconn Barebones system (you'll need to add memory and an HD to it). Still have a little bit of research to do, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. I also plan on using the barebones system as a centralized backup server. Not exactly sure how to do that yet...but it will be nice to have all of my files from all of my computers, phone, etc. all backed up in one place.