My current way is:
- bandcamp.com for some artists
- buying used CDs from a online music CD reseller and ripping them
- download a few from youtube via youtube-dl or something
Now a few of those from youtube are great, i’d like to buy now the album. bandcamp.com doesn’t offer it and it is too specific/too new to get a used CD.
i could buy them from apple Itunes since it is rather cheap and it offers a DRM free download option (i think), but i’d like to avoid apple and its walled garden and bad user interface for linux people.
torrents, and yt-dlp (works with bandcamp, soundcloud, etc, not only youtube).
with a few exceptions i only pay for music when i can do so without an intermediary taking a big cut and my data (eg, mostly only in-person at a show), but i have paid for things through bandcamp a few times.
I like paying for music when it comes with some merch or sometimes a really cool vinyl pressing. Also, seeing them live as much as possoble, however I haven’t seen any since before covid :(