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The internet has made a tremendous impact on how music fans and consumers buy music. First, with the ability to buy physical music items through various websites (such as Amazon.com, Walmart.com, fye.com, tower.com, etc.), it greatly reduces the need for a consumer to travel to a brick and mortar store to buy the music items they want. The trade off, however, is that instead of paying for the gas to travel to the brick and mortar store, the consumer is paying the shipping and handling fees to have the website mail the item to their mailbox.

However, with the rise of digital music retailers (such as iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, etc.), even the websites that sell physical music items are being given a run for their money. For a relatively small amount of money (at least in comparison to buying a physical item), a consumer can download the song(s) and album(s) they want, and have the music much more instantaneously than having to wait for a physical copy to arrive in the mailbox from a web retailer. Also, with many digital downloads, the consumer is not required to download entire albums, so they can pick and choose which songs they want. With a physical compact disc, the consumer is stuck having all the songs that are on the album, regardless of whether or not they like all of the songs.

Of course, there are still those individuals who won't buy digital music from legitimate digital music retailers. Instead, they insist on going to P2P file sharing networks (such as LimeWire, Kazaa, etc.) to download the music that they want for free.

The internet has created an environment where the consumer no longer has to leave their home in order to buy their music. However, there are still some consumers who prefer to not only have a physical CD in their hands, but to go to the local brick and mortar store to show their support for the artists and for the store.

Learn more about this author, Lesley Aeschliman.
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