My Preferred Approach to Music Downloads
- I interact directly with the act via their own website.
- I download (middling-quality) MP3 tracks for free and listen to the music for a few days or weeks.
- If I like the music enough to want to have it in my library, I go to the act’s website to buy it. If not, I delete the MP3 tracks.
- I specify the price I’m willing to pay.
- I download a zip file containing 320 KBps FLAC tracks and JPEG art files.
- I use Max to convert the FLAC tracks to Apple Lossless tracks.
- I import the tracks into my iTunes library, add the art, and enter the metadata for each track.
Update: It turns out that I underestimated Max. Apparently if a FLAC file contains metadata, it’ll be preserved during the conversion. And if not, Max has built-in metadata editing. It can also automatically add converted tracks to iTunes, and even to a specific playlist. Impressive! I like Max a lot – it’s fast, effective, reliable, free, and Free. My only real quibble would be that the UI is a little confusing. Just a little though.