More Free Music & Less Conspicuous Consumption

To recap from my Fall Performance Line-Up post, there are several ways to avoid paying full-price for new cd's and still keep stock-piling your collection with your lastest favorites.

I already mentioned Title Trader which, as I wrote, had about dethorned Half.com as my favorite way to procure new music. The best thing about Title Trader is that it's essentially an egalitarian system, whereby you can trade in the old paperback you're not planning on rereading, earn a point and then use that point to request the cd you've been pining for. It a free service and easy to very navigate. Highly recommended!

I've also recently been swayed by Swaptree and have already made some highly (at least personally) lucrative trades! For example, after I finished playing Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None from The Adventure Company, I listed it in my "Items I Have to Trade" list and was almost immediately offered to trade it for a DVD of Waiting for Guffman which is one of my favorite movies. Whereas I could watch Waiting for Guffman a million times, how many times can one play a computer adventure game which one has already won? For me, this was a brilliant trade.

What I like best about these services, is what I like best about eBay and Freecycle, some one wants it, you have it, you don't want it. When you get it to that person, that's one less product that would have had to be produced from scratch, with all the requisite environmental stressors inherent. When you get it to that person, you've also prevented it from being another sad, discarded object of variable mass to be taking up space in a landfill. Not to mention, but of clearly similiar import, the money one saves in these transactions!

So, keep trading. There's also always Craig's List which may have just been at the forefront of this movement. Thanks, Craig!