re: physical vs data
For me, the advantage of a physical copy (cd or vinyl) apart from the artwork is that it's easier to find a song I want to hear... maybe if I had a terrabyte of hd space and everything as mp3 it would be a bit easier but for one, I hate selecting tracks to dj out of folders on a machine, and two... the artwork helps my memory process... and, on those initial listens, I read the track names etc and remember them whereas if I download an album I have no idea what the tracks are called.
I used to burn everything I downloaded to audio cds and make covers with tracklistings and that, while not satisfying the object fetish side of things, helped me know what was where but, having gone from 56k to dsl modem speeds last year and discovering soulseek I find myself with 100+cdrs of totally unorganized mp3s and it would probably take a solid week or two to organize it all.
I usually buy music I have wanted for a long time... lately, almost exclusively on vinyl and probably 50% of it second hand anyway (which I did before the advent of downloads too). But recently I find myself only listening to records at home because It's too hard to find the mp3's I wanna hear. I always walk around/catch the train to a randomized mp3 selection though and I agree with whoever said hear that sometimes that's a good way to find stuff you may not have listened to after downloading large quantities of music.
Definately having access to so much music has changed how in touch I am with the music I have in my collection, but at the same time, if something is really good, it's still gonna get stuck in my stereo for a while. I have gotten to hear many great albums and tracks I wouldn't have heard if it wasnt for p2p so I guess I can't complain and it keeps me from getting stuck in a genre rut. Often one genre is only appropriate for one range of emotion or mood so sometimes it's nice jumping from underground hip hop to ruffneck jungle to cheezy electro in 3 tracks.