New sites seem to
appear all the time. There's a lot of places now where you can buy CDs
online. Sometimes it can be worth it. Here's a rundown of my experiences.
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| Online Store | CD Price | Shipping to Europe | Total | Comments |
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| cheap-cds.com | $11.29 | $4.43 | $15.72 | A refreshingly
simple site for people who know what they want. Good inventory, although
understandably not so strong on imports as some of the more mainstream
stores. Payment is structured as cd price plus $1.43 handling charge (per
cd) plus postage charge (per cd).
Update, 27th March: I tried actually ordering something, and was quickly informed by email that they couldn't get it. Whilst this was a shame, and casts some doubt over the validity of their large inventory, they were at least quick to tell me about it, and have not tried to hold onto my money while they look for it... |
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| pentagon.net | $11.99 | $4.99 | $16.98 | The site doesn't look all that beautiful, but is quite strong on price, range and content. However, the site was incredibly slow when it came to calculating my order. Otherwise, pretty competitive though. |
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| cdworld.com | $13.37 | $5.09 | $18.46 | Actually buying a CD seems to take in too many stages - you are forced to plough through screen after screen. However, the inventory is strong, and a $5 voucher is available for first time customers. |
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| cdnow.com | $11.88 | $6.96 | $18.84 | The market leader,
I think, and I can see why. Almost omnipresent simple search forms mean
you can immediately search for something as it occurs to you, wherever
you are on the site. Sophisticated personalisation scheme means you can
make a note of CDs to buy in the future in your 'wish list'. 'MyCDnow'
page is platform for personal services, which range from useful (order
tracking) to ridiculous (CDNow recommends). A European shipping center
for imports makes these purchases very good value if you are based in Europe.
Frequent sales, coupons and other special offers mean I come back here
quite frequently. Prices fluctuate a lot though. Note that the price shown
here is the price as given in the sale which is on at the moment.
Update, 27th March: Watch out for backordered items - they suggested it might be 1-2 days before they found an item, but it's now two weeks and counting! CDnow has recently announced a merger with Music Boulevard. Update, 10th June: The merger with Music Boulevard is now complete. The main difference seems to be images in the search results screen. Prices also seem to have gone up slightly for imports - eg some Japanese pressings which were once $16.75 are now about $26... One good thing to come out of the merger has been a fresh influx of coupons (check here for fresh ones) |
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| cdcellar.com | $13.38 | $6.00 | $19.38 | Get the feeling this a good store, although I've never used it. Seem to be generally more competitive on price than shown by this example. |
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| cduniverse.com | $13.57 | $5.99 | $19.56 | Has a reputation
for good prices, although it hasn't shown that here. Fails to attract the
same level of attention as cdnow and music boulevard. Hard to see what
distintinguishes it from other sites.
Update June 10th 1999. They have a promotion where if you type in 'save' in the promotional code box, you can save $5 on your purchase. I bought something this way, and was very pleased with the service. It arrived within 5 days and was pretty cheap |
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| musicboulevard.com | $12.88 | $6.99 | $19.87 | Now merged with cdnow... |
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| Rockhouse Music Mailorder (Holland) | $21.25 | $2 | $23.25 | Thought I would try somewhere closer to home to avoid high shipping costs, but killer European CD prices struck again! Not a nice looking site to me, but I guess I'm not the one they're trying to impress. |
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| German music express | $26.81 | $1.00 | $26.81 | Good, simple site design, but even with $1 shipping to Holland, the prices seem prohibitive to me. Note that even domestic German Releases have similarly high prices. |
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| totalE.com | $13.58 | n/a | n/a | They don't ship to Europe, but are apparently good on service. Run by Colombia record club. |
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| NewburyComics.com | unable to find | n/a | n/a | Thought I would check out a couple of indies, but strangely, they don't seem to have the CD... Would have expected it to have been a top seller with this store, so perhaps the search engine is screwy? |
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| ab-cd.com | unable to find | n/a | n/a | Again, I thought
I would try a smaller place, but they didn't have it. The search engine
was playing up, but worked in the end. Actually a nice site, which caters
for a more music-educated set of customers. Runs occasional draws/promotions
to bring people to the site.
Update, 27th March: they have the cd now - must have been out of stock |
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| Coupons: you can keep up to date on current money saving coupons at http://www.esmarts.com/music/music_coupons.html. | ||||