Purchasing A Music CD

I found and bought the CD immediatelyaliasg
I already have a copy of Beethoven’s 9th symphony, conducted by Karajan. Since that’s my favourite composition, I decided to get a variation of it, by another composer-Riccardo Muti. Rhythm House in Fort, Mumbai, is a stone’s throw from my place. I found the CD in a minute.

Time taken  10 minutes

There was an unusually long checkout line, but luckily, there were three people serving customers-that meant the queue wasn’t that long after all. I was able to check out in less than 10 minutes.

Time taken 9 minutes

It was still morning. I listened to the CD twice over before lunchtime. At Rs 295, I felt it was a steal of a deal!

Time taken 0 minutes

Total Time Spent:  19 minutes
Total cost: Rs 295

Amazon has a great collection, but shipping…
No Indian site had the CD available. I searched all over-Sify.com, Rediff.com, Indiatimes.com, and others-with no luck. Some didn’t even offer music CDs; some found nothing with “Beethoven” as the keyword. I decided I’d have to get it from abroad.

Time taken  15 minutes

Amazon.com was my site of choice, partly because I have shopped there before. As a matter of fact, I was very lucky to find the CD there, because it’s not a very popular title. It took me just one minute to find it.
Time taken 1 minute

Checking out was a breeze, of course. I had two viable shipping options-Standard International Shipping and Expedited International Shipping. I chose the latter because, at $11.98, the difference wasn’t too much. The CD was $6.98.

Time taken 4 minutes

Eleven days was how long I had to wait for the CD to arrive. Of course, I wasn’t waiting with bated breath, since I’d already purchased the same CD at Rhythm House.
Time taken 11 days

Total Time Spent: 11 days 20 minutes
Total cost: $18.96 (Rs 850)

And TheWinner Is…
The old way wins hands down! Of course, there were two things at work here-first, the fact that I live so close to the music store, and second, the fact that Indian sites don’t carry too many Western Classical titles. However, you can get songs online-single songs, without having to purchase the entire CD. This is something you can’t do offline-CD singles aren’t that much cheaper than entire CDs. Indiatimes.com, too, has music downloads.