GeoffBrady

Last year I wrote a piece on the Mercury Music Prize shortlist, criticising the price of music to obtain the albums to give a fair vote. That’s my problem. If I want to be able to judge these albums and pick my favourite, I want to listen to them all. I love music, and I can enjoy any genre, and if I am being led to the cutting edge of British music, then the Nationwide Mercury Prize seems a natural place to look for ideas.

The judges have drawn up a shortlist of twelve albums of which I expect they feel are at the forefront of British music. As such, I am a little interested in them. Last year, I tried to find the cheapest CD prices on the Internet and post them here. For the lot, it would have cost £91.62 at the time, which isn’t bad for twelve albums, but still more than I was willing to pay. This year, I am going to try to find the cheapest legitimate means possible to obtain the music. It is a little fairer that way, I feel.

Amy Winehouse » Back to Black

£6.99 BangCd (CD)

Arctic Monkeys » Favourite Worst Nightmare

£6.99 BangCd (CD)

Basquiat Strings » Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford

£8.97 Amazon (CD)

Bat For Lashes » Fur and Gold

£7.99 HMV (CD), iTunes (Download)

Dizzee Rascal » Maths + English

£7.99 BangCd, Play.com (CD); iTunes (Download)

Fionn Regan » The End Of History

£7.99 Play.com (CD), iTunes (Download)

Jamie T » Panic Prevention

£6.99 BangCd (CD)

Klaxons » Myths of the Near Future

£6.99 BangCd (CD)

Maps » We Can Create

£7.99 HMV (CD), iTunes (Download)

New Young Pony Club » Fantastic Playroom

£6.98 Amazon (CD)

The View » Hats Off to the Buskers

£7.97 Amazon (CD)

The Young Knives » Voices of Animals and Men

£7.99 iTunes (Download)

This comes to £91.83 – a whole 21p more than last year (that’s inflation for ya!). But this exercise wasn’t in vain: I learnt a few lessons. Bands shouldn’t come up with their album names. Downloads aren’t cheaper. Amazon has terrible addressing. You can save a few pence by shopping around (often literally). But most of all, music ain’t cheap. So if you think you love music, like me, listen to crap stuff that was out two years ago that you can often find in service station bargain bins. It’s cheaper.

As a note, the shops I used for the comparison are: Amazon, BangCd, HMV, iTunes and Play.com. These are sites I have used before. I didn’t use Woolworths or CD WOW! because I would expect that you, like myself, would rather listen to the music some time before the winner is announced, and in any case before next year’s nominations are announced. I didn’t include Napster because I couldn’t be bothered to download it. I didn’t use any other shops because after checking those five I really couldn’t be asked to check any more. Please feel free to update me if prices change or if you find them cheaper. Then I can ignore you and make rude gestures in front of my computer screen towards your comments. (Joking, of course! )