A couple of months back I wrote something on trying to find inexpensive music for DJ sets for DJ TechTools which just got posted there.

There's another two tips here that I didn't think to include there.

Amazon Prime's No-Rush delivery

At least in the UK, if you have an Amazon Prime account, and you buy things shipped from Amazon, currently you're probably eligible to opt for a slower delivery with the benefit of a £1 digital credit applied to your account.

This credit can be used for music purchases, and as individual MP3s on Amazon are often just 99p or less, that usually means you can pick up a track for free in addition to whatever you actually were ordering in the first place.

It's possible to further benefit from this too. When you're planning an order of multiple eligible items, breaking that one order up into orders of individual items allows you to multiply the credit by the number of items.

Make sure you do use the credit though since they expire after some time. It's maybe worth keeping a want list to ensure you know exactly what to spend your next credit on.

Compilations can be competitively priced

With compilations, you'll often find that, versus buying individual tracks, you'll get more value for money, and can be a quick way to build up a collection, especially if you're looking for well-known hits.

If there are, say, five tracks that you're after on a compilation, and you get another fifty or so bundled in for a few pounds more than buying the five individual digital tracks, that's not a bad deal.

Sometimes you get the case where the CD version of the compilation contains mixes, whereas the digital version may have the mixes (which you probably don't care about too much; there are more mixes around than I'd ever have time to listen to) and the individual tracks (which you do want).

I don't want to sound like I'm just advertising Amazon here, as it may be that other digital music stores offer the same kind of deals, although I've not investigated them. But, Amazon can be particularly competitive, again when you "arbitrage" buying MP3s via lower priced CDs which feature AutoRip bundled MP3s, as I mentioned in the original DJ TechTools post.

As an example: at the time of writing, this compilation is £5 for the CD which has MP3s provided via AutoRip, versus £9.99 for the MP3 version. Seeing Roy Davis Jr's Gabriel on there, you might think that £5 for just that track is worth paying, but there are another 65 tracks on there too.1 Surprisingly, there's very little filler on there, and while there are a few radio edits on there, most tracks are the full length versions.

The bonus here is that you also get instant digital delivery on the bundled MP3s when buying the CD version too. The only differences are that you've paid less and get a redundant bit of plastic through the post a few days later.


  1. Since it was such ridiculously good value, I just impulse bought that compilation.