I'm curious to see how the mindset of new music fans (and by new I mean young people who have known nothing but digital downloads and digital music) is as far as connecting with the music. And to be specific, I don't mean to stir the troubling debate about downloading free or illegal music versus paying for it, but simply the merit of downloading and consuming music digitally.

At 34 years of age, and being a music nut as far back as I can remember to jamming the Jackson 5 album on cassette on a boombox in 1984, I came up on cassettes, compact discs and vinyl.

This topic popped in my mind as I was thinking about how close I am to finishing my often -delayed studio build, and how I will finally have access to my vinyl collection. Specifically, other than getting back to sampling records and making beats on the fly, I also am excited about encoding hip hop albums. This in itself may out me as a nerd, but it brings me to my point about this drop: I get more satisfaction and enjoyment out of listening to digital mp3s on the iPod from music that I have ripped from vinyl or compact disc than from music purchased directly from digital retailers. I still enjoy albums that I have bought digitally, but not nearly as much. In fact, at times when given a choice, I will skip over albums I bought digitally and go back to cuts I've encoded.

So the real question is this; do I feel a connection with the music because it was a physical object that I had to manipulate in order to hear the music, or do I feel a connection with the memories of the purchase experience - going to the store, meeting with friends, or listening to that album the first time. Do folks get the same connection streaming cuts on the internet, or from albums they've downloaded? I'm really curious. How about you? and does age and your 'generation' factor into it?