Does anyone have great memories of downloading a piece of music?

I quite often have conversations with students which will involve the student pointing out that e-books may well be the future, but the fact that you can't touch them (or smell them) means you'd lose part of the thrill of 'owning' the book.

The next batch of LP's ready to not be thrown away

Anyway. I'm a colossal hypocrite as evidenced by the fact that I recently bought a USB turntable. My long term plan is to use the turntable to convert my approximately 1000 pieces of vinyl into MP3's. This lead to a conversation with my wife that went something like this:

Me: I'll need to clear some space on the desk soon as I'm going to begin digitising the vinyl with the new turntable.

H: Excellent! And when it's all done you can sell the vinyl and we can get some space back...

Me: Urrrm.

H: ...and the money can go towards our holiday...

Me: Errr.

H: ... because there's obviously no point in keeping the vinyl if you've got it on the laptop...

Me: Aaaah.

There then followed a long and rambling explanation by me as to why it's about having 'the object' and not just being able to play the music. It's also about the memories of where you bought it or about haggling for it during a relationship break up! As much fun as downloading digitised media is, it doesn't always compare to the fun of finding the thing in a shop after weeks of looking. And as today is National Record Store Day it seemed like a good day to share this thought.

Some of you reading this will have never bought a 7" single and others will get all gooey at the memory of a 12" picture disc that went AWOL at a party long ago. And that shows how fast the technology has evolved if nothing else.

So my point is this; I understand why there are students who are comforted by that weighty feeling of having paper books in their bag when they're leaving the library. And although I do think that e-books make your studies a lot easier overall, it doesn't mean I don't have sympathy when I hear students say that it's more comforting to have the book physically open in front of you.