Well, I used to operate in the same way as Loren - I knew which artists I liked, or had listened to a friend's copy of an album before deciding to buy it myself, and I still do normally listen to complete albums. But having the Empeg player has changed my thinking a lot. I'm now much more likely to buy an album on the strength of a couple of tracks, knowing I can put them into a specific mood playlist even if I don't play the album much. I also have been more willing to buy compilations even if I already have 25% of the contents, because I can simply leave the duplicates un-ripped. Compilations only get their own playlists if I'm convinced there's a strong theme tying them together - film soundtracks being the obvious example. I have a "singles" playlist for every year, and several mood playlists composed of singles (set to random play); these are popular with passengers who can't agree on entire albums to play.

As for the ostensible topic of this thread - I've never downloaded music from the Net - free or otherwise. And now our corporate proxy blocks audio/*, so I'm unlikely to do so in the forseeable future. But if anyone has a digital copy of Capercaillie's Cascade album, I'd love to know. My tape is too worn out to bother with, and AFAICT it's never been released on CD and is out of release on cassette...