I was going to order some discs through Tower, but at $5+ per disc shipping seemed unreasonably high.

Where do others in Canada buy?

Hey Fred,

I've downloaded CDs from Pure tracks . I'm not sure if you are just limited to downloading.

If it's a non-rare album, CDPlus has free shipping and good prices, and the CDs show up quick... but their selection in stock is pretty limited. ie: They'll have the new Creedelback of a Deadman but not Debbie Harry's Def Dumb and Blonde in stock.

Bren R.

I'll have to pick up that new Creedleback Cd.

It's a game we play... since I don't really like mook rock, I can't tell the difference between Nickelback, Theory of a Deadman, Creed and Seether, so a song comes on and I'm asked to name the band. My success rate is about 20%, which is lower than a random guess.

In reverse, I play "No Use for a Lagwagon" whereby she has to tell me if a song is by Lagwagon or No Use for a Name.

Bren R.

That's too funny. A couple of years ago I started talking about Theory of a Default Nickel to my buddies and because they're all local bands they practically thought that I was being sacrilegious or something.

Mostly interchangeable, with the odd decent, OK approaching decent, song.

Just checked out cdPlus, I now know what the plus stands for, more money, Nickleback Darkhorse is on sale at FS or BB for $9.99 they want $20.99. I think I will just keep searching the usual suspects and buy cds when avaialable at a good price. I have ordered from Amazon and Barnes & Noble for harder to find items.

10-15 yrs ago, CD plus had some pretty good deals esp. if you bought quantity they would give you some extra discounts but they've become very exp. imho. It's probably better to get the sales at BB or FS or even HMV (not affiliated with any of these co's...your mileage may vary)

CDPlus is hit and miss pricewise. Amazon and HMV seem to have good prices sometimes too, but then you pay shipping. (and it seems to have changed now, but for a while, it looked like HMV.ca had sold out to Amazon for their fulfillment - that's why I quit buying from them)

You're often better off to walk into a brick-and-mortar, but sometimes there's an album you only think of at 3am.

Bren R.

Too true.

cdPlus has B&M stores as well, they look to be set up in the smaller towns avoiding FS and BB, HMV etc.

There's some here too. They remind me of the old school smaller record/tape shops of my youth... with pins, t-shirts, lighters, belts and other stuff besides the music. The closest one here is in a mall spot that's been an A&A, a Sam the Record Man, a Music City and now a CDPlus.

Bren R.

Remember we had Sam the Record Man years ago, I think they still kept the huge downtown store on Yonge Str., and also Music World. I think HMV must have bought some of the stores. Ok,just Wiki'ed Sam's, they closed the T.O. store too, in '07...that was a Toronto landmark. Also A&A went t#ts up years ago, we don't have a whole lot left besides FS, BB and HMV.

Funny thing is I found CD plus through Amazon. They have one of the discs I was looking for listed through Amazon, but do not show it on their own site. Strange...

I guess I can just special order through HMV or such.

I was looking for 3 of the classical discs that Johnk recommended. As with everything else, they are easy to find south of the border, but not so easy here. It will probably end up costing me an arm and a leg here anyway.

Fred, maybe I'm not aware of the complications, but isn't Amazon Canada as good for Canadians as Amazon U.S. is for U.S. residents? For example, when I order from Amazon itself, I get free shipping if my order is over $25U.S. If I order a new or used individual CD from one of their third-party sellers(which I've done often with no problem), the shipping is $2.98 per CD, and even including this the total price is sometimes less than Amazon itself. Looking at Amazon Canada I see that free shipping comes with a $39CAD order and the charge per CD from third-party sellers is $3.49CAD.

You didn't say what three classical CDs you were interested in, so I couldn't check them specifically, but is the Amazon Canada selection significantly less extensive?

Hi John. Yes it is less extensive. The three discs were the Dvorak Cello Concerto conducted by Fournier, the Dvorak, Tchaikovski, Borodin quartets, and the Bach Organ works by Hurford.

Gah! I must have been search challenged earlier. Now I find all three. Thanks for your help John, even if you didn't exactly do anything.

Yeah Fred, assuming that you mean Amazon Canada, I looked and see that the three are $10.99, $11.99 and $14.99 respectively, so if you order, of course add something to get over the $39 for free shipping.

Another possibility to keep in mind is that due to weakness recently of the British Pound, even against the Canadian dollar, although to a lesser degree than against the U.S. dollar, British dealers are a viable option, with surprisingly moderate shipping charges. I've used MDT Music and Presto Classical recently. For example, here's MDT's price(about $9.90 CDN)on the Hurford set.

You could try here. It's the online store for Sunrise Records. (Which still has 21 B&M locations here in Ontario)

Thanks again for your help John.

Thanks for the link Shawn, I saved it for the future. I notice that Sunrise has a store local to me, though I have been in the mall where they are located and don't remember seing them. I'll have to try again as I see they also do business in used discs.

I usually purchase all my books, cd's and dvd's etc. from amazon.ca
The selection is generally better than walking into Best Buy or Future Shop.
My orders always qualify for free shipping so I saved time and money driving to the store.

Anybody have a good online source for SACDs in Canada besides Amazon.ca? Amazon.com and many other US sources have an amazing range but you pay an arm and a leg - and a nice canadian duty!

Mack, I'm not sure to what extent it's also a good deal for Canadians, but you might look into British dealers, such as clicking on the MDT link in my post above and clicking SACD there. As I pointed out, the price is quite good for U.S. shipments e.g., about $7.90 USD now for the 2-CD sets on sale plus about $1.10 shipping to the U.S.

Amazon.ca is even iffy a lot of times. It seems every time I look up a classical CD, it's coming from one of their 'not really Amazon' sub-stores, often in Europe.

However, I've actually had great luck so far with a couple of the European shippers in books though, I received a couple of books from England faster than ground shipping would get them to Canada from the US. One was also a book version not in print in North America, which was nice.

Anyway, sorry for digression. I was going to add,
CD PLus is Canadian and seems to have a good selection. I have never checked them for SACDs though.

Thank you kindly JohnK and Murph, I'll check those out.
Ian

I usually find the best deals at BB, sometimes Wmart or HMV which is quite good (look under promotions). Nobody seems to have too many SACDs though, from what I've seen.

I can't find anywhere on amazon.ca where you can actually ask them to special order SACDs (or anything for that matter) and perhaps they just don't do that. It seems crazy that their American sister has hundreds (or thousands) of SACDs and countless 2009 releases that I would like to buy but the Canadian side can't come anywhere close to carrying that array. Exchange rates is something that we just have to live with in the great north, but a 20% (I can't remember exactly what the penalty is) duty on top of that. No.

I don't even bother looking things up on Amazon.ca, it's a waste of time for me. Trying to look up basic things like tools, and it tells you there's "no match" on your search?....FAGGETTABOUTIT!!

Why is a New Yorker trying to buy from Amazon.ca anyway?

Amazon.ca doesn't sell tools. .COM sells everything under the sun but the .CA version is limited to books & media and a slim pickings of electronics and even the electronics is fairly new for them, I believe.