According to Nielsen's 2017 year end report, only 11% of all album sales for the rap/hip-hop industry were physical sales. For the industry itself, it's a fact that physical sales are a small portion of album sales. I understand independent rap words differently but the days of hustlin tapes and cd's out the trunk are pretty much gone imo. Not tryin to argue here, but my point was that as someone who comes from the old school I don't care if the artist pressed up physical copies or it's just a digital release only. I'm gonna listen to the music digitally regardless so if I buy the physical copy, I have to rip it into itunes to throw on the ipod anyways when I could just buy a digital copy that I can slap right on the ipod. It doesn't matter to me if the artist spent a couple hundred bucks to press up physicals. It's really about the quality of the music itself. My process for buying an album is this: I always download a copy of the album regardless of release format, listen to it and buy it if I like it. I've bought too many albums that were trash so I screen them first. Any album can be downloaded for free but I choose to support the artist if the album is worth it regardless of the format of the release.