I approach it from the 'It exists and I'm interested in it but I don't want to part with my hard earned cash buying something that it may be difficult to get a refund on' mentality. Especially with the amount of bullshit you get about refunds on sealed items from many places.

You can test drive that aston martin and get a proper idea for how it handles on the road, fuel consumption, comfort etc before parting with your cash and buying one. However I can't remember finding anywhere online (apart from the rather wonderful Magnatune) that sells CD's or MP3 downloads that would allow me to listen to the entire album before buying it rather than mere 30 second clips which aren't enough to judge an entire song by.

So I torrent albums, then I buy or delete them and also go to gigs and make sure that the bands I like actually get a decent payment for their music rather than the shafting and the 0.001 pence per CD deal that they've usually been locked into by the record company scum.