I wrote this some time ago on Facebook to my loyal friends, but am sad to report that the situation is the same, TWO YEARS LATER. Ho hum.
I'd like to say this will be an hilarious Charlie Brooker-esque rant, but it won't be hilarious, but I've thinking, why is it that music downloading is so idiotically implemented? With the music industry banging on and on and ON about all the money it's apparently losing from illegal downloading, why do they insist on making legal downloading MORE difficult and arcane than buying CDs. I should add that the music industry's view that one illegal download = one lost sale is utter bullshit, but that's another matter.
Two fine examples. The iTunes store. As most people know, I'm happily suckered into Mac using and have an iPhone, play all my music through iTunes and generally bang on about Apple slightly too much (although less than I used to). Having said that, the iTunes store is ridiculous. In the grand tradition of letters to Points of View, why oh why are there countries? How come you can't buy ALL albums in ANY country? Surely the whole point of an online music store is that you can buy from wherever you happen to from the comfort of your own computer desk? What moron decided that I can't buy things that are only on the US store (or whatever)? How is this progress? Even more stupid is Amazon. I can buy any CD from the US Amazon store, yet I can't download from the US Amazon mp3 store? What kind of crazy dumb fuck thought that one up? This was double annoying as the album I wanted doesn't appear to have received a CD release so I just have to wait (or download it illegally) and find out whether they can be bothered to either put it on CD or add it to the Amazon UK store.
Varese Sarabande have released a number of their hard to find/out of print back catalogue items to the US iTunes store (the double disc release of Goldsmith's terrific Lionheart, for example). Fortunately, I have a friend with a US store account who bought it for me. You know, pay money for music. Imagine that?! Of course, if I didn't have such a friend, I'd not have been able so Varese would have lost out on a little cash which can go towards their superb release programme. I could gripe that Varese themselves could put the music on the UK store, but frankly it shouldn't be an issue. It should be "the music is on the iTunes store" and you buy it from wherever you live in your local currency and with local taxes applied. Yes, I agree they need to know where you live, but that should just be for tax reasons etc. Surely online music stores are a great way of making money from back catalogues, especially in obscure music genres such as film music where it could take a while for the label to make its money back, but make it easier for the few thousand hardcore fans to spend and surely they will.
Although a rather more parochial concern, technically you aren't allowed to use the iTunes store in Guernsey. Something to do with VAT (and Apple being lazy as hell, frankly) and they are slowly closing the workarounds. The best bet is now to use a UK friend's address, but presumably they'll work out how to stop that. OK, offshore jurisdictions don't constitute a huge slice of their market, but I'd wager that per person, the average Guernsey person would spend more than the average UK person simply because Guernsey is a generally wealthier place per person.
I was about to write an enthusiastic polemic to Spotify, which strikes me as the most likely way forward for music ownership - online subscription and you just choose what you want from a vast online library - but even that is country specific. Still, as a legal way to sample music, share it and so forth, it's a superb service. It's how I imagined listening to music would be in the "future", although they need to get it in lossless, with gapless playback and ensure albums don't "disappear" randomly. Bloody copyright laws and stupid record companies seem to ensure this happens from time to time when they don't want their product sullied by being on a free, but legal service... perhaps they want it all on wax cylinders where they can fiddle with their handlebar moustaches and doff their caps to one another while the peasants lap up this "hip hop" music.
So, I ask again (for no real reason), how can it be so easy to buy a CD from whatever country you want yet if you want to download or play it online, it's made so much harder? If they want to combat illegal downloading, surely they should make it as easy as possible and with as wide a selection as possible. Plus, it wouldn't go amiss for them not to screw over certain places by charging more in one country than another. I'm reliably informed that it's not Apple who impose the country specific format, although given their market share, they should be forcing the record companies into the 21st century and trying to enforce some sense onto them. They don't seem that desperate to do anything much to change things, but we can only hope. Like Obi Wan Kenobi.
