Wednesday, July 23, 2008

I'm in love. What's that song?

Well, I did it. I made my first purchase from Amazon's mp3 store. What'd I buy? Paul Westerberg's 49:00. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of his solo work, but the Replacements' Pleased To Meet Me is one of the albums I played to death as a kid*. Also, and more importantly, the total cost for his new album is $.49. Now, I'm not so naive as to think that this will usher in a new era of ultra-cheap legal music downloads, but at least Westerberg is fighting the good fight and he deserves some kudos.

As for my Amazon shopping experience, it was quick, easy, and DRM-free. Hopefully, iTunes is taking notice.

Yesterday I also picked up Nine Inch Nails' The Slip, even though I had already downloaded the album for free (legally!) a couple of months ago. While I no longer have the teenage angst that 43 year old Trent Reznor seems to feed off of, I still like his music and I'll buy pretty much anything he puts out. Also, I like to send the message that there are folks like me who see a physical release as superior to a download-only one. And there's a bonus DVD and some stickers.

*Curiously, I never upgraded my cassette copy. Yesterday I got news of an autumn reissue, so I'll just wait for that.

6 comments:

SBN1 said...

have you seen Trent lately? that mofo is a beast. I think he really got into the healthy living/gym lifestyle or something.

Micah said...

Yeah, he's a tank. Kicking drugs also made him way more prolific than he used to be: 3 proper albums from 1989 to 1999, 4 more since 2005.

Dave Bessom said...

Re: iTunes and DRM... I've heard rumors they are planning to discontinue their DRM use on downloaded music. Can't confirm this, since I don't remember where I heard it, but they do already have DRM-free music available (anything with a "+" next to the "buy song/album" tab). In the meantime, though, Amazon is still cheaper, so, you know, cheers to them.

spydrz said...

What's a DRM?

jasdye said...

it means they won't let you copy it to any other server. basically, if you buy music from iTunes, you can only save it on your computer, they will save it up to three computers (i think) in case yours breaks down (i'm on number 2 for most of it), or CD.

which means that i've got some 1000 songs that're screwed.

Micah said...

dave - I knew that some of the music on iTunes is DRM-free. I've got to give Amazon credit for all of their music being so, though.

spydrz - Yeah, what jasdye said.

jasdye - That's rough.