Buying Music

After years of BMG, working in a store that sold used CDs cheaply, and participating in music trading sites, I have not paid full price for a CD in a long time. Hell, it is quite rare that I actually listen to physical CDs! I tend to burn mp3 discs for my car player because I can put 200 songs on it and shuffle through them.

But I read about the latest Steve Earle album in Mother Jones too late to request it for Christmas. Steve Earle is one of those artists (like Franti) that I like to support with a direct purchase (rather than from a used store) to ensure they benefit. So I checked out his site and considered ordering the album directly from him.

But I want to listen to it NOW ... and I actually am listening to it as I write this. This morning I also read that Warner Music Group has pulled its head out of its ass regarding online music sales. As so many other music companies did, they only sold music online in a crippled format via iTunes. iTunes is great as long as you never want to listen to the music on a difference device than those authorized by Apple. It is not great if you want freedom to listen to the song is x years when iTunes is old news.

The solution is here. I bought the entire album off Amazon.com in a high quality (much higher quality than iTunes offers) MP3 format. This means I can play it on any device I CHOOSE. I don't have to ask Apple to authorize the device and I don't to worry that in the future no players will know how play this locked file.

Additionally, the album as an affordable 9 bucks. Well worth it for the latest Steve Earle.

Do not support Apple's iTunes. Do not buy music there. They abused their monopoly online music sales position to require all songs to come locked so only Apple's devices could play them. Independent musicians were forced to shackle their songs to Apple's devices. Amazon.com offers an alternative - you can control what devices will play your music.

If you want to use iTunes to manage your music, the Amazon downloader automatically adds them to it. But if you want to take your music to a different application, you can do that also. You should have the choice, not Apple.