Have you noticed the Amazon MP3 downloads don’t have an option to save to your wish list? I certainly did.
Now that Warner titles are available for download, I’ve been searching for stuff I used to own, as well as albums I’ve been meaning to check out. I’m used to the "Save for Later" feature of eMusic, and I found it odd that Amazon would leave out one of its most versatile features from this particular section of its site.
MP3 purchases are supposed to be impulsive, I guess — iTunes doesn’t have that kind of feature.
Amazon does provide links to CD titles from the download site, and from there, the wish list can be used. It’s rather passive-aggressive, no? "Here," Amazon’s interface seems to be saying, "why don’t you consider getting the CD while you’re at it?"
Well, I consider digital files to be the 21st Century answer to the cassette tape, but, to paraphrase Alton Brown, that’s another entry. Personally, I buy digital for a few reasons:
To hedge my bets. The eMusic subscription model is a cost-effective way to figure out if a CD is worth buying. If I’m not wowed by what I download, then there’s no onus for me to get a CD. The CD is, essentially, a high-quality backup of some lossy files.
To get titles not yet available domestically. Bridin Brennan’s Eyes of Innocence is available in the US through iTunes, and Nina Hynes’ Really, Really Do can be had through Amazon. Neither has been released in the US on CD. BIS titles are notoriously expensive, but an eMusic subscription can alleviate some of that expense.
To reacquire titles I used to own but don’t like well enough to get on CD again. I’ve so far done that once with the Kiss-Offs’ Rock Bottom, and I’ve been meaning to that with Amazon downloads.
In other words, I buy digital when I’m not feeling confident to invest in an entire CD, and yet Amazon attempts (by design or not) to make me consider a CD purchase — in addition or, ideally, instead.
I’m probably seeing conspiracies where there are none, but the inability to add MP3 downloads to an Amazon wish list strikes me as a well-engineered oversight.
Nonesuch Records announced the launch of a redesigned website. As heavily reliant on Flash as the initial design was, it wasn’t as excessively heavy-handed as it could have been. Well, the new site crosses that threshold.
I wonder how much cross-browser checking the designers of the new Nonesuch website performed, because the fixed height of the design can be a real problem for Firefox users. I have a few add-ons which adds new toolbars to my interface, and that makes the viewport slightly narrower. The Nonesuch site doesn’t offer a page scroll when said viewport falls short of its fixed height. Let me show you:
If there’s anything interesting hitting stores in December, I’m deferring it for the Favorite Edition list of 2008. I’ve settled on my favorite 10 albums of the year.
For me personally, 2007 is the year classical music exerted its strongest influence in a long time. When I was in college, I had a healthy diet of classical music since it was part of my curriculum. After college, classical was sidelined by indie rock and Japanese music.
In the past, my disposable income — what little there was and is — determined how I prioritized my listening habits. I could only listen to what I could buy, and I wanted to make sure those purchases mattered. Then the one-two punch of digital audio and the Internet made music extremely portable, and the barrier to access was lowered dramatically.
So I’ve made room for a lot of catalog, music I didn’t get a chance to check out at the time it was released. And classical — I could finally play catch up with all the pieces I’ve been meaning to listen to.
Of course, too much choice makes the bell curve of appeal all that more severe. In other words, things that get my attention have to be really good to emerge from all the ways I can get music. It’s almost to the point where 10 spots is actually too many.
CD sales this year took a pretty dramatic hit, and it’s reaching a point where the bogeyman of online piracy can’t be entirely blamed. Customers have gotten smarter, and artists? I just get the sense everyone is so freaked out by the changes in the distribution model that artists are just phoning it in.
It was tough to find something to like in 2005. I’m getting that sense in 2007.
With the third quarter now done, I figure it’s time to update the Favorite Edition 2007 list. Still not much change from quarter to quarter, and I’m not fired up about the fall release schedule either.
Exploring the Amazon MP3 downloads makes me realize how much the Warner/Elektra/Atlantic family of labels shaped my listening habits.
Honolulu wasn’t a hotbed of indie rock when I was growing up — I don’t think it’s a hotbed of indie rock even now — but to its credit, it did have room for Tower Records and Jelly’s Comics and Music. The stores stocked mostly major label product, and what post-punk music was available were on the majors.
As my appetite for music grew, I developed a sense of what labels were more in tune with my taste than others. More times than not, the bands I liked were somehow linked to WEA. My ultimate geek dream was to work for Nonesuch Records. Actually, it still is. Before it was blinked out of existence, I would have wanted a gig at Elektra.
Warner Bros. Music Group is still holding out on the digital right management issue, so as a result, the "music of my youth" is not available as Amazon MP3 downloads. Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. seems to be dragged kicking and screaming into a world without DRM, but then again, Warner isn’t on top of the world anymore.
With the compact disc turning 25 years old and all this talk about declining CD sales, why don’t we just rebrand CDs to the purpose they serve now — backups?
That’s the reason I still buy CDs. Reliable as my hard drive has been all these years, I’m still very wary of all the things that could wipe it clean, including human error. If I like an album I got from eMusic or from the Evil Sharing Networks, I’m going to get a CD to insure against hard drive failure. (The albums about which I’m lukewarm get the CD-R treatment.)
Premium backups — yeah, that has a nice ring to it.
Sometimes I wonder how my life would have been like if the Internet was accessible to me back in high school. I remember getting into Kronos Quartet and a whole bunch of other late 20th Century music (most of them on Nonesuch) and pining for a glimpse into those scores. Even in my early college career, the resources on hand just weren’t enough.
There was no way the local sheet music sellers would have any of that stuff in stock, and the university library, while well-procured, didn’t exactly have the capacity for my voracious curiosity. So I contented myself with just being a listener and not the student I could have been.
Fast forward 10-15 years later, when anything can be had online, including sheet music. Sure, you could search Amazon for music scores, but Amazon is just going to direct you to Sheet Music Plus anyway. I discovered this site a while back, and on occasion, I’d visit, gawk and pine some more.
The issue now isn’t accessibility — it’s cost. Because if that weren’t an issue, man would I be going to town.
(As you probably noticed, I’m breaking the radio silence I announced last week. I reached a point with my various projects where I have to step back for a while. I’ll be going back down the rabbit hole around the July 4 holiday.)
The second quarter is pretty much done, and I’ve got to say that old English band name is quite prescient — pop will eat itself. Rather than spreading the release schedule out, the labels are stacking all the marquee names for fall. Used to be spring would ramp up to the summer tours, while fall ramped up to the holiday shopping season. Now it seems everything gets dumped in the fall, which means a lot of material overlooked.
Last quarter, I assumed releases wouldn’t start picking up till Q2. They haven’t really. And it makes drafting preliminary favorite lists difficult. That doesn’t mean I won’t try.
makes me realize how much the Warner/Elektra/Atlantic family of labels shaped my listening habits.