iTunes store & screwed albums. Rant = ON

[Evangelion]

I noticed a while ago that Pink Floyd is available on iTunes. IIRC they weren't before, but they are now. And since they are signed up with Emi, their songs are iTunes Plus-tracks. So I went ahead and bought "Wish you were here". Yesterday I decided that it's time to make another purchase: "The dark side of the moon". And here's where it gets irritating/interesting: iTunes has all Pink Floyd albums available for purchase. Except TDSOTM. Sure, it's there, but it's a "partial album". It's missing two tracks ("Great gig in the sky" and "Us and them")! And not only that, you can't actually buy the album! What you CAN do is to buy individual tracks for 1,29 a piece (except the two missing tracks). Why do they have the album listed in ITMS if you can't actually buy it?

Seriously: What is this crap?! they have every single Pink Floyd album in there for sale, EXCEPT their most famous one? Sure, you could buy the individual songs, but even then you would be missing two tracks, and you would have to pay more.

Why are they doing this? Honest question: how does this benefit me, the consumer? What am I going to do now? I'll march to my local library, loan the CD and rip it to my computer. And I WAS willing to buy it! I wanted to buy it! But Apple and/or Emi decided that "No, you can't buy it, because we decided to screw you over".

 

[killmoms]

Why are they doing this? Honest question: how does this benefit me, the consumer? What am I going to do now? I'll march to my local library, loan the CD and rip it to my computer. And I WAS willing to buy it! I wanted to buy it! But Apple and/or Emi decided that "No, you can't buy it, because we decided to screw you over".

It doesn't help the consumer. It's also 99.9% probably not Apple's fault. This sounds like a label/licensing/artist issue. Who knows what contract vagaries cause things like this. It is annoying, but I wouldn't blame Apple. I'm sure they'd love to sell you the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon. It's probably just that they, for whatever reason, can't get it from EMI. Frustrating, I know. Just more evidence that the current record label system is broken.

 

[Evangelion]

Yeah, it propably isn't Apples fault, but it still pisses me off. And IIRC, when I was buying "Wish you were here", TDSOTM _was_ available for purchase, and I contemplated which of the two I should get.

 

[killerrobot]

In Europe you can always see the albums you want, but you can't always buy them. Or every once in a while you can buy one of the songs, but not the rest. And it changes from time to time. It's all licensing depending on their recent contract with the record company. I'm sure Apple would love to sell it all, EMI, Capital and whatever other company just doesn't let them.

My advice, go buy the album at a used CD store (or visit your local public library).

 

[Evangelion]

I just checked iTunes... And Dark Side IS available for sale. It's trange indeed. First it was for sale, then it wasn't. And now it is. Well, I'm not complaining: downloading as we speak