dallas moore

First Digital-Only Purchase

I’ve gone and done it now. I spent actual money on something purely digital. Yeah yeah, I’ve come completely late to this game. I’m historically late. Okay yes … I admit … I’m hugging my pet dinosaur on this one.

In the past, the only thing I’ve ever done with a purely digital “purchase” is redeem those Pepsi lid codes for an iTunes download. I downloaded one song. The eight other codes that I entered expired because I never used them. I deleted that singular file later because it was “different”.

I usually buy CDs. It’s a childhood thing. For some reason I like the tangible presence of an easily broken plastic case with little glossy papers in it. Well that and a disc that could be played in all the different CD players at my house, my friends’ houses, car, etc. Well… used to be played, those CD Players have disappeared from the landscape. Now that job is managed by my home computer. The computer plays music , it sends music out to the Tivo and thus my stereo system, and it fills my iPod for listening to music away from home (car, friend’s house, on and on).

A few years ago, the idea of solely relying on the continual existence of a little digital file on a computer AND it being worth actual money would be a concern of mine. Backing up was not a cheap prospect for me. It wasn’t a matter of money alone … it was my time. It used to be burning CDs. Then DVDs. Then external hard drives coupled with an inefficient backup software package. Yuck. I hated it all.  Well, Apple fixed that with the latest iteration of OS X and its “Time Machine” functionality. I feel safer now. So I purchased an earworm song that has been bugging me for a bit. The now–antique in its own right– “Island in the Sun” by Weezer. I bought it because it reminds me of the vacation I won’t be able to take this year.

I ended up buying the song through Amazon’s Music Store versus iTunes because it was available in a non-DRM format (MP3). The only reason this matters is my Tivo requires MP3 files. It was also a little cheaper for some reason, it cost 89 cents versus iTunes 99 cents.

However, I have to ask the question… why can I buy it without DRM through Amazon… but Apple only offers it in the DRM’d “non-iTunes Plus” format? I know I would have to to mess with converting the non-DRM’d iTunes Plus ACC file to a MP3. I know I saved 10 cents. But why isn’t it available at both places?

Because Universal Music is afraid of Apple.

I’m glad I rarely get an earworm that I feel obligated to purchase. I just want my song and the artist to get their royalties. Instead, I feel like I’m part of some stupid power struggle. It makes me feel dirty.