I’m going to come right out and say that I like to own CDs. I like to buy them, listen to them, and stick them in a shelf in order that my friends and associates can be amazed at my depth of taste. I also like to judge you when I see your shelf without Soap Bubble and Inertia or Rarities v.1.
For this reason, I’ve never bought a full album from iTunes. I’ll buy a track here and there when I just can’t stop shakin’ it like a polaroid picture unless I hear that damn song, but if I’m going to plop $10 on a record, I want the disc. I want it to still be there when my laptop is run over by a rogue bar-stool, again. Storage is an issue as well; I’ve ripped 60 gigs of music and still only have access to a small fraction of my collection.
The problem is, that lately I have less and less of the new music I want, because I can’t purchase the CD. It’s not that they don’t exist; it’s that with retailers and distro struggling to not-lose-too-much-money-this-year, they’re limiting their selection to the new Paul McFartney (always funny) and some cross-over country. Our little local dudes have only ever carried about 100 titles anyway, and if I couldn’t find it there, Borders always; had it. Chain or no chain, If you don’t live in range of an Amoeba, Borders wins the selection war every time. That is, until recently.
Here’s what’s happening: people buy/steal digital music, retail recedes, which causes people to buy more digital because they can’t find what they want. So the question is, would retail be in as much trouble right now if they weren’t such pussies? There are ways around losing your shirt to digital, but limiting selection is not one of them.
Now, I’m going to download Dan Deacon’s full record in iTunes. Later, I will whine about the fact that I was forced to do so.