Now, I'm not going to waste more than half a sentence rehashing the discussion of whether Apple Computer's "indie cred" is counterfeit, other than to say, sometimes you've got to face facts: when you're the biggest in the U.S., you are not the scrappy underdog. The iTunes Music Store got there first (it didn't, of course, but in all practical respects it did), did it right (relatively speaking) and is reaping its reward.
I resisted the pull of the iTMS for a long time, on principle, mind you, because of the DRM. My relenting on this point was not a principled one. One day I found myself wanting to hear the full length rendition of "The Journey of the Sorcerer," the Eagles' oddball banjo-delic instrumental that has served as the theme song for the dramatization of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in various incarnations. A few years later I may have been able to hear it legally without paying for it through one of the various new social discovery experiments: as it was I succumbed to the lure of immediacy and took my DRM.
And for a while its general transparency seemed fine and once in a while I'd get music off iTunes, until a few everyday hassles reminded me that these weren't ordinary MP3s and that as a result I would have to manage them as long as I retained them. I can't say it was enough to compel me to expunge them from my collection, but it irked me enough that I elected to generally skip the iTMS as a music source.
I was excited when the news of the Music Store's "Plus" collection appeared, the first big breach in the amazingly resistant frontier of DRM-free major label digital downloads. Also I had a gift card. I ordered Dark Side of the Moon right up, firmly sorting me into some sort of approaching-middle-age-dude box, I suspect, and that went just fine. A couple of my former purchases had moved to the Plus collection, available to be unlocked for a small fee. Fair enough, or at least better than nothing, right? Steve Jobs was publicly exhorting the record industry to let his downloads go and it was all very salutary.
Nevertheless it had been a while since, the other day, I decided that I needed a refresher course in the iTMS shopping experience. No, that's a lie. Somewhere along in there I developed a distinct chip on my shoulder about the whole iTMS experience and I set out on my shopping endeavor, purely as fodder for this blog, with a bitter heart. Maybe it was the Amazon thing. Letting Amazon scoop them on a general DRM-free major label catalog continues to strike me as a major business failure. Bending that uniform pricing model to charge more for Plus tracks. Amazon debunking the whole premise of the value of uniform pricing in the first place.
So I fired up iTunes with the intent of buying the first Plus item I saw, for the unvarnished experience, sort of like wandering into Walmart. What I got was...
Well, before I get into that, can I just talk about the virtual retail space? I mean, that is a blog in itself, but these music sites. Why are there so many examples of this: front pages that seem to suggest that God gave them a single sheet of foolscap and a divine injunction to stuff everything they could on it. Here is some of what's occupying real estate in the Music Store's foyer: NEW RELEASES. JUST FOR YOU. WHAT'S HOT. STAFF FAVORITES. FREE. INDIES. Something called QUICK LINKS with links to things like Buy iTunes Gifts on it. A music store menu that ought to be called Quick Links but bears the imaginative title iTunes STORE. OH I THOUGHT I WAS ALREADY IN THE STORE. WHY ARE WE SHOUTING? TOP SO - ahem, Top Songs. Top Rentals. Top TV Episodes and Albums and Ringtones and Music Videos and Podcasts and Audiobooks... all bracketed by clusters of standalone buttons with everything from American Idol promotions to books by Oprah to Ellen Degeneres for what reason I do not know except it has SOMETHING TO DO WITH AMERICAN IDOL. I'm sorry, I'm shouting again. This was supposed to be a short review, I'm aiming for "snappier."
Here's the thing: the iTMS lives in my music player. It sleeps in the same folder as my entire music collection. Is this whole Apple aesthetic not supposed to be about the clean and simple interface? Why am I confronted with what can only be called a link vomit of (at best) postage stamp sized icons? And why is the first thing that this store which lives inside my music collection offers me Yellowcard?
Nothing against Yellowcard, okay, as I have sort of made fun of them a couple times now: I hope their multi-platinum record sales (and I'd never heard of them! So out of touch) will console them. My perusal of my $7.99 album purchase from iTMS Plus, Live from Las Vegas at the Palms, suggests they are generating well-polished punk pop, probably as we speak, much in the hardcore roots vein of Green Day, who I once saw opening for Bad Religion, if you can believe that, and if you want to know about MY indie cred. Anyway, my point is, this is not Yellowcard's bad. Signing some live exclusive deal with iTunes is not a decision I can fault any aspiring musician for.
Offering this to me, as my very first choice on the very first page I see when I enter your store, on the other hand: come one, Apple, I thought we had a relationship. Well you were wrong about that. Apple wants to see other people: LOTS of other people, and if this thing feels increasingly less personal, well, it is business. The point I'm making here is that if Apple has attained Walmart-like retail status as a music seller, no mean feat, it is also delivering a Walmart retail experience. The user interface is a cluttered mess, selections based on personal data are shallow and perfunctory, searching is mediocre, and the location of the store within my music-playing software is actually kind of a pain in the ass. The failure to negotiate equal access with Amazon to DRM free major label catalogs was a big fumble, the pricing is largely uncompetitive, the surcharge on music in the Plus catalog sucks, and frankly, I'll shop there again when everything is DRM free and they offer me free upconversion of all my previously purchased, FairPlay encumbered tracks, which I'll otherwise probably expunge next time a major migration of the catalog is required. Checkouts and downloads generally work fine, at least from inside iTunes on an iMac, the only way I've ever experienced it, but you know, checkout at Sam Goody was generally a pretty trouble free experience. I think the bar is set justifiably higher for Apple and I don't think they cleared it. Congratulations, iTunes Music Store, you are the first review to receive a rating of HATE, heralding in the age of a crueler, rougher Phree Musique digital music download store review blog! A "one thousand points of darkness" sort of digital music download store review blog! How's that? "Snappy" enough for you?
Update, January 2009: Given the recent transition to all DRM-Free tracks, I am upgrading the iTMS rating to Shrugs. Keep up the mediocre work, guys.
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