A cautionary tale… I nearly had an accident on the information superhighway last night (yes, I’m aware no one calls it that anymore). It all started when I added the iLike Facebook application in an effort to find out when bands I like are touring through DC (previously this hadn’t been much of a problem since most of my favorites—e.g. Morphine, Judybats—had disbanded during my post-college musical hiatus). iLike seemed rather promising. It was free unlike Pollstar and a bit more polished than tourfilter, and most importantly it seemed to have an entry for every band I like (except for Matt Palka—get on there Matt!), along with most of their concert schedules (though not, for example, tonight’s Ceann show at Murphy’s). I finished selecting my favorite artists and it took me to a page that listed headlines about my selections… and that’s when the trouble began…
Imagine my delight to see the headline that James had released a new album called Journey on January 1, 2008. James is one of those college bands that disbanded, but that I knew had recently reunited. And so here to kick off my new favorite year was this long anticipated album. Brilliant! iLike even had a convenient link for me to purchase the album from iTunes or Amazon. Having sworn off DRMed music from iTunes, I went to check in on Amazon’s MP3 download service, which a friend had mentioned just days before. One click of the direct link from iLike I was looking at the new James album on Amazon… albeit in CD form, but prominently advertised was a link to the MP3 download version. BAM, there it was, the new James album in all its 256 kbps DRM-free glory for just $9.99 (exactly the same price as iTunes even). And there hovering tantalizingly before me was Amazon’s revolutionary patent-worthy (yeah, right) “1-click” button. Just like that, in three clicks from my facebook profile to downloading a new album. Cyber syzygy I tell you!
My mouse slid towards the button as my eyes drifted to the cover art for the music that I would soon own (I mean, be licensed to enjoy for personal use etc. etc.). Hmmm. That’s funny. On the cover are photos of five lovely black women… who were most definitely NOT in the brit pop band that I saw at WHFStival fourteen years ago! Thankfully this discontinuity queued up in my brain about one instruction before the neurons would fire to command my finger to purchase… what turns out to be a new Christian & Gospel album by The James’… beautiful music I’m sure, but not what I was looking for…
Now if I can figure out how to tell iLike that James != The James’ and prevent others from being wrongly separated from their hard-earned duckets…
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