This afternoon I was working away listening to Pandora.
Pandora, similar in many respects to Last.fm, is a brilliant, brilliant reason for moving to San Francisco — or anywhere with an American geo-located IP address.
Type in an artist, track or album and woosh, Pandora will create a dedicated and spookily accurate streaming radio channel for that ‘type’ of music.
I tried it last year, when I was in the Bay Area for 3 months — and I loved it. I had to work really hard to unlove it really quickly after I arrived back in the UK and found the service wasn’t accessible because of international licensing issues.
So I’ve been spending a lot of time listening to Pandora. I setup a channel for the artists Smith & Pledger. You’ll know of them if you’re into serious trance music. Pandora knows them and is just brilliant at offering me a continual array of similar music. Phenomenal.
I came across a track this afternoon — “Ferry Corsten “Sublime” (Thrillseekers Remix)” on the album: “Passport: Kingdom of the Netherlands”.
I liked it so much I thought I’d buy it. I clicked through. I DID precisely what the Pandora geniuses wanted me to do. I clicked through first on the iTunes link, ready to buy.
Alas iTunes couldn’t find any record of the track. Or the album, despite it being published in 2005. Bollocks. Total bollocks.
Pandora offers two links to purchase tracks you like — iTunes is one, the other is a link to Amazon. That took me to the CD page. Almost helpful.
I don’t want it in 72-96 hours. I want it now. Within 10 minutes.
I used Amazon’s really cool ‘listen/sample’ function and found out — to my extreme annoyance — that the rest of the tracks on the album were of a quality I’d like to own too.
I’d upgraded myself from spending $1 to $20. I’ll have the whole thing please.
I searched about.
Surely I don’t need to actually buy the flucking CD. Not in this day and age. It is, after all, 2009.
Ferry Corsten’s people will have seen to it that his stuff is all over the place, surely? I checked out the Amazon MP3 Store. Fluck all. No mention whatsoever of the album.
Oh they had some more recent stuff. But not the album I wanted.
I checked out Ferry Corsten’s official and 100% bollocks website. Totally flucking useless to me when I’m wanting to BUY.
NO I don’t want to download a picture of you, Ferry. I want to give you money for your music…
Here am I, a customer.. an actual customer, not just a fan — a customer — I hit on the ’shop’ link on his site immediately.
I was presented with the opportunity to buy a branded T-Shirt or design my own Ferry Corsten branded T-Shirt.
Yeah… but where’s the sodding music?
I clicked about. I clicked into the downloads/audio section. The whole page is a period. It’s a full stop. I kid ye not. Have a look. It’s a blank page.
I then saw a scrolling ‘music downloads’ section listing quite a few online music stores. You know the type… the sort of thing the mainstream consumer never, ever goes to. Names like beatport.com, trackitdown.com, dance-tunes.com, audiojelly.
I checked each sodding site.
Manually. I manually visited each flucking website and typed in ‘netherlands passport’. Nothing. Nothing at all.
Completely useless.
Not one of these sites was able to assist.
Where’s the fault? I don’t know. I suppose the root issue is Ferry Corsten’s people for not uploading/licensing or doing whatever they’re meant to do to make sure I can give them money for their product.
I eventually typed ‘Passport: Kingdom of the Netherlands digital download’.
Useless.
Oh, I got tons of torrent and illegal download links. But I want to support the artist. I want to give the chap some money in return for the music.
But I don’t want to wait 3-4 business days to be sent the 2005 album.
Absolutely useless. I considered, briefly, buying the whole album for about $1 from some Russian website that claims legality.
But no.
I’ve regressed back a decade and I’ve ordered the sodding compact disc album.
$7.43 from Amazon.
I’d have paid you $20-$25 for the same product, Ferry.
And I’d have been happily up-sold another $25 there and then.
But you couldn’t facilitate. How ridiculous.
I’m really hoping that I’ve missed something, that… really, the ONLY way to get hold of this particular 2005 album is to order a physical copy?
