The Comedy Life of Brian

For weeks now I've wanted to buy music from 'Attack in Black' pretty badly. It didn't seem to be on iTunes, and I couldn't find it in stores (not even at the love of my life, Newbury Comics). So today I gave it another shot as I sat at my computer. Poking around Attack in Black's web site I realized that they were a Canadian band on a Canadian indie label. OK, so that explains why it was hard for me to track it down. But then in their discography they've got links to iTunes for the digital copy of their last couple of records. I click, and I'm brought to the Canadian iTunes store. They've got Attack in Black's entire back catalog. Cool. I go to buy their last two albums, but no dice. My US Apple account won't work in the Canadian store. And what's worse, I can't create an account in the Canadian iTunes store unless I have a Canadian billing address.

So here's my question for Apple - why does the country I'm from restrict the music I can purchase? You can't tell me its because of currency conversion - that's an easy problem to solve. And if it is a record label thing, they need to get the fuck over that (and all of the crazy outdated practices they are still hanging on to). If I could literally browse the world of digital music I'd open myself to some great new artists and I'd probably spend a shitload of money too. Don't you people want my hard earned money Apple and dying record labels?

So I ended up going to the web store for Canadian indie 'Dine Alone Records' and buying physical copies of the two full lengths. One on CD and one on vinyl (the only available format). Thanks to a really useful new practice I get the digital download with the vinyl. Looking back on it all, although I had to jump through some hoops I feel pretty happy about getting the physical versions of these albums and supporting the label directly. Plus, I've got more motivation to buy a record player (which I've wanted to do for a while).

Hey - super bowl!

Labels: Music