A little on NIN and Amazon

Trent Reznor just released the first CD of his new album for free. (Obligatory mirror for my torrent-throttled friends: hosted in Detroit, official torrent: tracked by The Pirate Bay)The full album is up for a digital download for $5. Great!

Well, everyone else thought so too, and his site went down under load. He posted a link to Amazon’s music store so his fans could still buy the album, but I decided that I’d wait until Reznor’s site went back up so he could get a bigger cut of my $5. I’m very slowly downloading Ghosts I-IV from the official site now.

I decided to check out the Amazon store too, and after sampling Y34RZ3r0r3mix3d I decided to buy it. Here’s what I saw.

So I can’t buy the album, yet I can install the downloader? Why do you want me to install a downloader that’s useless to me, Amazon? Ah well. I’m impressed that they offered a Linux version, even though I still don’t know why they require you to use a downloader to grab unprotected music.

Out of curiosity I attempted to buy the album anyways. Amazon asked me for a new American billing address. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to try to fake one with my Canadian credit card so I gave up.

With that avenue closed off to me I looked to iTunes. A dollar more expensive, and laden with DRM. Wonderful. I guess I won’t be buying Y34RZ3r0r3mix3d after all, but I’m very happy with Ghosts.