Seth’s World View

Now begins a rant about music downloads. Since the peer-to-peer revolution a few years back, a number of services offering reasonably-priced legal downloads are available. While I have no love for greedy record execs or some of the rediculous claims about how much money they’ve lost. How can they lose money people wouldn’t have spent anyway? But I digress. Artists and musicians certainly deserve to receive income from their art, so me spending money I earn on music I enjoy is totally reasonable. Having said that, I think the peer-to-peer revolution’s biggest impact (and there is a financial impact here) is how it changed the way people ‘thought’ about acquiring music. People no longer need jewel cases or liner notes (can get lyrics online anyway). More significant, people no longer feel it necessary to buy an entire album. While there are a very limited number of thematic albums that deserve to be bought as a whole, most contain rather random collections of songs. Add to that the RUSH to put out numerous CDs, and the quality on a given album can be very inconsistent. Buying an album because we linke 1 song is larger a things of the past, and I’m sure record companies don’t like that at all.

So now, the quest to find the songs I want to download. The following services are among the most popular legal services that offer single downloads:
iTunes
Real
Walmart
MusicMatch
The New Napster

Thus far, I have added the following to my collection:
Something Good – Bic Runga
Sway – Big Runga
Mr. Jones – Counting Crows
Don’t Dream It’s Over – Crowded House
Mad World – Gary Jules
Dance Dance – The Black Seeds
Drops of Jupiter – Train
Meet Virginia – Train
All Kinds of Time – Fountains of Wayne
Go Forward – Whale Ride Soundtrack

Half of those were bought because I needed to buy some New Zealand music for a dinner I was hosting. Now, New Zealand music is a bit header to get a hold of here, and being able to download can be rather convenient in that case. I was able to acquire for Hayley Westenra’s Pure for free with my BMG membership, which was rather shocking and cool. Bic Runga was someone I heard on the radio while shopping at New World (among other places) and thought was Sixpence None the Richer. The Black Seeds were a local Wellington NZ band with a mix of island, reggae and other styles. I always liked Don’t Dream It’s Over by Crowded House, and didn’t know who they were or where they were from (NZ, OZ, and S. Africa). Train penned two songs I really liked, Meet Viginia and Drops of Jupiter. I didn’t know for a long time that their lead singer grew up in Erie County, Pennsylvania, like myself, until more recently. Not many famous people hail from Erie, so we gotta stick together. Incidently, when I was flying to LA on the way to New Zealand, Pat (the lead singer) was on my flight. All of the above were bought at Real’s Music Store. Why I went with Real is detailed below. It’s certainly not because of RealPlayer. The Whale Rider song could be found nowhere by itself, finally found it at MusicMatch.

Now, the story of Gary Jules and Mad World. I wanted Mad World. The ethereal cover of the Tears for Fears song captured it perfectly, and there I times I echo the sentiments of the song. To really be captured by the song, you have to see Donnie Darko and the accompanying Mad World Video. The song itself is available on two different albums: Donnie Darko Soundtrack and Gary Jules’ Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets. Neither were available through BMG. The Soundtrack has some haunting piano music, and if you want an album of quiet angst with 1 vocal song on it, it’s a good choice. Gary Jules album includes 12 other tracks, and none of them resemble his cover of Mad World. So, thus began the quest to find JUST THAT SONG.

I initially looked at Walmart, iTunes and Napster. A search on the first one revealed no Mad World, no Gary Jules. On the second one, they had Gary Jules album, and every song was available for single download except 1, and that would of course be the one I wanted (though I could download the ENTIRE ALBUM). Don’t remember what happened on the other site, but no Mad World. Undaunting, I kept searching, and Real came to my rescue. They had Mad World, and thus have gained quasi-loyalty, since I’ve bought 9 of 10 songs (in a year) there:)

Still can’t find New Zealander Brooke Fraser, nor is her album easy to acquire, but LifeLine is just such a great song (you can see the video on that page). Then today I was thinking about other songs I could downloading, after buying All Kinds of Time (NFL.com promo commercial using that song is on that page). I then thought of Evanescence. I originally heard then while in New Zealand, and I knew this really cool Kiwi girl named Amy-Lee, and my friend pointed out that Amy Lee is the name of theEvanescence front girl. Hmmmm. Well, DareDevil may have been average, but My Immortal and Bring Me To Life are very cool, and go with my eclectic music collection. Guess what, I can sample theses songs at all the music services, but none are available for download…except the last place I look, Napster. I’ll check them out tomorroow maybe. And so it goes. I need to have more mainstream tastes.