Legal Music Online? What If I Can’t Find It?

Dear BPI,

I’ve not recieved one of your lovely letters, but I would like to hear an answer to a point I have regarding music online. What if I can’t find a music track or album online?

I’m sure you’re familiar with artists who don’t appear electroncially, such as The Beatles, or do not wish to appear in certain stores (Kid Rock and Garth Brookes to name two). What happens when there is music that I would like to buy, but it’s not available legally? This happened recently; after Eurovision 2008 I decided to grab some of the albums of the artists. Norway’s entry, Maria Haukass Storeng was top of my list. From what I can see, it’s not available online (although her previous album , Breathing, is). It’s not even on sale via Amazon on a physical CD.

From other more grey sources, it is.

There’s also the argument that if I don’t want to buy from iTunes (DRM, product lock-in, crappy encoding, low bitrate, I don’t particularly support Apple’s distruibtuion of the money to artists, etc), I couldn’t even get a copy of Breathing online, and would have to resort to my dark corner of the web of choice.

The market has provided me with choice. It should be in the music industry’s best interests to not put barriers in the way of people who are happy to drop money on something like 15 albums of artists where I have heard a single track. Without internet music stores (in some cases), or other means (in the other cases) I wouldn’t have music from Ani Lorak, Mor Ve Otesi, Tersabetoni, Kalomira, Maria Haukass Storeng and Dima Bilan to listen to and enthuse about.

GIve us options we want, not options you think are the only ones that will keep you in the financial nirvana you had in the 80s and 90s.

Yours,
Ewan Spence.