Adventures in digital distribution

Although I’m a big consumer of digital media, I’ve never really been much of a purchaser. Apart from a few exceptions (which I’ll come to) the vast majority of my media is either a) ripped from physical media, b) shared with friends or c) free. The latter encompasses things like YouTube and podcasts, or stuff from the like of Jamendo or Magnatune.

The few pieces of media I’ve purchased have been exclusively through iTunes because they make the whole damn process so easy. The trouble is that now my house is mostly¹ free of that operating system I can no longer use iTunes to purchase any new music (or even listen to/watch the stuff I have purchased – DRM sucks). So I’ve avoided purchasing anything new digitally since then.

Yesterday I was introduced to a couple of new bands: Flood of Red and Enter Shikari. I’m always keen to support artists I like, but I don’t really buy CDs anymore. However Enter Shikari’s site linked me to 7digital who had both bands and – even better – they were available as unencumbered MP3 (as well as the more typical WMA and AAC) so I grabbed both Flood’s EP and Enter’s album as well as The White Stripes latest (Icky Thump) in said format. Checkout was painless as they support PayPal (so I don’t have to give my card details to yet another company), and my only criticism of the whole process was that I had to download each track separately. If I was using another OS I could have used their software to speed this up but it was only an inconvenience, not a show stopper.

So I’ve got new music, almost instantaneous satisfaction, and a warm fuzzy feeling from knowing that I’m supporting the artists (and their labels, and the distributors etc.) whilst not supporting DRM.

Another criticism – but this is not 7digital’s fault – is that not all music is available in a choice of formats or unencumbered by DRM, but the simple fact is I won’t be buying anything that has those restrictions.

¹ My laptop came with Vista on it, and it’s still in there somewhere but never gets booted. One of these days I’ll get around to getting rid of it.