So I registered with iTunes Music Store. With the buzz I was getting from users down south, I was expecting it to be like my favourite indie record store, only online. Um, no.
So I searched for artists I’m listening to right now:
![itunes does not know joanna newsom](http://scruss.com/wordpress/wp-content/itunes_joanna_who.png)
Ah, I see. It didn’t seem to have most of the artists I wanted. In all, it failed to find:
- The Apples in Stereo
- Devendra Banhart
- The Decemberists
- The Holy Modal Rounders
- Bob Log III
- Neutral Milk Hotel
- Joanna Newsom
- The Polyphonic Spree
- Kate Rusby
- XTC
As you’ll be able to find at least five of these in the most dismal mall chain store, it didn’t start off too well.
I browsed the music genres, and was shocked. There was no folk genre, but there was a roots one which seemed to overlap what I’d call folk and world. Confusingly, there was also a world genre. Oh, and people, disney is not a genre, it’s more a malignant/cryogenically-preserved state of mind.
(I was amused to see the appaling faux yokel band The Wurzels listed as roots. I guess they are, if you know the etymology of their name …)
So I found a RobynHitchcock spoken word track that I hadn’t heard from Millennium Thoughts. I downloaded it, and on trying to play it, it said:
![do not make me authorize this again](http://scruss.com/wordpress/wp-content/itunes_auth.png)
I thought that the pretty proprietary interface would at least remember that it was me logged in at the store, and using the same computer. I guess that’s how paranoid those DRM types are.
Once I was over that, I decide to buy a whole CD: XO, by Elliott Smith. Since I knew that the service used a propritary encryption scheme, I figured on buning a CD, and ripping it later. So I selected the tracks:
![](http://scruss.com/wordpress/wp-content/itunes_burn_selection.jpg)
and started to burn a disc. But it assumed I meant all the tracks I’d downloaded into some “playlist”, so now I have a CD with one Robyn Hitchcock track, and all of XO. Annoying. Especially when iTunes doesn’t burn CD-TEXT information to the disc, grr.
I wonder why iTunes uses something very close to the radioactive symbol for the “Burn Disc” logo?
![](http://scruss.com/wordpress/wp-content/radioactive_burn_disc.png)
I’m not impressed with iTunes Music Store. The content is woeful, the user interface is contrived, and the tracks are very expensive, and in a proprietary format I can’t use directly with my MP3 player. I’ll be giving it a miss in future.