I have a special love, hate relationship with iTunes. Yeah, I am sure a lot of people do. My reason? It actually is really simple, but it drives me up a wall even to think about it.

I hate it on iTunes when you really, really want a song but for some reason they only sell that song with the whole album.

I go crazy when this happens.It just happened to me again. Regina Spektor is my favorite music artist by miles, and I really wanted to buy her song, The Call. Which is amazing I have to say. But you can’t buy it anywhere unless you buy a whole freaking album.

Some people when they hear this say, Well maybe the whole album is good? Maybe you should just buy the whole thing. I always do check. I listen to the whole album, weigh the pros and cons on wasting ten bucks for a whole CD that really only has one good song on it and decide against it. That is the worst part, that one song is always amazing, and all the others suck like there is no tomorrow.

For an example, take this Regina Spektor song that I am dying to have. It can only be bought on two albums. Guess what they are?? Come on guess.

Chronicles of Narnia, Prince of Caspian, and Disney Box Office Hits. Some of these songs make me bleed from my ears. They make me want to tear out my hair I get so frustrated!! It must be a strategy because no one in their right mind would ever buy those songs even if they were being tortured.

It just drives me insane because I know iTunes knows that people hate that, so why do they do it????

The world may never know, maybe it’s greediness or perhaps they just like watching us squirm. I wonder if people actually do buy the album just for one song. I know I am always tempted, but I haven’t broken yet. Same thing happened to me with an Atreyu song I loved but will never own because iTunes is a stickler.

iTunes little stunts like this one are the reasons people use free downloading illegal sites. I disagree totally with downloading illegally because I think someone should get paid for their hard work, but I can now understand why people do it. Because of tricks like this one where in no way you can buy the single song you want.

It isn’t just iTunes either, Amazon does the same thing also. Just a recommendation for these companies: If you want people to buy the music, just let them buy it. No strings, or sneaky tricks just put a price next to every song with a button that says buy. It would work a lot easier for everyone.

I am still dying for that song, when iTunes decides to actually put it on sale I will be there.

Tags: downloading, frustrated, iTunes, regina spektor, songs, tricks

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 5th, 2009 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.