Online music

For a while I held the opinion that online music business won't just work thanks to idiotic DRM-limitations and too high a price tag. And other annoying stuff. My opinion started to slowly change when I tried out Apple's iTMS. Of course it still had DRM. And it was decently expensive considering that you didn't even get the physical CD. And then you had to rip the DRM away so you could actually listen to it. No wait, I'm in Finland, I can't talk about overriding DRM protection. Silly me.

But the point remained, the Apple user interface, again, was done brilliantly. Without even noticing I had spent somewhere around 30 euros there. But it was still sort of annoying. Enter Amie Street. I'd actually been aware of Amie Street since the end of summer, 2006. I'd even plugged it and the idea in some conversations with people, but never actually got around to spending any more than 10 minutes with it myself. Until tonight. I paid them 10 bucks and was essentially expecting to get a couple of albums for that money. And mostly crap. But instead I bought the couple (three) albums and lo and behold, they were actually fairly decent. And I still have somewhere around nine bucks to spend! I can see how this service would, in the long run, be actually able to make a dent in my wallet. At least a larger dent than iTMS, not to mention the people selling physical CDs. I can just click-click-click and download a new album. And it'll cost something like 20 cents. Do that ten times and it's still just two bucks. Do that on 90 days a year and it's already 180 bucks...

Oh, and a shameless plug (I'm entitled to these because a) it's my blog and b) I don't even know the person who I'm plugging, this time). Go listen to Manic's stuff on Amie Street and possibly buy something if you like it. Brilliant stuff.