The Iron Yuppie

Yahoo Music.... you're fired. You're so fired, it isn't even funny. Why? Quality of service? Nope that was great. Selection? Great as well. It was the player. THE DAMN PLAYER. Come on.

So I've switched over to Rhapsody, which is a bit better. But I wanted to catch some Kayne West, v. 50 Cent goodness so I could decide for myself which is better. Only when I come upon the Kayne West album to discover two tracks are missing because they haven't been given permission to be streamed. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Fuck you. FUCK YOU. F-U-C-K Y-O-U. I'm thinking it's not even Kayne West's fault... it's some label lackey who has decided this is the best way to upsell albums. FUCK YOU LACKEY.

Oh, and before you jump off and say DRM is wrong and Steve Jobs is right, I'm a huge fan of the subscription. HUGE. And, by and large, I'm willing to pay the DRM cost in order to keep the price down. The fact is, I can count on my dick the number of cd's I've needed to take to a place where I didn't have wifi/ethernet access and/or a connection back to the Interweb once at least once a month (Yahoo's method of working on this kind of stuff was you would download it to your portable player and it would need to call home once a month to make sure you're still subscribed... I'm not sure, as I haven't checked, but I think Rhapsody works the same way). And, the fact of the matter is, that except for the VERY rare release (Chutes Too Narrow, Give Up, Anything by the Strokes, maybe (and that's a big maybe) 200 full albums total since I started listening to music, etc), I don't even listen to releases more than a year after I have them. What difference is it to me whether or not I have a piece of dinosaur carcass and metal that provides me with some token of meaningless ownership.

Assume the two following scenarios:

1 CD per month = $15 x 12 = $180 plus ~200 tracks I can enjoy forever

1 subscription per month = $13 x 12 = $156 plus A BILLION TRACKS

At the end of one year, who is ahead? At the end of a thousand years, who is ahead?

And for those who care about switching services... yeah, I've got a hint for you too. Let me promise you that the search providers through all of these things are a million times better than your organization/search system. So here's a hint... delete all previous music you downloaded and just search based on what you want to listen to now. It's virtually instantaneous, and you'll never remember what you didn't want to listen to  in the first place.

Before I finish up, let me reiterate my thoughts:

#1) Subscription = good

#2) Yahoo player = ass

#3) Rhapsody = meh, but better than Yahoo

#4) Senior douche working for Roc-a-Fella Records who is responsible for making me have a less than ideal experience simply because you think you're going to upsell me and claim some portion of Kayne West's quarterly album sales as "your doing".... YOU FUCKING SUCK. You make the world ever more miserable for the rest of us to live in. I hate you.

posted by Iron Yuppie  # 10/09/2007 01:11:00 PM