You never wash up after yourself

Hello, World.

World, you owe me. Not too much—about fifty bucks. But you still owe me.

You see, World, i’ve been listening to Radiohead since the second “You’re so fucking special” was played on Israeli Educational TV for the first time. When “Pablo Honey”, “The Bends” and “OK Computer” were released, i was a penniless teenager. Few of my friends listened to such music and those who did like it, were penniless teenagers, too, and didn’t have the CD’s. And, believe it or not, there were no MP3’s to download then. I only knew the songs from the videos on MTV, but did’t hear “Black Star”, “Planet Telex”, “You” or “Exit Music”.

Long story short, by 2000 i finally bought all those CD’s. I even became so rich, that i bought “Kid A” the day it was released.

What’s the problem then? The rest. With every album that they released, Radiohead released a separate companion EP. And these companion EP’s were good, too. And they were almost as expensive as the albums. For some time i didn’t buy them, because i hardly had the money to buy the albums. Later i was sure that EMI ere about to re-release them in some way. Then i stopped seeing them in record stores. Hey, i stopped seeing record stores—they began to get closed one after the other.

And then i saw those EP’s somewhere, and i had some spare money and i gave up and bought them—”My Iron Lung EP”, “How am I Driving EP”, “Com Lag EP”. Excellent music—”The Trickster”, “Permanent Daylight”, “Pearly”, “Palo Alto”.

Mere weeks later, bang: Radiohead’s First Three Albums Reissued and Expanded.

Well, yes, those tracklists have the complete EP’s and then some: “Molasses”, “Talk Show Host”, “Pop is Dead” and “Killer Cars” are all great and hard-to-find songs. And i am going to buy that crap, because i am the sucker that keeps the CD industry alive. But damn it, i don’t know what is it in me that makes record companies re-release albums days after i, of all people, buy myself a copy. It happened to me with Bob Dylan, Pavement, R. E. M. and Arik Einstein, but somehow with Radiohead it’s especially painful.

So there. I guess that i had to buy those EP’s to have them re-released so you, World, would be able to pay less than i paid and get more than i got.

Fuck justice. Fuck EMI. Fuck Radiohead. Fuck money.

P.S. At least i didn’t buy “Seven Television Commercials”. Go-go, YouTube.

A Letter to eMusic

eMusic are more or less the good guys of the online digital music business. They are cheap, they sell “good” music – jazz, indie, progressive, avantgarde. They sell high-quality MP3 files and they don’t use CRAP (DRM). They give quite a lot of music for free. All that wasn’t enough for me, though. Still, i really wanted to give them a chance and offered them an opportunity to exploit me. Here’s the letter i sent them:

Hi there,

This “bad feedback” is totally subjective. As the famous break-up line goes, “it’s not you, it’s me”.

You see – i just don’t like to listen to MP3’s. Even if i love the music, i just don’t experience quite the same excitement when i listen to a file on my computer as i do when i listen to a CD or a record or even a magnetic tape.

CD’s, records and tapes are something that i can touch and hold in my hands; MP3’s are just files. I just don’t like them so much. Even if i get them for free, i don’t *enjoy* listening to them.

I downloaded WinAmp and tried your generous free 50 MP3’s offer. I found a lot of great music – Trail of Dead, the Microphones, Stephen Malkmus. The music’s great! And the subscription price is fair! Really! But as i listened to Malkmus’ great “Face The Truth” i wanted to read the CD booklet. But i didn’t have it – i just had a bunch of MP3’s. Even if i would be able to read the whole of the booklet online, i wouldn’t enjoy it half as much as reading a printed one. And no, i don’t want to print one at home – buying good paper and ink would cost me more than buying a CD. And i don’t want to listen to a burned CD. It just disgusts me. I want the original CD and i will probably go to a CD store and buy it. Which is a kind of a rip-off, ‘cuz i already payed for the *music*. Again – it’s not eMusic’s fault; it’s my crazy completism.

But why won’t you make profit out of it? Consider this possibility: I download a whole album on eMusic. If i like it, i can buy a discounted CD at some online CD store. I’d love it! I get access to a lot of good legal music downloads, the record company gets what it wants, eMusic gets subscription fees.

I tried looking for something like it at your website, but couldn’t find it. If there IS something like it and i missed it, please tell me! ‘Cuz if there isn’t, i will, unfortunately, have to cancel my subscription.

Thanks for understanding.

Here’s their reply:

Hello:

Thank you for contacting eMusic Customer Support.

Thank you for taking the time out for the feedback, I will be sure to pass it onto our content and marketing departments for their information.

If you are using the most current version of turned, there is a feature that automatically adds artwork to your albums if the artwork is available online.

If you do not receive artwork with your downloads, you can import album artwork from our site into turned to ensure that the album artwork will appear when playing songs. Here are the steps:

1. Launch tunes. Make sure you’ve already added your tracks to your tunes library.

2. Make sure you are set to “Browse” mode by clicking the eye on the upper right hand corner.

3. Locate the album you’d like to add artwork to by first locating the artist in the Artist column and then locating the album title in the Album column.

4. Click once to highlight the album title.

5. Locate the appropriate artwork on the eMusic album page. With your left mouse button, select the image and *hold down* your mouse button.

6. Drag the image to the lower-left corner of turned labeled “Drag Album Artwork Here”. (If it says “Now Playing” then click the bar for it to display “Drag Album Artwork here.”)

7. When you see a “+” sign in the window, release your mouse button. The artwork you selected will appear in the window and will now appear for each track of the album you selected.

Please let us know if you have any further questions.

eMusic’s MP3s are nowVRR-encoded using the encoder LAME 3.96. Our MP3s are not restricted in any way.

OurVRR-encoding ranges from 32kbs to 320kbs, averaging around 192bpss. A portion (

Please see the following help section article for further information:

http://www.emusic.com/help/technical.html#q10

The ID3 tags we use are version 1.0 and version 2.3.

We do not currently include the release year in our tags but hopefully should be adding it soon.

Please let us know if we can be of further assistance

Regards,

Carlos

eMusic Customer Support Team

What’s to say? First, it’s automated. They didn’t really bother to read my letter. They thought that i’m just another stupid American who can’t figure out how to download files. I wanted to give them an opportunity to use my weaknesses and take my money. They didn’t want it.

Furthermore, i’ve got a strong hunch that Carlos isn’t a real person. In the past i received replies from several customer service representatives named Carlos in different organizations. I doubt that it’s a coincidence. Might it be the default name for some CRM bot?

If you happen to be an entrepreneur, please go on and use me. I meant every word of that letter.