Dear Music Industry: Your days are numbered ...

Yesterday evening, as I was ripping a stack of CDs to iTunes, I decided to hunt down some music by Ames, Iowa's The Envy Corps. I'd heard their stuff in the van on the way back from SxSW because I believe Jesse Stensby knows them, and they sounded good. Then I heard "Story Problem" on the Current. Damn, thought I, that's a catchy goddamn song that sounds great. Plus they're from Ames! Ridiculous.

So I hit the iTunes store and searched for "envy corps." Nothing. I went to their website, which wasn't very helpful, so I went to their record label's website. Their label, Vertigo, is in the UK. So I clicked on The Envy Corps' EP link and got a bunch of options for buying the EP, including a link to the iTunes store. I clicked through, at which time the iTunes store told me that the product I was looking for was only available in the UK store, and would I like to switch to the UK store. Sure, as long as I can switch back. And then I arrived at the iTunes page for The Envy Corps EP, which cost something like £1.50, and I clicked on Buy Album, at which point the iTunes store told me that I could only buy products from the US version of the iTunes store.

At this point, I switched over to Acquisition, my rarely-used P2P program, typed in "envy corps" in the search box, and downloaded the songs for free.

I tried. I really wanted to give someone my money to get this disc AND THEY WOULDN'T LET ME. I don't know what the answer is here, but if they can't figure out some way to make this work better, nobody's making money off records anymore--and they don't deserve to.